Tag: TechBytes

Communicate More Effectively With These New LinkedIn Messaging Features

While Facebook and Instagram are the social networks of choice for the modern day mobile user, apps like LinkedIn haven’t lost their luster. The professional network is still the master of its class, and a growing number of users are turning to the app to keep up-to-date with their network more than ever before.

LinkedIn Moves To A More Competitive Platform

Whether as a simple courtesy to its users, or an attempt to become more appealing to those who’ve made a habit of bringing their professional life to social apps, LinkedIn has implemented some significant changes to their platform, all aimed at making the user experience more worthwhile.

The company announced the changes in a recent blog post, making the case for why the professional network isn’t one to be ignored if instant communication is a big part of your business. From finding jobs to networking and communicating with teammates, LinkedIn boasts loads of potential, especially with these new features.

Compose Longer Messages

The ability to communicate freely and privately through social apps has become a necessity for many of today’s mobile users. Sometimes, you’ve got a lot to say, and scrolling back and forth as you’re typing to make sure you got it all out can be tedious. With this, LinkedIn has created an easier way to compose longer messages, implementing a larger message box for ease-of-use. There will be no more fishing for your cursor. Now, you’ll be able to fit everything you need to say, just as you need to say it, by stretching the message box to reveal more space.

Share Attachments On The Go

In today’s business landscape, work doesn’t stop once you leave the office. This is the reality for workers across all industries today. Between mobile workers and those who travel often for business, smartphones bear their fair share of the workload, and social networks would do well to keep this in mind when rolling out new features for users.

To make the process of working remotely more convenient, LinkedIn now allows users to share attachments on the go. According to the company, the ability to share attachments was among the most frequently requested messaging features by LinkedIn users. To do it, just tap the attachment icon and choose from the approved file types, which include PDF, XLS, DOC, and PPT. This one change alone is sure to bring big potential for the app and users everywhere.

Express Yourself With Emojis

Conveying emotions through words isn’t always easy to achieve. Rather than spend the rest of your workdays dissecting messages and searching for undertones, you can now incorporate emojis into your messages. Use the emoji picker on your desktop to add emojis to your text. Just search by category, and let the emojis do all the talking.

Start And Manage Group Messages

There are loads of reasons why chatting on LinkedIn makes sense. You may be discussing work with a teammate, gathering info about an exciting new job opportunity, or collaborating with other professionals within your industry. Whatever the reason, instant communication is vital for many people, and the company has addressed this with the ability to start group messages.

It’s now simpler for you to start conversations with people within your network. To do this, just tap the “+” button, which will prompt the suggestions of users to communicate within groups. These can include fellow co-workers from a recent or present company, old classmates, or people you’ve recently met. And if you need to remove someone from the chat, never fear. Simply tap the three dots on the top right corner of your group message and tap to remove people as you wish.

Mention Others In Your Messages

The tagging feature on Facebook and Instagram is a great way to stay connected with friends. LinkedIn has incorporated a similar feature, allowing users to mention other users in group messages or in one-on-one conversations to recommend others.

Copy And Paste Images From The Web

It may come as no surprise that many people opt for visuals over traditional text. The popularity of memes is a testament to this. Visuals are a part of everyday communication for countless users, and LinkedIn has recently come up with a game plan for that, too. Users are now able to copy images from the web, and even their phone, right within LinkedIn’s messaging platform. This makes communication easier and more fun than ever – a big plus for users and LinkedIn alike.

Wrap Up

Given LinkedIn’s emphasis on all things business and professional, it makes sense that the company would further strive to make its features reliable for just that. These new features are bound to attract a new wave of young professionals hoping to find new ways to use modern methods of communication to advance their careers and networks.

“Hey Cortana, remind me to contact Bill at Acme to set up that sales meeting.”

More business people are relying on their voice assistants and AI chatbots to help them save time and effort, according to market research firm Spiceworks. After surveying more than 500 technology professionals throughout North America and Europe, they found that 40% of large businesses and 15% of smaller ones will now be using voice-assist technology to improve their business efficiencies.

