Many users have found that Office 365 PowerPoint is much easier to use than previous iterations of Microsoft PowerPoint. This application features tools like Designer that take advantage of Microsoft’s cloud technology and machine learning techniques for processing pictures and choosing a suitable layout for an image. Designer also makes it possible to change your content to make slides look more aesthetically appealing.
Here is some information about how to use Designer in Microsoft PowerPoint.
Get Design Ideas
The main advantage of PowerPoint Designer is that it provides you with design ideas to make beautiful slides. To use Designer, you should open up Microsoft PowerPoint. If you’re connected to the Internet, Designer will automatically provide you with suggestions when you add a graphic to your PowerPoint presentation.
You can ask for design ideas by navigating to Design > Design Ideas on the Microsoft PowerPoint ribbon. You can scroll through the Design Ideas pane to look at the suggestions. This pane is positioned on the window’s right side. You can either close the window or click on a design you like. When you click on a design, the slide will be changed according to the design. You have the option of choosing another idea from the Design Ideas pane. You can also press Ctrl+Z to undo a design change you chose.
The first time you use PowerPoint Designer, it will ask for your permission to provide you with design ideas. If you want to use PowerPoint Designer, click on Let’s go or Turn on. You need to turn on intelligent services so that Designer will provide you with design ideas every time you add photos to your PowerPoint.
To get design idea suggestions, you should use images in one of the following formats: .JPG, .BMP, .GIF, .PNG. You should also make sure that the size of the graphic is larger than 200 x 200 pixels. Otherwise, you may not get design ideas suggestions.
Professional Layouts
Designer in Microsoft PowerPoint is able to detect not just pictures but also charts and tables on a slide. Designer will provide you with a number of suggestions to arrange all of these graphics in an attractive, cohesive layout.
SmartArt Graphics
Designer is able to turn text like timelines, lists, processes into a SmartArt graphic that is readable. If you use bulleted lists, you will receive suggestions for an icon to be used for each bullet item. If you don’t want to use the suggested icon, you can stick with the original icon.
Illustrations
Designer looks for concepts and key terms that it has related illustrations for. It will show you these illustrations in different layouts. These illustrations come from the icons library in Office 365.
Turn Off PowerPoint Designer
If you decide that you don’t want to use PowerPoint Designer, you can do the following to turn this feature off:
Select Preferences on the PowerPoint menu
Select General under Authoring and Proofing Tools
Clear the check box marked “Automatically show me design ideas” in the General dialog box, which is under PowerPoint Designer.
PowerPoint Designer is a powerful tool if you want to make your slides and PowerPoints as aesthetically appealing as possible. For more information about how to use Designer in Microsoft PowerPoint, don’t hesitate to contact us.
It is hard to maintain a strong brand presence without video marketing. Whether local or national, brick and mortar or eCommerce, goods or services, video content is crucial to success in the current marketplace.
Here are some recent numbers from an Animoto study to put this into perspective:
Basic Stats
93% of marketers report that they reach new customers through the use of video content
73% of consumers say that social media content has made an impact on their buying decisions
45% of consumers say that video is their preferred form of social content, with image, link and text content coming in second, third and fourth, at 22%, 13% and 10% respectively
About a third of consumers will review a brand’s social media content before deciding whether to go to their website in the first place
45% of consumers report that their first encounter with a product or service is through video
So this clearly establishes a couple of things.
You need to pursue video content marketing through social media to maintain a strong brand presence in the modern age.
Everyone is doing it. So it’s going to be hard to stand out.
Video content is necessary, but all it accomplishes on its own is that it puts you in the running. Producing video content earns you a shot at getting seen, but it won’t guarantee that you are seen in a crowded marketplace. What does it matter that your videos are making thousands of impressions if nobody’s clicking play?
How do you produce the right kind of video content?
It’s all a process of narrowing-down. As in any data-driven marketing decision, you take your options, cut them in half, cut them in half again, and again, and again until you are getting the most effect for your efforts. You’ve probably taken a look at your analytics and found that certain kinds of content will perform better when posted at certain times of day and on certain days of the week. The same sort of thinking applies to the process of developing, producing and posting your video content.
This begins with…
Categories
The Animoto survey found that three types of video content comprised the vast majority of views:
How-to videos
Videos about sales and promotions
Top 5’s
One of these categories is probably on-brand with your product or service. If it’s not immediately apparent, you can try testing content in each category and gauge their performance. Sale-announcement videos are always a good idea, but you might find that your target audience prefers how-to’s to top 5’s, or vice-versa, and produce content accordingly.
Where Are You Posting?
