Microsoft 365

4 of the best Microsoft Teams features you may not be using today

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 15:49:56 +0000

4 of the best Microsoft Teams features you may not be using today admin Wed, 01/12/2022 - 09:49 Microsoft 365 ��Ƶɫ

When the pandemic hit in early 2020, many workplaces migrated to Microsoft Teams, looking for a quick fix to connect employees until it was safe to return to the office. Nearly two years later, many of those same workplaces are now planning to work remotely or in a hybrid setup indefinitely. This may lead you to wonder if there’s more to the tool that your team can benefit from.

Indeed, there’s more to Microsoft Teams than just video meetings, instant messages, and project channels. Let’s take a look at some of the lesser-known features that can help your team long-term.

Get more out of messaging

Most discussion of Microsoft Teams only considers it the “new version of Skype chat”, or likens it to Slack. In reality, there’s a lot more to it than being able to send and receive instant messages. Teams is set up so that you can work in real-time with your colleagues without ever leaving the channel you’re in. It’s a great place to house your digital workplace hub to collaborate, plan, and execute work as a team.

Where Microsoft Teams gets a leg up over other messaging apps is in its ability to support many functions at once. Within project channels and direct messages, you can easily attach a file, video or voice-call a colleague, and access other Microsoft apps like OneNote and Office, all within the same window. This makes it easy to stay on-task, collaborate seamlessly, and organize project information.

Collaborate with colleagues

There are a number of features that make collaboration easier with Microsoft Teams.

First, as Microsoft explains over on their support page, adding tabs makes it possible to keep your information organized and streamlined. You can add any relevant files and apps as tabs to your existing Teams conversations. For example, if there’s a deck your team is working on that’s part of a larger project, you can add a tab to that channel to make the deck easily accessible to everyone. Once a file is added, users can also co-edit it together in real-time, without needing to leave Teams.

Another great collaboration feature is the ability to add both internal and external contributors to project spaces. This makes it possible to add vendors, suppliers, freelancers, and clients as guest users, which means you don’t have to rely on a separate email thread to keep them in the loop (just make sure you run this function through your security process first).

Integrate for ease

Integrations make it easier to work smarter using third-party apps in conjunction with Teams.

First, sometimes you need more than just text to get your message across. Microsoft Teams lets you easily embed content from third-party apps directly into your messages, making them more interactive, informative, and functional for the people receiving them.

You can also interact with 24 different app bots by @mentioning them in chats or project channels. This support article uses the example of chatting with Survey Monkey to create a new poll within a team message. This makes it easier to accomplish more, without having to put any extra effort in.

Access from anywhere

We’ve all gotten used to working from home over the last two years, but the Teams phone app makes it possible to access all your documents and conversations while you’re on the go as well.

Once you have the Teams app on your phone, there are a number of ways you can customize it to suit your work style. For example, you can set quiet hours (and even quiet days) to filter out notifications during your down time. You can also use the app to share content from your phone during a meeting, or transfer a call from your laptop to your mobile app.

Overall, Microsoft Teams is more than just a messaging app. With the right actions, information, and integrations, you can use it to connect with your team on everything from day-to-day communications to larger projects that require heavy collaboration.

If you’d like to talk to a Microsoft Partner about Microsoft Teams, get in touch here.

Secure Modern Workplace

How to increase adoption of Microsoft Teams

admin — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 19:33:07 +0000

How to increase adoption of Microsoft Teams admin Thu, 12/23/2021 - 13:33 Microsoft 365 ��Ƶɫ

For some workplaces, going remote in 2020 was their first foray into collaborating and meeting virtually. For these organizations, Microsoft Teams was a welcome addition, allowing them to meet, chat, and stay organized from afar.

Now that some time has passed, however, some are finding that while their colleagues and employees are using Microsoft Teams, they’re not getting the most out of it. Let’s look at a few ways you can encourage more meaningful adoption of Microsoft Teams at your workplace.

Decide what success looks like

We’ve touched on the bridge between usage and meaningful adoption, but what does that look like? The truth is, it’s different for every business. It’s important to define what a successful adoption of Teams will look like for your business and work towards those metrics.

As with any goal, it’s important to make sure yours are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. According to Microsoft, there are four categories of outcomes you can work towards: organizational, cultural, tangible, and individual. Let’s look at each a little more closely.

Organizational outcomes: Goals in this category include those around cultural transformation, employee retention, talent acquisition, social engagement, and operational agility.

Cultural outcomes: These include goals around employee sentiment, employee recommendations, customer feedback, and innovation measures.

Tangible outcomes: These can include impacts on customer experience, cost savings, revenue generation, data security, process simplification, and retirement of legacy systems.

Individual outcomes: Here’s where we get more into the weeds of user adoption, with outcomes related to actual use of the tool, employee morale, employee productivity, employee engagement, and idea generation.