Right now, Microsoft Cortana is the most commonly used AI assistant for businesses, at 49 percent – and 14% of businesses are using AI chatbots, with their Microsoft collaboration tools like Slack and Teams. This is probably because it’s so accessible and is integrated into Windows 10. Apple’s Siri isn’t far behind at 47 percent – it’s integrated into iOS and macOS.

Some of the tasks respondents use voice assist for include:

• Voice-to-text dictation
• Employee calendar management
• Customer service purposes
• Helpdesk management tasks
• Sales and marketing

New Players in the Business Voice-Assist Marketplace.

Integrating voice assistants in the enterprise market is unleashing new use cases for the technology. In November 2017, Amazon launched their Alexa for Business platform, which lets businesses to create their own Alexa skills.

IBM recently launched their Watson Assistant for businesses. They plan to license it to enterprises so they can build customized, interactive tasks into their own products and services. The Watson Assistant is more focused on customization and privacy than are Google and Amazon. This might give IBM a competitive edge in the business marketplace.

Watson allows for better-tailored voice interactions and eliminates the need for a universal wake-up word like “Hey Siri” or “Alexa.” Plus, you can train the assistant using your own datasets. This makes it easier to set actions and commands.

The Watson Assistant also gives each user control over their personal data. It doesn’t pool users’ information and allows each person to control which Watson-powered devices and applications can access their data via the IBM cloud. The technology then learns and remembers each user’s preferences.

IBM is introducing their Watson Assistant to hotels, hospitals, banks, offices, restaurants, connected cars, and more. They’ve partnered Harmon where they’re using the Watson Assistant in a Maserati concept car. The Munich airport is also using IBM’s Watson Assistant to power a robot that provides directions to travelers. And Chameleon Technologies is using it to control temperatures in homes based on residents’ daily schedules.

What Voice Assist Will Demand from Your IT Professionals.

As voice assist becomes increasingly mainstream in the workplace, IT departments will face many challenges. As it stands now, the various forms of voice assist, machine learning and artificial intelligence operate on multiple platforms, operating systems, apps, and hardware. This will make it difficult to harness their potential without considerable investment in resources and expertise.

Not only will IT professionals need to have a complete grasp of its functionality and how to integrate it with networks and legacy systems, but they must also define and implement strategies for using it, and provide training and education for an entire pool of users in the enterprise.

As voice assist becomes more interactive and “personal,” IT professionals will need to combine their technical skills along with strategic and interpersonal capabilities to achieve greater success.

Adoption of the technology is moving slowly but is predicted to pick up as the power of voice achieves a new level yet to be discovered. Those businesses that stay informed and ready for and prepared for change will be better positioned to take advantage of its benefits. Some of these benefits include increased productivity and sales, more and better innovations, improved collaboration, and the ability to increase global market share.

Deep Learning

Voice assistant providers are improving recognition capabilities through the power of deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence (similar to facial-recognition technology). Deep learning goes a step farther than machine learning that is based on algorithms and historical data.

It will be able to predict a pattern of speech based on previous content without training by compiling vast amounts of data from the Internet. Voice assistants will be capable of taking meeting notes with much more accuracy. And, they’ll be able to identify different voices in a room to transcribe who said what.

Deep learning will be better at translating foreign languages. Imagine how this could fuel the growth of a global business, and the ability for more seamless collaboration. Right now, voice assist is a bit “robotic,” but eventually it will be more conversational in tone and respond more accurately due to deep learning.

But, Don’t Fire Your Administrative Assistant Just Yet.

Those who aren’t using them say it’s because they don’t see a use for them, that the cost is holding them back, and they worry about security issues. They also worry about technology distracting their employees and that it could negatively affect productivity.

Although voice assistants and chatbots are helpful in the workplace, the technology still needs improvement. 59% said that it can misunderstand requests and 30% said that it is inaccurate when executing commands. And, 29% said that it can’t distinguish their voice from others.

Other than using them for simple tasks, voice assist has yet to become widely used in the workplace. If you have a lot of employees in one area, the technology won’t work for you. It has difficulty deciphering commands with there are simultaneous conversations taking place. But, as the technology improves, more will be willing to use it.

