Most of us have probably at some point deleted an important email we shouldn’t have. It happens. We think an email is pointless and don’t want to file it away or create a new folder for it, so instead we carelessly delete it. 30 days pass and then the email is gone for good. And that’s when you end up slapping yourself on the forehead wondering why you ever hit the delete button in the first place. The email ended up being important, but now it’s too late – you can’t get it back. Microsoft Office 365’s new policy has now made this problem a thing of the past, allowing deleted emails to be recovered indefinitely.

If you’re a regular user of Outlook 365, you’re likely aware that you can only recover an email that was deleted 30 days ago or less. After that, it’s gone for good. For those that have been agitated by this policy, Office 365 has now made a change that allows emails in the Deleted Items folder to be accessed indefinitely. However, take note that if an end user makes the effort to empty the Deleted Folder, those items will still in fact be unrecoverable.

But what if you don’t want to indefinitely recover email?

Believe it or not, indefinite access to emails may come as bad news for some. It can create industry compliance issues for organizations and can also affect offline storage as deleted emails pile up.

Not to fear. Along with this new policy, Office 365 also allows you to customize the retention duration to a time span that works for you. To do this, click on the following:

1. Office 365 Admin
2. Exchange Admin Center
3. Compliance Management
4. Retention Policies

From here you can modify the retention duration of your emails to a time span of your choice.

Want to learn more about this and other cutting-edge Office 365 features? Give us a call today and get all the info you need.

It happened quickly in an intense moment of passion. You had just gotten back from a vacation to find over a hundred emails in your inbox. Determined to peel through them all, you took a shot of espresso and set out on email deletion rampage. One trashed email quickly turned into two, which then exploded into dozens. Now, months later, you’re regretting the reckless actions of a few fleeting moments of productivity – you deleted a vitally important email. If this bleak situation sounds all too familiar, Office 365 has now officially come to your rescue with a new policy that allows emails to be recovered indefinitely.

If you’re a regular user of Outlook 365, you’re likely aware that you can only recover an email that was deleted 30 days ago or less. After that, it’s gone for good. For those that have been agitated by this policy, Office 365 has now made a change that allows emails in the Deleted Items folder to be accessed indefinitely. However, take note that if an end user makes the effort to empty the Deleted Folder, those items will still in fact be unrecoverable.

But what if you don’t want to indefinitely recover email?

Believe it or not, indefinite access to emails may come as bad news for some. It can create industry compliance issues for organizations and can also affect offline storage as deleted emails pile up.

Not to fear. Along with this new policy, Office 365 also allows you to customize the retention duration to a time span that works for you. To do this, click on the following:

1. Office 365 Admin
2. Exchange Admin Center
3. Compliance Management
4. Retention Policies

From here you can modify the retention duration of your emails to a time span of your choice.

Want to learn more about this and other cutting-edge Office 365 features? Give us a call today and get all the info you need.

Have you ever deleted an email only to discover months later that you still need it? If so, you’re in luck. Office 365 has now made emails recoverable indefinitely- whether it’s been deleted for a few days or a few years. Here’s the scoop on Microsoft’s new policy that makes this possible.

If you’re a regular user of Outlook 365, you’re likely aware that you can only recover an email that was deleted 30 days ago or less. After that, it’s gone for good. For those that have been agitated by this policy, Office 365 has now made a change that allows emails in the Deleted Items folder to be accessed indefinitely. However, take note that if an end user makes the effort to empty the Deleted Folder, those items will still in fact be unrecoverable.

But what if you don’t want to indefinitely recover email?

Believe it or not, indefinite access to emails may come as bad news for some. It can create industry compliance issues for organizations and can also affect offline storage as deleted emails pile up.

Not to fear. Along with this new policy, Office 365 also allows you to customize the retention duration to a time span that works for you. To do this, click on the following:

1. Office 365 Admin
2. Exchange Admin Center
3. Compliance Management
4. Retention Policies

From here you can modify the retention duration of your emails to a time span of your choice.

Want to learn more about this and other cutting-edge Office 365 features? Give us a call today and get all the info you need.

It’s Monday morning at the office, and you just came back from a lovely trip to Hawaii. It was a long overdue break from the technology, phone calls, and commutes of everyday life. As you settle into your office chair and open your inbox, your eyes widen as you realize it’s time to pay the piper. You scroll, scroll, scroll for what seems like forever, unable to find where the avalanche of emails began. There are hundreds – how will you ever get through them all? Ever felt the dread of a situation like this? Office 365 has a new feature that will prevent these email nightmares from ruining that first day back from vacation.