Being clear from the outset on which of these outcomes are important to you (and how you plan on achieving them) is critical, but so is being flexible. If you’re having trouble reaching an outcome, you can investigate why and adjust your adoption approach accordingly.

Drive engagement with champions

Encouraging—and managing—behaviour change is one of the most difficult things leaders can do within an organization. Getting employees to join a work call on Meetings is one thing; getting someone to change the way they conduct their day-to-day communication is another entirely.

Managing this change, however, is critical. Engagement is a major factor in driving software adoption across an organization. When it comes to Microsoft Teams, the company has a solution for making this happen: onboard early adopters first, and identify Microsoft Teams champions—that is, the people who will drive awareness, adoption, and education around how to use Teams within the organization. As Microsoft recommends, champions should be given:

Formal training in how to use the software
Encouragement and empowerment to guide, teach, and train others
Consistent, positive reinforcement on the progress and impact they’re making
A clear, time-based plan to execute

Microsoft even has a Champions Program, where leaders can access valuable materials about getting the most out of Teams. If you’re running your champions program well, these people will learn all they can about Teams and pass that knowledge and support onto others who may be less enthusiastic or knowledgeable about the software.

If you’ve already been using Teams and haven’t appointed Champions, it’s not too late, and it’s worth the effort. There’s no replacement for having someone internal who can drive adoption and address any questions and concerns others may have.

Incorporate feedback and invest in awareness

It’s important to gather feedback about Teams from your employees, both from your champions and from others. Understanding how people use and experience the product will help you adjust the way you approach awareness and training going forward.

Microsoft recommends paying close attention to things like how users incorporate Teams with existing technology and which questions they ask about how to use it.

Finally, you should put considerable effort into building awareness and training across the organization. Microsoft equates this with the “marketing and communications” segment of your overall adoption strategy.

A good awareness and training plan includes deliberate internal communications, which can look like events, signage, and self-help/training information to familiarize people with why this is an important tool.

It’s important to evaluate your success metrics and share them widely to encourage continued adoption across the organization. Microsoft recommends sharing insights from your feedback channels with the hashtag #TeamStories to make them easily searchable. They also recommend sharing a team story company-wide every month to show what increased productivity and collaboration looks like using Teams.

Meaningful adoption doesn’t happen overnight

As with any major endeavor, success with Microsoft Teams adoption won’t happen overnight. Getting employees engaged, trained properly, and enthusiastic about using this tool will take careful planning, deliberate execution, and discernment about what’s working and what could be improved.

If you enable your champions, measure success, and incorporate feedback, you’ll be well on your way to meaningful adoption across the board.

Secure Modern Workplace

Everything you need to know about Microsoft Customer Digital Experiences (CDX)

admin — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 17:12:22 +0000

Everything you need to know about Microsoft Customer Digital Experiences (CDX) admin Wed, 12/15/2021 - 11:12 Microsoft 365 ��Ƶɫ

If you’re a Microsoft employee, a vendor with an MSFT domain, a Microsoft Partner, or an MVP, you’ve likely heard of Microsoft Customer Digital Experiences (CDX). It’s designed for people like you to demonstrate Microsoft technology and products with hands-on interaction. You also probably know that it offers three main types of experiences: demos, interactive guides, and customer immersion experiences.

But do you know how to make the most of it? If not, fear not: we’ve put together a quick guide to help you out.

First things first: How access works

Access to CDX is granted to all valid Microsoft partners and MVPs. If you’re a Partner, you must use the work account associated with your Microsoft Partner Center for authentication. For MVP users, you must be a current, approved user in order to access.

To sign in, ��Ƶɫ must use a work account that is enrolled into the Microsoft Partner Center, associated with their MPN account, and authenticated through their work domain's Azure Active Directory (Microsoft Partner Center Help can support any setup issues you encounter).

Demos: More common, less involved

Overall, demos make up most of the experiences available through CDX. A demo is a deep one-to-many or one-to-one presentation led by Microsoft and Partner facilitators that incorporates little to no audience participation.

Generally, a demo is best for an audience of practitioners, ITDMs, IT pros, security pros, or anyone involved in tech planning or everyday use. Demos can be on-site or virtual, and come in a variety of types, so let’s take a look.

Assets only demos: These demos offer downloadable guides that can be followed as a standalone demo, or within a Demo Tenant that is already in your account.

Shared tenant demos: These demos allow you to open a demo environment that’s already pre-configured. This environment may contain products and features that are not available within your own demo tenant.

Tenant only demo: These demos provide an easily accessible personal demo tenant that can be used to demo the product that the experience is about.