Is your business ready to meet the demands that voice assistants and future technology advancements will surely bring? If your small or mid-sized business is struggling to manage your existing IT systems, or you can’t keep up with IT security concerns, it’s time to consider partnering with a Technology Solutions Provider. In this way, you’ll be prepared for what’s coming next in the world of voice-assist, and other technologies that can help you better compete in your marketplace, improve productivity and ultimately your profitability.

Are you using Outlook to its fullest potential? If not, you’re missing out on a valuable tool that will make your work so much easier. Not only will it incorporate everything you need to do with emails, like make appointments and set “Quick Steps,” it can save you a lot of time. We have 9 great timesavers we want to share with you here.

1. Turn Off Notifications

You know those little pop-ups that appear when you’re trying to concentrate on a project? They are there to let you know that you have new mail. This is great if you’re waiting for an important email. Otherwise, they can be very distracting.

Here’s how to turn these off:

• Just go to the bottom right-hand side of your screen (in Windows) and click on the little triangle. A check box will come up.
• You can see here where it says, “Show New Mail Desktop Alert”.
• Uncheck this and no more annoying pop ups!

You can also do this right from Outlook:

• Go to the left-hand side of your screen with Outlook open.
• Select “File” and “Options.”

Under “Mail” you’ll see a bunch of options. Here’s where you can select all the notifications and sounds that simply distract you, and that you don’t need. Ah, peace and quiet for a change!

2. Drag Mail to the Calendar

When you’re in an email, and you want to add a meeting to your calendar, simply go up to the top Ribbon where it says “Meeting” and you can “Reply with Meeting” to all the people on the email stream.

Set up the time and place, and then invite everyone.

3. Block Off Time Slots

Let’s say someone emailed you a proposal and you need to block off some time to read it. Here’s how to do this right from the email and attachment:

Here’s the email with the proposal marked in blue.

Drag the box down to the left where it says “CALENDAR” and it will create a prompt where you can enter the block of time in your calendar, on the day and time that works for you. It will appear as an appointment in your calendar.

When you’re entering time in your meeting time slot, Outlook does some of the work for you.

Say you want to start at 10:00 am. Simply key in 10 and hit TAB, and Outlook will enter the rest (10:00 AM). You can even enter military time. 15:15 TAB and Outlook will convert it to 3:15PM.

You can do the same with the end time as well.

4. The Ignore Button

If there’s an email that keeps appearing in your inbox, but you don’t want to see it anymore, rather than deleting it you can simply go to the Ignore button on the top left, (or Control >Delete) and emails about this subject will automatically go into your Deleted Items.

You’ll get this prompt to ensure that you want to delete the message every time. Check “Don’t show this message again” and click “Ignore Conversation.” You won’t be bothered by the message anymore.

5. The Quick Access Toolbar

Microsoft provides this toolbar in all of their software solutions. You can put some of your most used commands in this toolbar. Simply check the ones that you want to appear. They will always appear at the top of your screen until you remove them.

And you can easily add more commands, as you see below.

Simply highlight the commands to the left and click “Add” and they will appear in your ribbon. To remove, do the opposite. Highlight the commands to the right and click “Remove.”

5. Respond Fast with Instant Messaging

Sometimes you need a fast way to get a message to someone, and email isn’t doing this for you. Right from Outlook, go to the top ribbon to: “Reply All with IM”

Now, you can send everyone on your email stream an Instant Message instead of an email. This comes in handy if you need to get a quick message to your team. However, it only works if your team is connected to you with Microsoft Link. If not, you can do this with Skype as well.

6. Quick Steps

You may recognize this in the top Ribbon. It’s been in Microsoft products since 2010.

Sometimes you do things manually. Or you may set up Rules. For example, “If the email is from Molly Dempsey save it to Project Falcon.” Or something like this. You can also save commands like this in Quick Steps. Here’s one we set to move the message, mark it as read, tag it, and put a follow-up flag on it.

Quick Steps moved the email, categorized it and marked it as read, just as we specified.