The problem with today’s email spam filtering

In everyday life, we’re faced with some issues that are of major importance, others minor, and many completely insignificant. Our email inboxes are no different. Some mails need to be attended to immediately, others can wait awhile, and some we never want to see at all.

But in our current email landscape, there is no gray area. A message either goes to your spam folder or to your inbox. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of middle way? This is where Office 365’s new Clutter feature comes into play.

How Clutter works

Clutter works by creating a folder for your emails that are of ‘minor’ importance. This folder is aptly named Clutter, and it works in essentially the same way as your junk folder.

How does it know which emails to put in the Clutter folder? The feature monitors your inbox behavior and then accordingly determines which folder to put an email. For example, if there are specific senders you always reply to immediately, perhaps several times a day, then those messages are clearly important to you. However, if you’re receiving emails from a company and deleting them without opening, then that also says something about the importance of messages from that sender. Clutter works by tracking the patterns of this behavior, observing them and then filtering each message into the appropriate folder. This leaves the messages you need to respond to now in your inbox and hides the ones that can wait, delightfully out of sight.

Want to learn more about Clutter and other Office 365 features? Get in touch with us today.

Cyber threats, rising healthcare costs and overloaded inboxes. These are some of the problems of modern life. Thankfully, Office 365 now has a solution for the latter. If your inbox is bursting to the brim with social media alerts and junk mail from newsletters you don’t remember signing up for, now you’ll have one less problem to worry about. Learn how Office 365’s new Clutter feature can bring order back to your inbox.

The problem with today’s email spam filtering

In everyday life, we’re faced with some issues that are of major importance, others minor, and many completely insignificant. Our email inboxes are no different. Some mails need to be attended to immediately, others can wait awhile, and some we never want to see at all.

But in our current email landscape, there is no gray area. A message either goes to your spam folder or to your inbox. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of middle way? This is where Office 365’s new Clutter feature comes into play.

How Clutter works

Clutter works by creating a folder for your emails that are of ‘minor’ importance. This folder is aptly named Clutter, and it works in essentially the same way as your junk folder.

How does it know which emails to put in the Clutter folder? The feature monitors your inbox behavior and then accordingly determines which folder to put an email. For example, if there are specific senders you always reply to immediately, perhaps several times a day, then those messages are clearly important to you. However, if you’re receiving emails from a company and deleting them without opening, then that also says something about the importance of messages from that sender. Clutter works by tracking the patterns of this behavior, observing them and then filtering each message into the appropriate folder. This leaves the messages you need to respond to now in your inbox and hides the ones that can wait, delightfully out of sight.

Want to learn more about Clutter and other Office 365 features? Get in touch with us today.

It’s a fact of life that many of us receive an overwhelming amount of email everyday. And peeling through all of it can prove a major waste of time. Office 365’s new Clutter feature offers a solution that will bring order back to your inbox. Want to learn how? Here’s the lowdown on this new feature that may forever change the way you manage your emails.

The problem with today’s email spam filtering

In everyday life, we’re faced with some issues that are of major importance, others minor, and many completely insignificant. Our email inboxes are no different. Some mails need to be attended to immediately, others can wait awhile, and some we never want to see at all.

But in our current email landscape, there is no gray area. A message either goes to your spam folder or to your inbox. Wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of middle way? This is where Office 365’s new Clutter feature comes into play.

How Clutter works

Clutter works by creating a folder for your emails that are of ‘minor’ importance. This folder is aptly named Clutter, and it works in essentially the same way as your junk folder.

How does it know which emails to put in the Clutter folder? The feature monitors your inbox behavior and then accordingly determines which folder to put an email. For example, if there are specific senders you always reply to immediately, perhaps several times a day, then those messages are clearly important to you. However, if you’re receiving emails from a company and deleting them without opening, then that also says something about the importance of messages from that sender. Clutter works by tracking the patterns of this behavior, observing them and then filtering each message into the appropriate folder. This leaves the messages you need to respond to now in your inbox and hides the ones that can wait, delightfully out of sight.

Want to learn more about Clutter and other Office 365 features? Get in touch with us today.

 Microsoft is launching Azure App Service today, a new cloud-based service that gives developers a single service for building mobile and web apps, combined with tools for automating business processes across cloud services, and a new service for building and consuming APIs. All of these services revolve around Microsoft’s oft- (and over-) used mantra of “mobile first, cloud… Read More

It’s been a long time coming, but Microsoft has finally unveiled its latest version of the Office for Mac suite of productivity applications. The first refresh that the package has seen since 2011 takes it closer to delivering the experience enjoyed by users of its Windows sibling, and it brings Office 365 and the power of cloud computing to the masses. Best of all, the whole thing is free of charge for a limited period - here are some of the features to look out for in Office for Mac 2016.