The Animoto survey suggests that Facebook and Youtube lead the way for video views, but Instagram is the clear winner for sales-per-view. People are specifically on Instagram to discover something new, whether it’s a content producer or a new ice cream shop. This means that your viewers are already in the right frame of mind to discover whatever it is that you’re offering them. Users on Facebook and Youtube are generally looking for content that they’re already familiar with, favorite game streamers, keeping up with friends and family and so on.
This does not necessarily mean that you will have the most success with Instagram. Every brand attracts a different audience, and while more brands than not may enjoy more engagement on Instagram, you might have more success on Facebook if your demographic is a little older, or even Pinterest, which trails far behind the video leaders, but might be perfect if you’re after an arts-and-craft audience.
Calibrate And Refine
All of this data can set you off in the right direction, but getting the most out of any social media content is a process of constant calibration and refinement. Almost nobody gets lucky and hits the target dead-center on the first try. You might post a dozen videos and get fewer than one hundred views on each one. But one of them is going to be an outlier, one of them is going to have a few views more than the others. So you produce a dozen more in that direction, and, again, you have an outlier, one that produces twice as many engagements as the runner-up, and you keep following the outlier and following the outlier until you get a sense for exactly what catches the attention of your target viewer.
There’s no secret formula for producing attention-grabbing videos in a crowded marketplace, because every brand is different. But if you keep testing and adjusting your aim appropriately, you will discover exactly what your customers are looking for.
Page breaks are incredibly useful when it comes to formatting your Microsoft Word documents so that they look exactly the way you want them to. The page breaks tool allows you to determine where a page begins and ends. Here is some information about how to insert and remove page breaks in Microsoft Word 2016 as well as the types of page breaks that exist.
How to Add a Page Break
When a page can no longer fit additional content, Word automatically adds a page break. However, in some cases, you may want to add page breaks elsewhere. For example, if you’re working on a lengthy document, you may want to create to add a page break to create a new section. Page breaks are also useful when it comes to adding space around images and other graphics.
Fortunately, the process of creating a page break is incredibly simple.
1. Move your cursor where you want to begin a new page. For example, if you want to add a page break between two paragraphs, you should place the cursor before the first character of the second paragraph.
2. Navigate to Insert > Pages > Page Break. Microsoft Word will then create a new page where you placed your cursor.
You can also the keyboard shortcut CTRL + Enter to add a page break quickly.
Other Kinds of Page Breaks
In Microsoft Word, there are many different types of breaks that you can add.
Column Break: If you have multiple columns in your document, you can use a column break to start adding content to a new column. Using a column break is far better than simply pressing the Enter key to move to the next column. Even if you make changes to the text or change the font size, you won’t have to worry about formatting as long as you use a column break instead of pressing the Enter key.
Text Wrapping: Another type of page break is text wrapping. If you have an image or in your document, you can use a text wrapping break to ensure the rest of the content flows around the image and the caption.
Next Page: The Next Page feature works similarly to the Page Break feature. The main difference is that it creates a new section and gives you the option to use formatting that is different from the prior sections. For example, you can use the Next Page feature to rotate a section to portrait or landscape mode. You can also use different footers or headers or add columns to the next section without impacting the formatting of the rest of the document.
Continuous Break: The Continuous Break feature creates a new section but doesn’t have you begin on a new page.
Even and Odd Page Breaks: This feature allows you to add a section break. You will begin on the next odd or even page, depending on the type of break you pick. You can also format the even and odd pages of a document differently.
How to Remove Page Breaks
It is just as easy to remove page breaks from a document in Microsoft Word 2016.
1. Click on the symbol for Show/Hide.
2. Double-click on the page break you want to get rid of.
3. Click on “Delete”.
Keep in mind that you can’t remove page breaks automatically added by Microsoft Word, However, you can change where these automatic page breaks land so that you can keep certain lines or paragraphs together.
If you are new to Microsoft OneNote, let me say it provides a unique way to collect and review all your useful “bits” of information, whether you are at home, in the office or on the move. You can collect a range of different information. You can access your data on various devices. You can share your notes with friends and colleagues. Plus, it’s easy to find the info again quickly!
What Features Are Available With OneNote?
As a Microsoft OneNote user, you immediately feel at home with the familiar menus to format data, change the view and insert different objects like tables, images, audio, and video recordings. The powerful search tools mean that you can find what you need instantly, irrespective of whether you have added it to one page, or stored your information in different sections within the notebook.
Microsoft OneNote is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, or Android devices. All you do is sign into your
Microsoft Office 365 account. Then go ahead and access your online notebooks from anywhere, at any time, on any device. Here are just a few OneNote things you will do:
Go full-screen
Navigate and search
Draw, write, or sketch
Resize note containers
View and manage notes
Easily undo your mistakes
Explore commands on the ribbon
Instead of your files concentrate on your ideas
You can store your notebooks “in the cloud” (on the internet), and they synchronize so that as you make changes, you get the one version of information irrespective of which device you are using. OneNote Notebooks can be stored using Microsoft’s online storage service – OneDrive, or SharePoint in your corporate environment.