Interactive guides: Step-by-step specifics

Interactive guides provide a guided, step-by-step presentation for a specific feature of a product or business scenario. They focus on the enablement of features and functionality, and are especially helpful for supporting virtual training and events.

These guides are often featured at conferences and events, and are available online for all audiences: field, partners, and customers. The experience of participating in an interactive guide is mostly passive, with some guided simulation.

Customer immersion experiences: The full package

Finally, we have the most interactive option, the customer immersion experience (CIE). A CIE is a one-to-three hour on-site or virtual experience led by a professional facilitator that features a high degree of audience participation.

The intended audience for a CIE are enterprise executives, BDMs, or IDTMs that meet minimum qualifications. Generally, the audience for a CIE is anywhere from 4-20 people.

CIEs allow all participants to log into a live Microsoft 365 environment using virtual desktops or a quick tenant. From here, users can interact with one other in real-time, using a scenario-based script to demonstrate various Microsoft 365 products.

There are a number of CIEs to choose from, each highlighting a product or a specific industry. Generally, the experience is interactive, storytelling-based, and hands-on, with some guided simulation. CIEs come in two options: Instant-On or Quick Tenant.

Instant-On: Instant-On CIEs should not be used for testing purposes and only a customer account should be selected.

Quick Tenant: A Quick Tenant CIE provides only a preconfigured tenant, and can be accessed by your users either in a browser or on physical devices. (Devices are not provided by CDX).

So there you have it, the basics of Microsoft CDX explained. Want to learn more about Customer Digital Experiences? If you’re an existing partner, you can access our full M365 Sales Fundamentals workshop here, which features a Transform module. If you’re not yet a partner, but interested in access to our online workshops, masterclasses, your own account manager with Microsoft expertise, and more, become a partner with us today!

The Future of MSP

10 FAQs About Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience, Answered

admin — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 17:01:26 +0000

10 FAQs About Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience, Answered admin Fri, 12/10/2021 - 11:01 Microsoft 365 ��Ƶɫ

Updated 01/10/2022: Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE) is now available through Secure Cloud for customers and partners.

What do you need to know about NCE? Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE) has been around for Microsoft Azure since 2019, but now it’s expanding to include M365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365, and Power Platform.

While technical previews have been underway since October, the general release date is fast approaching. We wanted to answer any questions that Microsoft partners may have beforehand. Without further ado, here are the most common questions we hear about NCE—and their answers.

1 What is NCE?

As Microsoft puts it, "The new commerce experience makes it easier to transact with Microsoft...It’s a multi-phase, long-term investment in the CSP program aimed at helping our partners accelerate business growth, simplify licensing, and address how their customers prefer to purchase."

Whereas before, NCE only existed for Microsoft Azure, it’s now a Microsoft-wide initiative that introduces a standardized way of doing business, both directly with customers and through partners.

The ultimate goal of introducing NCE is to enable partners and customers to have more choice and buy more easily while optimizing costs. This is evident through the consistent and simplified purchasing experience, the greater standardization of offers and terms, and the opportunity for partners to sell or upsell to a larger set of existing and new customers.

Please note, the initial rollout of NCE for CSP subscriptions will only be for commercial offers. Government, education, and non-profit offers are expected to be introduced to NCE over the coming months, but there is currently no date for when these subscriptions will be available in New Commerce.

2 How will NCE affect partners?

NCE will offer some distinct benefits for partners, allowing them to serve customers better and have an easier time with the platform themselves.

Greater sales agility and customer commitment: NCE offers pricing benefits for annual term subscriptions that lock in pricing for the entire term (plus a promotional pricing period starts in January 2022).

Operational efficiency and cost savings: NCE makes it easier to manage subscriptions, with enhanced provisioning, pausing, automated changes at renewal, and efficiency for quoting and price list management.

More choice for customers: The introduction of the new monthly term subscription will allow customers to cancel or reduce seats more easily than an annual term, at a premium price. It will also be easier to adopt new products and add-ons separately.

3 How will NCE affect customers?

There are also a number of things that make NCE more flexible and accommodating for customers, such as:

New products, with more options: The new Windows 365 is now available for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). There are also free trial choices with an easier conversion to being a paid customer, as well as new add-ons available only on NCE.

Offers to meet specific or changing needs: For a premium, Microsoft will now offer new monthly-term subscriptions, allowing customers to cancel or reduce seat counts on a monthly basis. Monthly subscriptions can also be combined with annual subscriptions to help customers balance cost.

More value for commitment: Customers can access the best pricing on annual terms with long-term protection. They can also lock in pricing further with multi-year terms, and switch from a monthly to an annual term easily to save money.