Cloud power

Office for Mac 2016 takes the power of the cloud and puts it to full use, bringing the advantages of its cloud-oriented Office 365 applications to its flagship package. As a result, you can now access your Office documents whenever and wherever, and no matter which device you are using. Aside from Office 365, the new software is also integrated with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.

It’s now possible to jointly author Word and PowerPoint documents with colleagues, and to make challenges simultaneously. Much like Google Docs, you can run a chat conversation alongside the document, in order to discuss the changes you are each making. Word and PowerPoint automatically flag up updates to the document that you might not have spotted already. These features are already available to Windows-based users of Office.

Sharing documents also becomes simpler, with a dedicated sharing button in the applications’ top right corner that allows you to invite colleagues to collaborate on the document you’re working on. It’s possible to share a document either as an attachment or as a link, and of course to control access rights for each person to whom you give access. You can open others’ Office documents right from your email account and get straight to editing.

Ribbon refresh

Until now, there have been differences in the options available on the ‘ribbon’ of icons that appear beneath the File, Edit and other menus at the top of the screen. You might see one thing on your Mac but another on your PC, and another still on your tablet. With Office for Mac 2016, Microsoft has taken the opportunity to fix those inconsistencies, so you’ll now find the options you need in the same places across all the platforms you use. A new task pane is also intended to help simplify graphics editing.

Email grouping

The updates to Outlook, and OneNote too, were actually released in 2014 and so are technically not new with this release. But one such useful update that is carried through to Office for Mac 2016 is the organization of Outlook emails by conversation, as is the case with Gmail. Emails can be sorted using a variety of other criteria, too.

Presentation aids

Office for Mac 2016 makes life a little easier for those presenting using PowerPoint slides. While your audience is shown the final product on your big screen, you can benefit from having ‘presenter view’ open on your monitor. This dedicated view gives you access to all of your presentation’s slides, any associated notes and also a timer to help you keep pace.

The entire suite of Office for Mac 2016 applications - including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook - is available for free upgrade during Microsoft’s preview period, which runs until later this year. Once that comes to an end, you’ll need an Office 365 subscription or perpetual licence in order to keep making the most of the package’s features.

To find out more about boosting your company’s productivity with Microsoft Office applications, give us a call today.

With the release of Office for Mac 2016, Microsoft brings a long overdue refresh to its flagship suite of productivity applications for Mac users. As well as design changes that deliver similarities to the Windows versions of the applications, the latest upgrade – currently free of charge while it remains in preview stage, prior to full release later this year – harnesses the power of cloud computing to deliver Office 365 collaboration features. Thinking of upgrading? Here’s what to look out for in the new release.

Cloud power

Office for Mac 2016 takes the power of the cloud and puts it to full use, bringing the advantages of its cloud-oriented Office 365 applications to its flagship package. As a result, you can now access your Office documents whenever and wherever, and no matter which device you are using. Aside from Office 365, the new software is also integrated with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.

It’s now possible to jointly author Word and PowerPoint documents with colleagues, and to make challenges simultaneously. Much like Google Docs, you can run a chat conversation alongside the document, in order to discuss the changes you are each making. Word and PowerPoint automatically flag up updates to the document that you might not have spotted already. These features are already available to Windows-based users of Office.

Sharing documents also becomes simpler, with a dedicated sharing button in the applications’ top right corner that allows you to invite colleagues to collaborate on the document you’re working on. It’s possible to share a document either as an attachment or as a link, and of course to control access rights for each person to whom you give access. You can open others’ Office documents right from your email account and get straight to editing.

Ribbon refresh

Until now, there have been differences in the options available on the ‘ribbon’ of icons that appear beneath the File, Edit and other menus at the top of the screen. You might see one thing on your Mac but another on your PC, and another still on your tablet. With Office for Mac 2016, Microsoft has taken the opportunity to fix those inconsistencies, so you’ll now find the options you need in the same places across all the platforms you use. A new task pane is also intended to help simplify graphics editing.

Email grouping

The updates to Outlook, and OneNote too, were actually released in 2014 and so are technically not new with this release. But one such useful update that is carried through to Office for Mac 2016 is the organization of Outlook emails by conversation, as is the case with Gmail. Emails can be sorted using a variety of other criteria, too.

Presentation aids

Office for Mac 2016 makes life a little easier for those presenting using PowerPoint slides. While your audience is shown the final product on your big screen, you can benefit from having ‘presenter view’ open on your monitor. This dedicated view gives you access to all of your presentation’s slides, any associated notes and also a timer to help you keep pace.