Part I – Microsoft OneNote Has Easy Access and Eliminates Manual Saving
You can access your notes anywhere and on any device. Any notes, plans, or ideas are not trapped on a computer at work or home. By signing into OneNote from your Microsoft account, your notebooks are there waiting for you to continue.
You never have to worry about saving in OneNote. It automatically keeps your changes while you work. Even if you closed the app by mistake, or your device goes to sleep, your notes always get saved, so you can continue right where you left off.
Then there’s jotting down with ease because OneNote never runs out of paper. When you’re ready to create new pages, go ahead and tap the plus sign [+] at the top of the sidebar. When you want to edit a page, go to the Recent Notes list and tap the name of that page. And now you’re ready to make changes.
OneNote gives you the option to touch or click where you want to work. In laptop mode when you have a keyboard and mouse connected or tablet mode when you are on the go. Go ahead and tap anywhere on a page to activate the cursor. You can also double-tap existing text to begin a selection allowing you to adjust by dragging the handles.
Part II – Microsoft OneNote Let’s You Write, Zoom and Organize
Writing, sketching, or drawing notes is vital for most who use OneNote. While you can quickly type notes in OneNote, content doesn’t have to be walls of text. Creative ideas and plans do get expressed with the drawing tools that OneNote offers.
Zoom pages with pinch-zooming. In OneNote, it is switched off to eliminate any frustration with accidental magnification when you’re using a pen for drawing. To pinch-zoom in OneNote, find the icon that looks like this [ ≡ ]. Tap that Settings near the bottom, and then Options. Now you have access to turn on the Use touch to zoom option.
Copy text from pictures like a photo of a meal receipt. OneNote can recognize text in any images you’ve inserted. Press and hold the image. Next, tap Picture on the menu. Then tap Copy Text. Now wherever you want it, paste the text there, and move on.
If an Excel spreadsheet is too much, OneNote has the answer. You can create quick and easy tables in your notes to help organize your information. When you’re ready to start a table, you will tap the command Insert > Table. Before we forget, while any table cell is selected, tap the Table tab to delete, insert, or sort your rows and columns.
Part III – Microsoft OneNote Let’s You Share, Collaborate and Helps You
Sharing notes the way you want gives you a unique way of staying in control. When syncing your content to the cloud, it doesn’t mean they get automatically shared with others, unless you consent. Notes remain private unless you give explicit permission to view and edit your notebook files to specific people or groups.
When you want to collaborate with others in your notebooks, you will need to invite them. You can invite them using any of these options:
Any version of the OneDrive app
The desktop version of OneNote
From any browser, you would go to OneDrive.com
Microsoft knows every now, and then you might need help with OneNote, but you’re not sure where to look. For step-by-step guidance with OneNote, find the icon that looks like this [ ≡ ] tap Settings at the bottom, and then Helps. There you can search and see all the available OneNote Help articles for you to review.
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Remember that hilarious video of a BBC news reporter talking with a professor on camera, only to get upstaged by his family behind him? The professor is sitting in his chair. The door opens behind him and in marches a little arm flaying child. Then a baby wheels in on a rolling chair. Finally, a woman dashes in, stares straight at the screen, freaks out and then drops to the floor grabbing each child. All three scurry away, and the door shuts behind them. The professor is stunned, embarrassed and apologetic. He didn’t have Microsoft Team’s Background Blur that blurs video backgrounds, but his video did go viral.
What Is Microsoft Teams and Background Blur?
Microsoft Teams is a platform of cloud-based team collaboration software. Teams are only one part of the multiple suites of applications offered by Office 365. The core capabilities in Microsoft Teams include file sharing, calling, business messaging, and video meetings. Businesses of all sizes can use Microsoft Teams.
One of the main features inside Teams is Background Blur. According to Microsoft Team creators, the new background blur feature was added and permits users to remove embarrassing distractions and have only the focus placed on the individual, and not what’s behind them. The feature is currently available to all Microsoft Office 365 commercial customers and clients of Microsoft Teams and has discovered the capability is already available within their video calls.
Two Crucial Technology Details About Background Blur Most Don’t Know
Background Blur was announced back in July 2018. Along with getting the free version of Teams, users can now blur the background of their video calls. That feature is still currently available. However, if you don’t read the fine print, there are issues with performing facial recognition most don’t know. The blur feature is an AI-driven feature, and it will use facial recognition to automatically blur out your background while the individual is in a video meeting using Teams.