4 When are commercial subscriptions moving to NCE?

There are a few dates to keep in mind. Any new subscriptions will have to be made on NCE after March 2022. However, the ability to renew existing subscriptions on the legacy CSP platform will continue through June 30th 2022, ending on July 1st 2022. Legacy subscriptions will remain in effect until each of the subscription terms end, but Microsoft partner incentive rebates on legacy subscriptions will be removed in October 2022. After June, legacy customers will have to renew subscriptions in the New Commerce Experience before each subscription expires to ensure the services continue.

5 Can I have one customer on the same SKU with multiple terms?

Yes, you can have a customer on different terms, with different sets of seats, for the same offer. In the SMB space, it’s more common to have seasonal or temporary employees over the course of the year, for example in the restaurant and tourism industries. For these customers, mixing Annual and Monthly agreements for permanent and temporary users can be the most cost effective option.

"For example, a growing organization can minimize license fees and lock in predictable pricing for new users with an annual or multi-year subscription. However, that same organization can further minimize costs and maximize flexibility by including monthly subscriptions for any licenses that are expected to be unused for more than 3 months each year. As a partner, you can elect to have monthly, annual, or multi-year term expiration, which gives you maximum flexibility where term length is concerned.

6 How can I start an NCE subscription?

��Ƶɫ will continue to use the Secure Cloud - Partner Portal to start subscriptions.

7 How do I cancel, and will I receive a refund?

With NCE, a cancellation policy will be enforced for all terms. A subscription can only be cancelled or downgraded within 72 hours of the initial order or renewal, for all term types. A prorated refund will be provided for cancellations, with proration calculated daily within that 72-hour span. After 72 hours, that cancellation function will not be available. Suspending an account can prevent users from accessing the subscription, but billing for that subscription will continue.

8 Can I reduce seats during an existing contract?

Like cancellations, seat counts on a new commerce subscription can be reduced within the first 72 hours. However, if there’s a midterm order of additional seats, you will also have a 72-hour window to reduce that back to the original number of seats.

Conversely, if customers want to add seats, they will be priced at the original subscription purchase price (not the current price). Overall, this means that the price for additional seats will always be locked in at the beginning of the term.

9 Will there be promos? When?

Microsoft has announced a promotional period for NCE commercial offers that begins January 10, 2022 and runs through June 30, 2022. During this time, customers can choose a monthly subscription without paying the 20% premium, aligning monthly term pricing with annual term pricing. From January 10, 2022 to March 31, 2022, customers can choose an annual subscription and lock in a 5% discount off the annual term pricing. Microsoft has indicated they may extend this 5% promotion, possibly all the way through June 30, 2022.

10 Will there be any new features?

Yes! Microsoft is introducing a number of new features to help partners with how they manage subscriptions, billing, and data processing. Here are a few:

The ability to schedule changes at subscription renewal: ��Ƶɫ will be able to schedule different seat counts, SKU conversions, term-length renewal changes, and renewals to different billing options. This allows partners to manage subscriptions in advance instead of performing manual changes at renewal, which improves operational efficiency.

Automatic seat assignment with full upgrade: Whereas before, this was only possible with SMB SKUs, now seats can also be assigned automatically at upgrade with enterprise-level SKUs. This creates easier and more efficient subscription management for larger customers, saving partners a lot of work.

Auto-renewal toggle option: Now, partners can toggle auto-renewal and submit it manually. This makes it easier to manage renewals and plan ahead for subscriptions that will be terminating soon.

Switching partners:.Customers will not be able to transfer active subscriptions to a new partner. New subscriptions and additional users may be added via a new partner, but customers will continue to be responsible for existing subscription terms.

Subscription ownership enforcement: Previously, customers could buy from different partners to aggregate instances of the same SMB offer and buy multiple free trials. Now, Customer SKU limits will be enforced across multiple partner tenants, preventing a customer from purchasing multiple lower-cost SMB SKUs beyond defined limits from different partners. This prevents customers from gaming the system, and ensures that partners can maximize revenue from each customer.

Suspend/resume subscriptions: Previously, a partner would have to suspend and then reorder subscriptions if the term expired. Now, a partner can suspend and then resume a subscription at any time during the term without cancellation. Partner billing will continue through the suspension. This helps the partner by allowing them to pause until the customer remits an overdue payment.

Note on M365 price change

In addition to launching the New Commerce Experience for CSP’s, Microsoft also announced commercial pricing changes for some key Microsoft 365 SKU’s around the same time. Although these price changes are unrelated to NCE, it’s good to be aware of how they could impact you and your customers. This pricing increase reflects the value of the solutions and the added areas of innovation around communication and collaboration, security and automation. The pricing changes will go into effect on March 1, 2022. You can read more about that here for a clear and graphical breakdown of these changes.

Hopefully, we’ve answered any questions you had around NCE. If you’d like to know more, contact your ��Ƶɫ or AppRiver channel account manager directly, or become a partner with us – we will be your guide.

The Future of MSP