There are multiple actions you can choose from in Quick Steps. Start with “Create New” and your selections will pop up. Click “New Message.” Then preset the email that you think you’ll use over and over.

Here’s a Quick Step to create an invoice right from Outlook.

Click the invoice you want (we have one called Tailspin already set up). Outlook will take you to your contact list where you can choose who to send it to.

Then we set the importance level as “High.”

And we simply fill in the information in the preset template, send it and it’s done!

7. Out of Office in Advance

Now you can set your “Out of Office” messages in advance. Remember when you had to do this right before you left town? No more.

Here’s how to set it up:

Go to the “File” menu.

Click ” Automatic Replies (Out of Office)

Then set up your parameters.

Click “Send Automatic Replies” and type in the start and end date, along with the message you want to send when you’re away.

Check the box that says, “Only send during this time range”. Outlook will remember to send the Out of Office message beginning on the date and time you set and stop on the end date and time.

You can also set Out of Office emails for those emailing you from inside or outside your organization. How easy is that?

8. Search Your Email

The search box is right above your emails.

Say we want to find messages from Garret Vargas. All I have to do is type “Garret” and his messages came up.

But as you can see, some other messages popped up here. They probably contain Garret’s name.

Yes, you can see below that Garret’s name was in Katie Jordan’s message. Outlook search capabilities go that deep into your emails. Outlook will even look in attachments in your emails for what you’re searching for.

You can also search the Current Mailbox or All Mailboxes.

And, notice that when you’re in Search you have all kinds of options in the top Ribbon.

9. Look for ? or press F1 for Help

The ? is on the top right of your screen if you ever need help in Outlook or any Microsoft program.

Or, simply click F1 and the Help prompt will appear.

Microsoft Outlook has many other great features. Keep watching this space for more ways to get the most from Outlook and other Microsoft products.

Create and Collaborate With The All-New and Completely Radical Microsoft Whiteboard

What do most companies have in common these days?

The need to collaborate on a multitude of projects. Enter the old-fashioned whiteboard. This key piece of “equipment” is where a group might gather around while someone draws or makes bulleted lists. They write down ideas and suggestions. Everyone joins the discussion with their own unique ideas. Then after the meeting is over, someone erases the whiteboard so the next group can use it.

In today’s world, that’s a pretty outdated system. With all the technological advancements now available, surely there’s something better. Consider Microsoft’s new Whiteboard, a thing of beauty to behold. You can draw on it, make lists, share ideas, and create almost anything.

Microsoft brings the old-fashioned whiteboard into our new modern digital world. Team members can draw, make notes, type, or just get wildly creative. One team member can take up where another left off. Collaborating is easy and fun and it inspires the imagination. Below are just a few of the tools available for Microsoft’s Whiteboard.

Surface Pen and Collaborative Inking

Tasks such as the creation of comics rely on inking for quality and authenticity. Activities associated with high-end software used in the creation of high-quality graphics and comic book effects require the collaborative approach. Microsoft Whiteboard provides a platform for contributors to team up on a project ensuring that authenticity and quality are top notch. In terms of inking, enhancement of graphics and texts, and presentation, the Whiteboard can’t be beaten.

Geometry Recognition

Geometry recognition has applications in security enhancements through the concept of hand geometry in identification systems. Identifications systems, in traditional standards, make use of widely-used and applied features such as fingerprinting, Iris scanning, and facial recognition. However, hand recognition, which is part of the Microsoft Whiteboard Surface Pen application, takes security to another level providing scientific association of the hand contours with uniqueness in identity authentication process.

Table Conversion

Metric conversion of various standards to derived versions is an essential daily activity for multiple applications. Microsoft Whiteboard provides this functionality ensuring that users in various fields with conversion needs are able to integrate this feature into their professional practice. Revisiting the collaborative use of students and organizations of the Whiteboard versions for PC, Mac, Android, Windows, and iOS shows that varying categories of users rely on teamwork to function and to impact growth. Financial analysis and data-related tasks make use of tables and the Whiteboard application provides an easier solution for multiple users working simultaneously.