The technology to perform facial recognition, that identifies the person and understands where the background to be blurred begins and where the environment not to be blurred ends. The technology only runs on computers recently equipped with Advanced Vector Extension 2 (AVX2) graphics installed. AVX2 is what Microsoft Teams must use to blur the background after it figures out the position of the user.
Advanced Vector Extension graphics get supported when a computer has a post-Haswell chipset. If your current tablet, laptop or desktop background blurring is working, then you have the needed chipset; but if it’s an older device, it may not function. Also, be aware that a computer’s CPU has quite a bit of processing to do to locate a face and then blur the background. If you are running a loaded system, it will impact any other work on your PC that is in progress.
How To Blur Your Background During Your Video Call?
To start blurring your background, during a video call, you have two options you can try. Press the CTRL+Shift+P combination. If things go blurry, during your video call, you know that your PC has this feature.
The second option is to start your video from a meeting. Then, click on the Ellipsis icon from the meeting options and choose Blur My Background.
To un-blur your video, choose the Ellipsis icon again and select Don’t Blur Background.
Now let’s say you want your background already blurred, as you join a meeting before others see your video. It’s easy. Toggle the Video Blur icon to remove distractions from the start.
Let’s Go Ahead And Summarize What We’ve Discovered
Organizations use Microsoft Teams as a communication platform. It allows their employees to work and chat one-on-one. They can join company-wide video conference calls, share documents, and more. At the 2018 Microsoft Ignite developer conference, the company announced it added a few exciting features to the Teams platform, surprisingly the ability to add background blur during a live video call.
According to the Microsoft Teams creators, the new background blur feature was added to give users the mechanism to remove distractions behind them and have individuals focus on the person in front of them. The function was rolled out, and customers of Microsoft Teams will find that the capability is already available within their video calls.
The blur feature is an AI-driven feature, and it will use facial recognition to automatically blur out your background while the individual is in a video meeting using Teams. The technology only runs on computers recently equipped with Advanced Vector Extension 2 (AVX2) graphics installed.
Advanced Vector Extension graphics get supported when a computer has a post-Haswell chipset. If your current tablet, laptop or desktop background blurring is working, then you have the needed chipset; but if it’s an older device, it may not function.
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Creating a comprehensive business plan is an important step for any blossoming business. Whether you’re hoping to attract new investors or qualify for a bank loan, you’ll likely need to present a documented plan to help clarify the ins and outs of your business for interested parties.
In a bid to woo the business crowd, Microsoft Word has developed a way to make the process of compiling a business proposal easier than ever. Microsoft Office offers more than a dozen business and marketing plan templates to help you create a coordinated, professional looking business plan with the potential to impress investors and other stakeholders.
If you’re using an older version of Word, you may need to visit the Microsoft website and download your business plan template from there.
But before you can begin compiling your business plan, you’ll need to sort out three important details about your business:
What are your expenses?
Do you have enough start-up capital?
What are your sales projections during your first year?
Answering these can be one of the most difficult parts of writing a business plan, but doing so is necessary to ensure your business has the potential to sustain itself. Determining a clear, concise game plan for how your business will be run can set the tone for success early on.
Every business is unique with regard to tone and style. Because of this, the program comes equipped with a variety of templates to choose from. Once you’ve got a clear picture of what your business is, where it is and where you’d like it to go, you can then begin to develop a solid strategy to help your plans come to fruition.
Choose A Template
First, you’ll need to begin a new Word document. You can use the suggested search options to find your desired template. The template will contain step-by-step instructions to help you build your plan.
While all business plans are unique in their content, they should still follow the same formula in order to cover all the bases of your business.
An effective business plan will contain key highlights such as your business concept, market summary, competition, goals, opportunities, financial plans and others.
Compile An Executive Summary
Every legitimate business plan will contain an executive summary that paints a clear picture of your business. This will contain the “meat and potatoes” of your idea, meaning it’s where you will offer details about what you do, your goals, your mission statement and how you plan to become a success. This is likely the first section your potential investors will see, and therefore, it’s important to invest time in accurately capturing your idea so you can organize it properly.
Describe Your Business
This is where you will begin to explain crucial details of your business. You’ll be asked to describe your company’s ownership, your location, products and services and hours of operation, among other things. Here you will also go in-depth about how you plan to carry out your goals, including listing your suppliers, services, manufacturing and financial management.
Lay Out Your Marketing
Marketing is an important aspect of any business, regardless of industry. It’s a topic all business owners must consider, and it can be of great use when included within a business plan. It can help determine how much of your funds should be allocated for attracting new business.
