Category: Tuesday Tech Bytes Group 2

 

Microsoft Teams is a relatively new addition to Microsoft’s Office suite. Teams is a powerful collaboration tool. It’s kind of like Microsoft’s high-powered answer to Slack. Create teams for whatever purposes make sense in your business. Communicate and collaborate within those teams to get stuff done. The killer feature in Microsoft Teams is the ability to collaboratively use nearly any other component of the Office suite directly inside the Teams application.

Team Meetings

Whether your team is a mix of on-site and virtual or completely virtual, you still likely need to hold meetings from time to time. Microsoft Teams includes a Meetings function, allowing those that aren’t present to join in on an in-person meeting. All you need is a device running Teams in the conference room. If you’re the host, all you need to do is create the meeting in your Outlook Calendar like you normally do.

How to Join a Microsoft Teams Meeting on the Go

If you’re the one that needs to join the meeting from a distance, here’s what to do. Open your Teams app and click or tap on the Meetings tab. If your organization is using Outlook for its calendar functions, this tab will populate with the meetings you’ve been invited to. Look for the one you’re trying to join, and click the big “Join” button. This will launch a call, and you’ll see avatars or photos for the others who are joining the meeting.

Controlling Your Presence During the Meeting

Tap anywhere (or, on a computer, move your mouse) to bring up meeting controls. You can mute or unmute your device’s microphone, toggle video on or off, and adjust volume. In the upper right corner (on mobile) you may see a button for adding additional people to the meeting (if you have the rights). You’ll also see a button to view any chats associated with your Team or the meeting itself.

You or others can share files into the Teams meeting. Once displayed on your screen, you can pinch to zoom in. When you’re done viewing the file, close it out and return to your main meeting window (whether that’s a video or just an audio interface with avatars).

If You Don’t See the Join Button

If you don’t see a “Join” button, then you’re dealing with one of two problems. If you sometimes see them and sometimes don’t, then your meeting organizer likely isn’t creating the meeting properly. The organizer might need to experiment with creating the meeting within Teams rather than from Outlook.

If you never see the button, then your IT group likely has not implemented the Meetings function within Teams. Contact IT with a request to enable this feature.

Wrapping Up

You now know how to join a Teams meeting on the go, but there’s a lot more to Teams than that. For help navigating Teams or the rest of the Office suite, contact us today. We’re here to help!

If you’ve seen the acronym PII in the news or in trade magazines, you may have questions. What is it exactly, and what is the danger surrounding it? Today’s tech blog post answers these questions and more.

What Is PII?

PII stands for personally identifiable information. Personally identifiable information (from here on, we’ll just use PII) is information tied to an individual that can be used to identify that specific individual. The term usually comes up in discussions of internet security and identity theft. Most everyone in the developed world has plenty of PII. Name, race, address, age, physical description, and even photographs can be PII. So can social security numbers, credit card numbers, email addresses, usernames, and passwords.

Is PII a Bad Thing?

No, PII isn’t bad. Some of it (like name, age, and physical description) is directly tied to our core identities. Much of it is the currency by which we live our lives. You need usernames and passwords to exist on the web, and you need social security and bank account numbers to exist in the financial marketplace. These elements aren’t bad, but they can be problematic.

Then What’s the Problem with PII?

The problem with PII is that if a bad actor (like an identity thief) accumulates enough of a person’s PII, the bad actor can compromise accounts or even steal the person’s identity. While PII isn’t a bad thing, people must do what they can to rein in access to their PII.

Is All PII Created Equal?

No, it’s not. Some items are more valuable (or sensitive) than others. If all a bad actor has to work with is your full name or a photograph, he or she isn’t going to be able to do much. Similarly, if someone gets ahold of your credit card number by itself, it’s almost useless. Some PII, like social security numbers, are more valuable even on their own.

The real problem is accumulation. Thieves can do a lot of damage if they manage to match up a name with the correct social security number. The more PII they add, the more damage they can do.

How Accumulated PII Facilitates Identity Theft

The fuller an identity a thief can build, the more serious damage the thief can inflict. Knowing your name and address accomplishes little on its own. Add in a bank account or credit card number and the last four digits of your social, and now the thief may be able to sweet-talk a customer service representative into issuing a new card or approving a transfer.

How Thieves Accumulate PII

Some PII (usually from significant data breaches) is available for purchase on the dark web. Some of it gets stolen using social engineering or phishing. In too many cases, a considerable amount of PII is freely displayed on a victim’s social media account. If “Where did you go to high school?” is one of your bank account security questions and the answer is freely displayed on your Facebook profile, you’re setting yourself up for ID theft.

Keep Your PII Safe

Much of keeping control of your PII is common sense. Limit what you share on social media, and don’t give away account numbers or your social security number when it’s not necessary. These small steps will go a long way to protecting your PII.

Does your organization need additional help managing PII? Contact us today!

 

All notifications are not created equally, especially when it comes to business hours. That becomes apparent when sifting through multiple items on your iPhone or iPad. You want the alert from a peer letting you know about the receipt of a critical signed document, but not constant annoying pings about the latest updates to Candy Crush.

With a few tweaks to your iOS settings, you can avoid these annoyances in the future by taking control of what pops up while you are working.

Make Use of Do Not Disturb

There are times that you want to eliminate all distractions during business hours. It could be while preparing to sit down with a potential new client or when you are going over the implementation of a new organizational strategy with your employees. The last thing you want is to have your iPhone or iPad continually going off at critical points.