Automatic Table Shading

The Surface Pen allows users to apply conditional formatting to their worksheets. For corporate and academic uses, conditional formatting made possible by the MS Whiteboard’s Surface Pen functionality allows for interaction with tabular features. And, it offers professional tools for presentations. With reference to the standards of creating tables and the definition of formatting rules in any given project, Surface Pen offers these features ensuring that professionalism is integrated into the task resulting in the reliable quality of projects. Shading is particularly useful in highlighting crucial sets of information, such as financial ratios in financial statements in the expression of priority decision-making pieces of data.

Student and Organization Collaboration

Higher educational institutions offer students opportunities to pursue their professional fields of study. Students also require teamwork to efficiently apply their acquired knowledge on a variety of projects. These requirements are hindered by the inability to work on projects from a remote location without necessarily meeting physically with the team.

Organizations, on the other hand, require professionalism and collaborative dynamics to meet special organization-specific targets. In this regard, teamwork between employees is facilitated to not only support the functionality of an organization, but also the optimal utilization of time as a resource.

Correlation of Adoption to Efficiency

Organizations and individuals seeking maximum productivity will enjoy working with the MS Whiteboard application. Teamwork and project work within organizations is so important these days with people running in different directions. The collaborative features of the whiteboard application make it easy and fun for groups to get together and brainstorm. Individuals and organizations can improve their creativity while functioning at optimal levels. The Whiteboard also ensures that their activities can be tracked, authenticated, and shared with others.

Corporate Application

The MS Whiteboard provides a location diversity function to organizations that operate at an international level. The financial and economic climate of various regions requires organizations to operate from multiple locations taking advantage of emerging markets and sustainability. By collaborating, stakeholders of one organization can work together from different locations contributing to the same project. This approach makes organizational performance a shared duty where reliable ideas are taken into account, processed for their validity, and executed on-demand basis. However, the functionality of this application also runs into difficulties where teams do not share a common language but have to work on the same project. The translation feature of the Whiteboard provides a temporary solution since translated communication may not be as effective as same language communication.

Academic Applications

The onset of online academic courses is one of the significant applications of the MS Whiteboard. Through remote learning, tutors and students can work, present, discuss, and collaborate on academic tasks. The Whiteboard is perfect for schools of all sizes.

Conclusion

Teamwork has never been easier with Whiteboard. It’s the latest technology to take creation and collaboration to the next level for any team. This is a great tool for ad agencies and many other businesses who have a need to design and build things together. The Surface Pen opens up a variety of opportunities for students and leaders alike. Collaborate with others to create something amazing with Microsoft Whiteboard.

Staggering statistics were published stating that by 2019, the managed-services market is expected to see growth by as much as $193 billion . What is it about this particular business model that is so wildly successful? It seems a large percentage of small- and medium-sized businesses are very much in favor of these services, and there are a number of good reasons why.

Why the Demand for Managed Services?

We have already established that business owners are drawn to the managed-services business model, but why? What is it that owners are hoping to get out of such services, and how can you use those wants to market your services?  Research shows that the reason our clients choose our services are not necessarily the reasons why we think they should. Business owners are looking for a wide range of benefits when they opt for a managed services model, and what they want is:

• To improve the efficiency and dependability of their IT operations.
• Enhanced security and compliance.
• A proactive approach to maintenance.
• Cost effectiveness and a good return on investment.
• Free up IT staff to work on strategic projects.
• Have greater access to new technologies.
• Lacks in-house IT capabilities for certain functions.
• Shifting capital expenses to operating expenses.
• Predictable pricing and manageable costs.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the more pressing reasons why managed services are becoming the obvious choice for small to medium-sized business owners.

1. More Efficient and Reliable IT Operations

This is one of the main reasons that companies with over 100 employees decide that managed services are the right choice for them. Often, the businesses we partner with as managed-service providers are suffering from overburdened IT staff, or lack employees that have the knowledge and skills to handle certain tasks and successfully handle the entire network on their own.