Just like rent, payroll and materials are all large factors for a new business, marketing is one area that requires due diligence. A thorough business plan may contain things like market analysis, reports on market segmentation, competition and pricing. These are all key to understanding how well your business will do within your industry.
Address Financials In The Appendix
The last section of your business plan will be the appendix. Your business plan’s appendix will contain further details about the finances surrounding your operations. You’ll need to list things like your start-up expenses, for instance. How much will it take to launch your business off the ground? Cash flow and income projections are also vital for your business plan, as are other items like balance sheets and sales forecasts. You may even include things like tax returns in this section.
Sharing Your Business Plan
Once you’re done, share the file with your team via OneDrive. This will ensure your team members are able to view and make edits as needed. With Microsoft, team members can even see each other’s changes in real time.
If you are using Microsoft Team for communication, you can create a file folder and share your business plan there. This allows for a focused discussion about changes that may be needed, even if part of your team is working remotely. It’s important to gather the insight of those who know your business best, which can help your plan convey the most significant aspects of your business.
Owning a company is hard, and creating an all-inclusive business plan is one of the many difficult tasks business owners are faced with. Microsoft Word is only one of the many tools at your disposal to create a business plan that paves the way for success.
Microsoft Outlook makes it easy. If you are in an email, then click on the Message tab and Reply With Meeting. Then go ahead and update the invitation like you would any other meeting. Don’t forget about adding the attendees, time, location, then Send. It’s as simple as that. But wait! There’s more to meeting requests then reply and send.
What we’ve done is scoured our archives and brought you 13 quick tips most Outlook users want to know. Our list is not exhaustive. But what we’ve put together for you and your team are the most common meeting requests we hear, and we’d like to share them with you today and test them for yourself.
1) How can I respond to a new meeting request in Outlook?
Open the meeting request and click Accept. Click Send the response now if you wish to respond or select Do not send a response. Then click OK. You may want to choose Edit the answer before sending to include a comment such as: “I will be arriving late.”
2) How can I see who has accepted a meeting in Outlook?
When you need to review, who accepted or declined your meeting invite, in Microsoft Outlook here’s what you do:
Choose the “Calendar” icon in the “Navigation Pane“
Double-click the meeting you want to review
Under the “Meeting Occurrence” tab, select the “Tracking” button
3) How do I accept a declined meeting in Outlook?
This is for Outlook 2016 for Mac or Outlook 2016/2013 for Windows
Open the meeting request from the Deleted Items folder, and then click Accept or Tentative. If the Deleted Items folder got emptied, this option is not available.
Request the meeting organizer resend you a new meeting request update.
4) How do you send a meeting update without response required?
When you initially send the meeting request, if you didn’t turn off the response option, you can change the option at any time.
Open the meeting
On the Meeting Ribbon
In the Attendees group, click Responses
Uncheck Request Responses
5) How do I accept a meeting in Outlook that I declined?
Go ahead and open the Deleted Items folder and find the declined meeting request you refused.
Now go ahead and double-click to open the meeting request. Next, click the Accept button in the Respond group under the Meeting tab.
When the prompt box pops up, choose an option you want, and then click the OK button.
6) How do I accept a meeting in Outlook?
Here you will double-click the meeting request to open. Now click one of the buttons in the “Respond” button group, on the “Meeting” tab on the Ribbon. You can click either the Decline, Tentative or Accept or if allowed by your meeting organizer, “Propose New Time” buttons.
7) How do I see who is not attending a meeting in Outlook?
If you want to review who declined your meeting invite in Outlook, here’s what to do.
Choose the “Calendar” icon in the “Navigation Pane“
Double-click the meeting you want to check
Under the “Meeting Occurrence” tab, select the “Tracking” button
Can you recall meeting invite outlook?
When you want to cancel your meeting, open Outlook, then locate the event in your calendar. Choose the meeting, but do not open the meeting details. Choose the “Meeting” icon in the top navigation ribbon, then click the “Cancel Meeting” option. Type an optional message, then click “Send Cancellation.”
8) Can you un-decline a meeting in Outlook?
Show a declined meeting on my calendar. If a meeting request gets refused, the session does not get saved to your schedule, and the meeting request message gets moved to the Deleted Items folder. You can only show accepted or tentative meetings on your calendar. To request this feature, go to Outlook UserVoice.
9) How do I view Cancelled meetings in Outlook?
To hide or don’t show canceled meetings in your Calendar in Outlook, do this:
Step 1: Move to the Calendar view, and open the Calendar that you want to hide canceled meetings Step 2: Click the View Settings button on the View tab
Step 3: In the popping up dialog box, please click the Filter button
Step 4: Then the Filter dialog box comes out. Please go to the Advanced tab, and:
(a) Click the Field > All Appointment fields > Subject;
(b) Click the Condition box and select the doesn’t contain from the drop-down list
(c) Enter the text of “Canceled:” in the Value box;
(d) Click the Add to List button
Step 5: Click both OK buttons in two dialog boxes.