The entire suite of Office for Mac 2016 applications – including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook – is available for free upgrade during Microsoft’s preview period, which runs until later this year. Once that comes to an end, you’ll need an Office 365 subscription or perpetual licence in order to keep making the most of the package’s features.

To find out more about boosting your company’s productivity with Microsoft Office applications, give us a call today.

Mac users have a reason to celebrate – after a long wait since its last update in 2011, the Microsoft Office for Mac suite of productivity applications has been given a makeover. The latest look brings on board the power of the cloud to take Office to new levels for Apple fans, including a move to deliver an experience that’s closer to that of the Windows version of the package. Better still, you can upgrade for free while it’s still in preview stage – here are some of the killer features of Office for Mac 2016.

Cloud power

Office for Mac 2016 takes the power of the cloud and puts it to full use, bringing the advantages of its cloud-oriented Office 365 applications to its flagship package. As a result, you can now access your Office documents whenever and wherever, and no matter which device you are using. Aside from Office 365, the new software is also integrated with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.

It’s now possible to jointly author Word and PowerPoint documents with colleagues, and to make challenges simultaneously. Much like Google Docs, you can run a chat conversation alongside the document, in order to discuss the changes you are each making. Word and PowerPoint automatically flag up updates to the document that you might not have spotted already. These features are already available to Windows-based users of Office.

Sharing documents also becomes simpler, with a dedicated sharing button in the applications’ top right corner that allows you to invite colleagues to collaborate on the document you’re working on. It’s possible to share a document either as an attachment or as a link, and of course to control access rights for each person to whom you give access. You can open others’ Office documents right from your email account and get straight to editing.

Ribbon refresh

Until now, there have been differences in the options available on the ‘ribbon’ of icons that appear beneath the File, Edit and other menus at the top of the screen. You might see one thing on your Mac but another on your PC, and another still on your tablet. With Office for Mac 2016, Microsoft has taken the opportunity to fix those inconsistencies, so you’ll now find the options you need in the same places across all the platforms you use. A new task pane is also intended to help simplify graphics editing.

Email grouping

The updates to Outlook, and OneNote too, were actually released in 2014 and so are technically not new with this release. But one such useful update that is carried through to Office for Mac 2016 is the organization of Outlook emails by conversation, as is the case with Gmail. Emails can be sorted using a variety of other criteria, too.

Presentation aids

Office for Mac 2016 makes life a little easier for those presenting using PowerPoint slides. While your audience is shown the final product on your big screen, you can benefit from having ‘presenter view’ open on your monitor. This dedicated view gives you access to all of your presentation’s slides, any associated notes and also a timer to help you keep pace.

The entire suite of Office for Mac 2016 applications – including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook – is available for free upgrade during Microsoft’s preview period, which runs until later this year. Once that comes to an end, you’ll need an Office 365 subscription or perpetual licence in order to keep making the most of the package’s features.

To find out more about boosting your company’s productivity with Microsoft Office applications, give us a call today.

It’s been a long time coming, but Microsoft has finally unveiled its latest version of the Office for Mac suite of productivity applications. The first refresh that the package has seen since 2011 takes it closer to delivering the experience enjoyed by users of its Windows sibling, and it brings Office 365 and the power of cloud computing to the masses. Best of all, the whole thing is free of charge for a limited period – here are some of the features to look out for in Office for Mac 2016.

Cloud power

Office for Mac 2016 takes the power of the cloud and puts it to full use, bringing the advantages of its cloud-oriented Office 365 applications to its flagship package. As a result, you can now access your Office documents whenever and wherever, and no matter which device you are using. Aside from Office 365, the new software is also integrated with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.

It’s now possible to jointly author Word and PowerPoint documents with colleagues, and to make challenges simultaneously. Much like Google Docs, you can run a chat conversation alongside the document, in order to discuss the changes you are each making. Word and PowerPoint automatically flag up updates to the document that you might not have spotted already. These features are already available to Windows-based users of Office.

Sharing documents also becomes simpler, with a dedicated sharing button in the applications’ top right corner that allows you to invite colleagues to collaborate on the document you’re working on. It’s possible to share a document either as an attachment or as a link, and of course to control access rights for each person to whom you give access. You can open others’ Office documents right from your email account and get straight to editing.

Ribbon refresh

Until now, there have been differences in the options available on the ‘ribbon’ of icons that appear beneath the File, Edit and other menus at the top of the screen. You might see one thing on your Mac but another on your PC, and another still on your tablet. With Office for Mac 2016, Microsoft has taken the opportunity to fix those inconsistencies, so you’ll now find the options you need in the same places across all the platforms you use. A new task pane is also intended to help simplify graphics editing.