In these situations, it is hard to deny the value of working with an outside IT service provider. A majority of businesses using managed-services describe their partnership with their provider as a collaborative arrangement with their internal IT department, leading one to believe that certain aspects of IT management fall into the MSP bucket while others are preferably handled in-house. The driving force for these business owners is to improve and enhance the capabilities of the in-house IT team, not replace them altogether. Outsourcing IT not only ensures an extra team of IT experts to help resolve any issues or concerns but to be able to benefit from having access to the latest and greatest technology and innovative business grade solutions that will assist in maximizing uptime and profitability. These technologies include such things as:

• Remote monitoring and management (RMM)
• Backup and disaster recovery (BDR)
• Cloud computing

By investing in these tools the entire IT infrastructure becomes more reliable and dependable, labor constraints are overcome, and internal IT departments are able to keep in control of the situation.

2. Enhanced Security and Compliance

There are so many variations of technology that store and transmit data nowadays, including tablets, operating systems, servers, smartphones, laptops and more. Because data is stored and transmitted on these devices it means their security is critical. Many business owners live in fear that they will fall victim to a security breach. As a managed service provider it is your job to make them well aware of the risks, sharing examples that have been highlighted in the media and explaining how their data and compliance practices are compromised when such an event arises.

It is also crucial you address the business owners concerns about compliance, especially in industries such as health and legal, where compliance is a major concern. For these people it is important they work with a provider that is HIPAA compliant and in addition, can implement other ways to supplement additional managed security protocol, policies, and procedures.

3. A Proactive Approach to Maintenance

This is a major and important benefit to managed IT services. Business owners have little to no time to spend thinking about their IT infrastructure, worrying about things such as the dependability and speed of the network connections, and other concerns. By working with an MSP they are afforded the luxury of all-day, every-day, around-the-clock coverage.

Security solutions and services such as RMM are always working to detect potential threats, vulnerabilities, or potential disturbances. When you provide fully managed IT support, bugs and issues can most often be troubleshot and remediated before they are ever a concern to the business owner. Owners are happy to pay for such a service, as CEOs and others have no time to be verifying that backups are done properly. It has become more than clear that data management on the cloud is expected to yield more managed services revenue in the coming year, and when business work with the right MSP they are able to take advantage of proactive business continuity solutions, such as BDR, by combining RMM intelligence with regular and encrypted backups, cloud computing, and virtualization.

4. Cost Effectiveness and Return on Investment

The cost savings associated with managed services is considerable, making it another reason that using MSP’s is desirable. This fact has an incredible amount of business value, but many business owners are unaware of just how significant this is. It is your job as a managed service provider to explain to your clients how MSPs help control outgoing expenses and increase ROI. An IT budget consists of many items, including:

• hardware costs
• software and network infrastructure
• maintenance costs
• IT labor

The businesses you work with need to understand every-way that managed services can benefit them financially, especially where the aforementioned maintenance costs are concerned. Using outdated software can have detrimental effects on ROI, and this is avoided with MSPs. In additional it provides the flexibility and scalability needed to grow or scale back in a way not possible with internal IT teams.

The managed service model allows clients to easily predict their IT expenses on a monthly basis and are able to better plan and budget for larger IT projects and improvements. All of these factors should be reviewed in a quarterly business review. You are able to show your clients the value of your services during these reviews, and how you play an instrumental role in what they do.

5. Free Up Internal IT Staff To Work On Strategic Projects

When businesses choose a managed-service provider a major advantage they often don’t think of with an outside service provider, is that any internal IT staff is free to focus their energy and talents on projects and tasks they are better suited to handle.

This increases productivity and allows strategic planning to get the time and attention it deserves.

This maximizes the business’s IT budget and the business is able to get the most out of their investment.

It doesn’t make much sense to have your internal IT team handling things they have little expertise or experience with. Things like migrating over to Microsoft Office 365 when it can be expertly handled by an MSP instead, and the technician can commit their time to something they excel at. Managed services enable in-house staff to spend their working hours on what they are best at, with the MSP filling in the gaps and taking the pressure off, providing specialized services where they are needed most.

As managed service providers we are well aware of the benefits and advantages of the services we offer, but it is our job to help our clients see them as well. By better understanding what it is they are looking for and how their businesses can be best supported we are able to tailor our offerings and approach to better meet those needs.