10) How do I send a meeting update in Outlook?
Update a recurring meeting is easy
Go ahead and double-click the meeting on your calendar. It will open. To update all instances of a recurring meeting, on the Organizer Meeting or Meeting Series tab, click Edit Series.
Change the options that you want.
On the Organizer Meeting or Meeting tab, click Send Update.
11) How do you delete a meeting in Outlook without sending a cancellation?
Choose the “Send/Receive” tab
Now the “Work Offline” button
Make your changes or delete your calendar appointment
Now choose to Send cancellation
Head over to the “Outbox” and delete all of the cancellation messages
Now go back to “Send/Receive” and choose “Work Offline” again to turn it off
12. How do you change a meeting response in Outlook?
Change meeting request: Outlook 2010 and 2013
In your calendar double click on the meeting to open the Meeting dialogue window. Note: You have two options of opening: one occurrence or the entire series if you are changing a recurring meeting.
In the main Meeting dialogue window, make your meeting changes. When you get finished, click on the Send Update icon.
13. How do I recover a deleted meeting in Outlook?
Recovering deleted mail items: Outlook 2010 and 2013
Choose the folder where you want to retrieve the missing item.
Click on the Folder tab, and then click Recover Deleted Items.
In the Recover Deleted Items dialog box, select the item(s) you would like to restore.
Click Recover Selected Items.
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In the past, the proposal management process has been plagued by different data sources, manual methods, and a lack of collaboration across groups, despite the rise of industrial lending. Microsoft has built a solution for the Microsoft 365 platform known as Proposal Manager. Proposal Manager has advanced features, functions, and custom apps, which permits the streamlining of the corporate lending loan origination process.
What Makes Microsoft Proposal Manager Different?
Lenders who are struggling with their loan processes wind up with missed lending opportunities, dissatisfied customers, and employees burdened by highly manual and frequentative methods. Without digitization, banking executives estimate that their staff still spends more of their time on repetitive and manual tasks.
A recent Capgemini study confirms that back-office commercial bank employees do spend about 80 percent of their time on manual and repetitive tasks. That same study also cites that by automating data-intensive and repetitive tasks, automation will provide more than 25 percent in expenditure savings. With automating, your employees would have their time freed up to tackle other revenue-generating projects.
Microsoft’s Proposal Manager is the solution that helps kick-start the transformation lenders, like you, need to complete more lending cycles, without compromising on risk assessments, and to remain disciplined in a competitive market. Built on Microsoft 365, Proposal Manager is fully customizable, so lending teams can easily create professional winning proposals, streamline and accelerate the process, and improve productivity and teamwork.
How Does Microsoft Proposal Manager Work?
Let’s assume you are a loan officer for a corporate or commercial bank. And you are using the Proposal Manager to assemble and collaborate with your deal team, and you want to create a proposal for a prospective client.
With the proposal manager, you can guarantee the deal team captures client needs, even if they are on the go. That keeps the proposal moving forward from anywhere by incorporating:
Team members who have a deep understanding of the client and Legal and Compliance teams can still manage risk and compliance processes
You can quickly engage people with the right expertise. You can build a detailed workflow with vital tasks for content owners. You can then schedule built-in tracking and notifications. That makes it easy to keep the proposal progress moving seamlessly. As for meeting tight deadlines; risk and compliance approval processes are simplified with the pre-built workflows checklists. You also can now link document repositories to the to-do items.
Is It Possible To Collaborate or Co-Author The Proposal Draft?
Yes. In the past, proposal manager data fragmentation made it very difficult for loan officers and their teams to be agile, accurate, and compliant. But now, they can secure final sign-offs to present the formal commitment letter, and record the client’s decision.
It is easier to collaborate and co-author the draft proposal. You would assign sections of content to the expert on the team ensuring essential tasks are completed on time and securely. They can seamlessly edit, iterate, and track proposal content across the group while providing the completeness and consistency of the documentation.
With pricing, risk, and proposal terms and conditions, the proposal drafting process harnesses disparate data through links to external sources such as market data so that the content in the document is always up to date.
Is Proposal Manager Customizable?
Yes. Microsoft’s Proposal Manager solution comes customizable. It is adaptable for your enterprise development team, so your lending team can:
Create professional, winning proposals easily — You can save time, present professional commitment letters, and sharpen creativity, to improve credit risk management and increase win rates.