Email grouping

The updates to Outlook, and OneNote too, were actually released in 2014 and so are technically not new with this release. But one such useful update that is carried through to Office for Mac 2016 is the organization of Outlook emails by conversation, as is the case with Gmail. Emails can be sorted using a variety of other criteria, too.

Presentation aids

Office for Mac 2016 makes life a little easier for those presenting using PowerPoint slides. While your audience is shown the final product on your big screen, you can benefit from having ‘presenter view’ open on your monitor. This dedicated view gives you access to all of your presentation’s slides, any associated notes and also a timer to help you keep pace.

The entire suite of Office for Mac 2016 applications – including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook – is available for free upgrade during Microsoft’s preview period, which runs until later this year. Once that comes to an end, you’ll need an Office 365 subscription or perpetual licence in order to keep making the most of the package’s features.

To find out more about boosting your company’s productivity with Microsoft Office applications, give us a call today.

For many business owners, cloud solutions have become a must-have. While there are cloud solutions for pretty much every business process these days, one of the most commonly integrated is cloud productivity suites like Microsoft’s Office 365. This business-oriented platform has a lot to offer, and like everything else from Microsoft, there are a number of versions to select from. Here is an overview of the different versions your business could benefit from.

A brief look at Office 365

The easiest way to classify Office 365 is as a cloud-based version of Microsoft Office aimed at businesses. This subscription-based service offers businesses all the productivity software they need plus a solid platform for their communications. Think of Outlook combined with Lync (or Skype) and Office apps, all of which are accessible via your browser, or can be installed on your own servers.

Beyond this, there is a supporting layer called SharePoint that links all of these apps together, thereby giving you a central place to store all of your documents which can then be collaborated on using various Microsoft apps.

As noted above, Office 365 is subscription based. The business-oriented subscriptions are broken down into two main categories: Business and Enterprise subscriptions. Of course, there are other subscriptions for other categories like Education and Government, but we will focus this overview on the two main small to medium business categories.

Business subscriptions

There are three plans under the Business subscription category:

• Office 365 Business Essentials - Comes with online versions of Office apps (Office Web Apps), Lync for business, online storage through OneDrive and a corporate email address. This plan is ideal for businesses who don’t need full versions of Office apps. Plans cost USD 5 per user, per month on an annual commitment.
• Office 365 Business - For businesses who need installable versions of Office along with cloud-storage through OneDrive. It does not come with hosted email or business communication tools like Lync. If you already have hosted email, and are just looking for Office apps, then this could be a good plan for you. Plans cost USD 8.25 per user, per month on an annual commitment.
• Office 365 Business Premium - This subscription is for businesses who want the whole package. It combines all the elements of the above plans into a solution which is ideal for smaller businesses or even enterprises. If you are looking for a full solution, then this plan could be the best fit for your business. Plans cost USD 12.50 per user, per month on an annual commitment.

It is worth noting here that all three of these plans have a limit of 300 users per plan, giving you a maximum of 300 subscriptions.

Enterprise subscriptions

These subscriptions are aimed more at larger organizations, or businesses who need more control over Office 365 and access to features like Business Intelligence, Enterprise Management apps, and even business portals. As with the Business subscription category, there are three main plans in the Enterprise subscription category:

• Office 365 Enterprise E1 - Comes with online versions of Office apps (Office Web Apps), Lync for business, online storage through OneDrive, a corporate email address, and a corporate video portal. This plan is ideal for businesses who don’t need full versions of Office apps. Plans cost USD 8 per user, per month on an annual commitment.
• Office 365 Pro Plus - This plan is for businesses who need installable versions of Office along with more advanced apps like Access, and cloud-storage through OneDrive. It does not come with hosted email or business communication tools like Lync. If you already have hosted email, and are just looking for Office apps, then this could be a good plan for you. Plans cost USD 12 per user, per month on an annual commitment.
• Office 365 Enterprise E3 - This subscription is ideal for companies who want absolutely all Office 365 has to offer. This includes all of the above, plus advanced business intelligence tools, compliance protection, enterprise management, and more. If you are looking for a full solution, then this plan could be a good match for your business. Plans cost USD 20 per user, per month on an annual commitment.

Businesses who subscribe to Enterprise plans can sign up for an unlimited number of subscriptions.

Which plan is best for my business?

This is a tough question to answer outright. What we recommend is contacting us. As experts in all things Microsoft, we can work with you to not only help you pick the plan that is best for your business, but ensure it is installed correctly. This can help further reduce costs and increase productivity.

Contact us today to learn more about how Office 365 can enhance your business.