Streamline proposal management—Simplify the corporate and commercial loan origination process. Using automated, integrated, and secure tools for document management; allowing you to direct, team collaboration and workflows. Bank managers can facilitate frequentative proposal negotiations. They can help expedite credit committee approvals, empower relationship managers on the go, and guarantee version consistency.
Improve collaboration and teamwork—Respond to proposals collaboratively and quickly with connected, company-wide communications and collaboration tools. Keep the proposal process moving seamlessly by collaborating and sharing in real-time, while meeting tight deadlines. Lead whiteboarding sessions and proposal reviews with enterprise-class video, voice, and email.
Final Thoughts
Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 customers now have access to Microsoft Proposal Manager solution. It’s integrated across existing Microsoft 365 workloads. It helps you transform your proposal process into a secure, collaborative, agile, and client-centered process without requiring significant IT involvement for deployment.
If you are a loan officer or sales manager, you can download the Proposal Manager brochure. After you’ve downloaded the material, get with your IT support and development team in understanding more about how the solution can help you and your team. The impact Proposal Manager would have for your firm is significant.
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It looks like, in October, there’s a lot going on, with your Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal subscriptions. We know some of you are reading this do subscribe to one of Office 365 consumer plans. It’s great news if you fit that description and you have more than one device at home. Check out the latest updates to Office 365.
What’s New For Office 365 Home or Personal Subscriptions?
Office 365 Home and 365 Personal subscriptions use to have device install limits. Office 365 Home limited subscribers to 10 devices in total, across five users, and Office 365 Personal, limited subscribers to one PC or Mac and one tablet.
As of October 2nd, subscribers are permitted to install Office on an unlimited number of devices. And can be signed into their accounts on up to five of those devices at the same time.
And, for those with more prominent families, Microsoft increased the number of licenses in a Home subscription from five to six, with no change in price. To be clear, that’s six people with their Office license and 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage each, for a total of 6 TB.
What’s The News About OneDrive Files On-Demand for Mac?
Microsoft announced at Ignite 2018 a preview for an enhancement to OneDrive called Files On-Demand. That enhancement has been available on Windows for a few months. For Mac, Files On-Demand makes it easy to have access to all your files. But only have the data you need to be stored locally on the device, thereby reducing the amount of local storage space consumed.
The way you work doesn’t need to change. That’s because in Finder all your files are accessible, allowing you to work as you do with other data on your device. Files On-Demand is available to consumer and commercial OneDrive customers, and works across all your personal, work, and shared folders in Office 365.
Status icons in Finder, make it easy to know whether your files are locally available or online. You can easily create files or folders always available, even when you don’t have an Internet connection, by right-clicking and selecting Always keep on this device.
Files On-Demand for Mac is currently available for Office Insiders on macOS Mojave. It gets enabled by running a simple script.
What’s The Latest Information On Super Zoom?
The new Super Zoom feature enables OneDrive on iOS users to use a pinch gesture. With the pinch gesture, you zoom in and out of the Photos view. Zoom out to easily scroll many photos at a time or zoom in to get a more extensive preview of your pictures as you browse. This feature gets supported on both OneDrive for Business as well as consumer accounts on iOS.
For those of you using OneDrive on Android devices, Super Zoom is already available, but only for OneDrive consumer accounts and should be coming to OneDrive for commercial accounts later this year.
Did Word & PowerPoint Get @mention To Tag Someone For Feedback?
When you use what is commonly known as the “at” sign with someone’s name in social media apps like Twitter or Facebook, the person you mention receives a notification about that post or comment.
Now you can use @mentions in Word and PowerPoint to draw someone’s attention to comments in a document or presentation when you’re collaborating. Just add the @ sign, then type the name, of and the person from your organization; who are working with you.
That particular person receives an email, with a link directly to your comment. Clicking the link brings them into the document or presentation and the conversation. Using @mentions in Office can help take the lag time out of the collaboration process helping you get more work done, faster.
Outlook Has a New User Experience Designed For Simplicity
The latest updates to Outlook for Windows is the “Coming Soon” feature. That new functionality getting introduced to Outlook for Windows gives Office insiders a window of time to try new features on their schedule before they are released more broadly.
One of the new features being showcased using the new Coming Soon features pane are the new Simplified Ribbon. It lets you focus on the core of what you need, displaying a single row of commands versus the three lines of powers in the classic ribbon.
It is still easily expandable, so you’re always in control. The default set of commands in the simplified ribbon are those used most frequently, and less commonly used commands are always still available with just a click or two. In addition to the Simplified Ribbon, Microsoft made updates across the entire mail and calendar experience to improve productivity and keep you more organized.
What Got Added To The Power BI Built-in Report Theme Options?
Most Office users are familiar with applying themes in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to give your content a consistent set of fonts, colors, and effects. The Power BI team recently added the option to apply new built-in themes to Power BI reports, similar to what you can do with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You’ll see these more modern theme options by selecting “Switch Theme” in the Home ribbon in Power BI Desktop.
What you’ll need to do is pick your desired theme from one of seven new options, and it does apply it to all your visuals that use the default color palette. You can also find a link to the report theme gallery in the same place which contains additional community-developed themes.
This update also includes a preview of a PDF file connector that lets you access table data in PDF files, a preview of IntelliSense support for the M language used by Power BI, and a lot more.
What Is The New SharePoint File Template Management?
SharePoint has been at the heart of document-centric collaboration since long before Office 365 existed. SharePoint content types are essential to Microsoft’s vision of how they will continue to deliver content services innovation in Office 365 and by extension, Microsoft 365.
Now you can add document templates to SharePoint document library content types. Microsoft also added the ability to edit the New menu – to add, hide or reorder the new file options.
With this new capability, you can maintain the default templates for things like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint along with any newly added templates and content types specific to your requirements. Configuring the New menu is easy. Select (or deselect) which templates you wish to see and by using drag and drop to re-order the templates in the list.
In the Office client, you can edit the template directly. You can change the template’s content type or delete the template. While scoped to a single document library, for now, Microsoft will expand these capabilities to allow you to distribute and publish content types, with associated templates and metadata definitions, to multiple site collections and libraries in a single transaction.
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Google My Business is an excellent tool for establishing and tracking your company’s online presence. Included in Google My Business are tools to help you manage customer reviews. However, in order to get the most out of the review tools, you need to know (1) how to find your reviews, (2) how to encourage customers to share reviews, and (3) how to be alerted when you do receive reviews.
1. How to Find Your Reviews
In order to both see and manage your Google My Business reviews, you need to pay a visit to this site: business.google.com. Login, and once you are in, you can see your own My Business page. This allows you to, among other things, see and respond to the feedback your clients have provided through Google reviews.
You’ll find a link to Reviews on the left-hand side of the dashboard (it has a star icon beside it). This will open up a dedicated review page that allows you to write and edit constructive responses. Note that this also allows you to select one of three basic views: All, Replied (that would be, of course, reviews you have already replied to), and Haven’t Replied (which would be the reviews that you haven’t posted a reply to yet).
If you are still new to Google My Business or just don’t have very many reviews yet, you will want to start requesting reviews from your customers. With more and more people depending on the internet for reviews of everything from cell phone plans to home repair services, it is important that your company have reviews from real customers posted on Google.
2. How to Encourage Customers to Share Reviews
Trying to get great reviews can be tricky. Google My Business web pages do not offer a way to directly request a review from a customer. There is a workaround, however. To get a URL to promote to your clients, start by searching for your company from within Google maps (maps.google.com).
This reason you need to go to Google maps is simple: at the bottom of your company listing in Google maps, there is a link to post a review of your company. Once you are on your company’s map page, copy that URL. Then open up a URL shortening service such as bitly so that you can shorten that URL. With bitly, just paste in your URL and click on Shorten. You will receive a very short URL that you can copy and paste to your company’s website, emails, invoices, email signatures, business cards, and other materials. This makes it much easier for your customers to respond with feedback without having to search for your business on Google. The easier you make it for people to provide reviews, the more reviews that will begin to come in.
3. How to Be Alerted When You Do Receive Reviews
Once you are actively promoting reviews, you need to know when reviews are posted so that you can respond to them. It is important to quickly acknowledge reviews, both the good ones and the bad ones. Poor reviews especially need attention, and your company should try to make contact with the disgruntled customer and, if possible, take the discussion offline. However, you want others looking through your reviews to see that when a customer is dissatisfied, your business will reach out to fix the situation – even when the review is unfair. It is very important that a negative review does not sit out on the internet with no response.
Fortunately, there is a way to receive an alert as soon as a review is posted. To receive alerts about reviews, start by returning to the Google My Business homepage where you should still be logged in. Look toward the bottom of the right-hand side where it says Settings (there will be a gear icon next to it). Click on Settings, which will open the Email Notifications page. About halfway down, you will see an option that says Customer reviews. If you click the checkbox on the right-hand side of this option, you will receive email alerts when a customer posts a review. That is all you need to do to be alerted when a customer posts a review.
Conclusion
Your company’s reputation online is very important, and it is critical that you receive feedback in the way of reviews. Google My Business has the tools you need to manage those reviews, including tracking them, responding to them, and being alerted when they are posted online. There isn’t a direct way to request reviews from your customers, but smart use of a link in the Google Maps listing of your business, combined with a URL shortening service, can help you gather those reviews you need.