The latest iOS 12 updates make it a snap to go into your settings and silence your notifications during crucial junctures like these. Just swipe up from the bottom of your iPhone screen (or down from the top right on your iPad screen) to bring up a moon icon. All you need to do is click it to silence all your notifications.

Pressing and holding the moon icon for a few seconds more brings up additional options that control how long you silence your notifications. You can also press the “Settings” button at the bottom of the list for more detailed control over the length of your DND period.

Manage Alerts Through the Notifications Center

The Notifications Center allows you to make more permanent changes when it comes to managing your alerts. You can activate the Notification Center by swiping down from the top of your iPhone screen (or the top left/center of your iPad screen). Notifications can be viewed as a single entity or in multiple batches.

There are two ways to activate notification management. You can drag the notification from left to right and reveal the “Manage” option. Selecting “Manage” provides you with new options. Or, do a long press on a notification to bring it to the forefront. Select the three-dot icon at the top to bring up the same options.

1. Deliver Quietly — You will still be able to see your notifications within Notification Center but will not see them on your lock screen. The alerts will also not make sounds, show a banner, or badge the app icon.
2. Turn Off — Pressing this button allows you to turn off all notifications from a specific app.
3. Settings — Pressing this button takes you to the notification settings for the app that sent the alert.

Going this route allows you to silence some notifications while allowing others through. That means essential Skype meeting notifications still gets seen, while updates on your favorite sports team wait until you have time to review them.

Controlling Notifications Via Settings

You can also maintain your alerts the old-fashioned way through your settings icon. Clicking on it will bring up a list of options you can select, including one labeled Notifications. The Notification Style section allows you to choose any app and view selections enabling you to control when and how it sends you notifications. Those choices include:

• Allowing or disallowing notifications from an app
• Choose the way you wish to be notified by an application
• Change the appearance of banners that appear for alerts

Imagine that you have separate apps controlling your business and personal emails. You can use the settings to prevent alerts from your non-work email account while still allowing business emails to come through. The Settings section also let you decide whether you want to group important notifications or see previews of relevant messages.

Thanks to the iOS 12 update, you have a variety of possibilities at your fingertips. So take some time to explore your notification controls and ensure that only essential items come through during business hours.

The image of a traditional PBX phone system may make you uncomfortable because systems in the past were either tied into a particular type of hardware or an individual vendor. While that may make you want to shy away from the enhanced functionality that you receive with a PBX system, today’s telephone switching is radically different than in the past. There are many flexible options for implementing your PBX (Private Branch Exchange) system, including virtual solutions as well as on-premise hosting. Learn more about PBX phone systems and see why they may be the right choice for your business.

Using Technology to Reduce Restrictions

Creating an extensible telecommunications system is crucial, as businesses communicate in more varied ways than ever before. Simply connecting two individuals via phone could include a complex dance of rerouting calls to a mobile phone, translating audio voice mails to text and routing faxes to an email address. With the new Open-Standards-based IP PBX, Internet Protocol is the underlying transport technology that is used to deliver telephone calls. This less restrictive option for communications delivery provides enhanced functionality for your investment.

PBX Features and Functionality

There are a wide variety of PBX phones, with the traditional analog PBX phone system managing calls by connecting over copper wiring — with the hardware generally living inside the telecom closet of your office. Analog PBX systems connect to POTS, or Plain Old Telephone Systems, lines that pre-date the internet. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) or on-premise PBX systems utilize broadband internet to replace the copper lines, allowing these systems to deliver high-definition telephone calls and video. This provides the ability to provide sophisticated PBX features, including:

• Call queuing
• Application integration
• Flexible business hour rules
• A unified communication system with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software
• Automatic Call Distribution queues that can evenly distribute calls throughout a department
• Call transfers between extensions
• Detailed records of incoming and outgoing calls

These advanced functions make it simpler for businesses to provide the flexibility that workers need to be productive regardless of their physical location.

Should You Choose On-Premise or Virtual Hosting for Your PBX?

Virtual hosting is an increasingly popular option for businesses that are interested in purchasing a PBX system. Also known as hosted VoIP, this internet phone system provides all of the call routing and management as well as the advanced features that you would expect from a PBX system. Instead of the upfront cost associated with purchasing a PBX system for on-premises use, you’ll pay a service provider a monthly fee to manage all of the hosting for your business. Per-minute charges may apply and there may be additional costs for extending the system with integrations or advanced functionality.

With on-premise PBX, businesses find that this option is more similar to a traditional PBX system. Your business buys the hardware and physically hosts the machines in a server room or phone closet. The key difference between an on-premise VoIP PBX is that it will leverage the internet connectivity for your office. You will still need a provider to handle the gateway for calling, but your ongoing monthly cost will likely be lower than a virtually hosted instance after you’ve covered the costs of expenses.

Determining which option is right for your business requires finding a strong partner with a deep understanding of the technology, who is willing to listen to the needs of your business and make a solid recommendation. The true benefit of investing in a PBX phone system is that you are providing your business with the telecommunications flexibility and the extensible system that will serve your needs both now and in the future.

 

Here’s a quick tech tip for Microsoft OneNote. Today we’ll look at how users can share notes that they have created in Microsoft OneNote. First, though, since Microsoft OneNote isn’t one of the “Big Four” Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook), we’ll look at what OneNote can do and why you should be using it.

What Is Microsoft OneNote?

Microsoft OneNote is an awesome but lesser-known part of the Microsoft Office family. At its core, it’s a high-powered note-taking program. When you first open a OneNote Notebook, it looks an awful lot like a Word document. However, it works quite differently. Click anywhere on the page and start typing. A text bubble will be created right there. Click somewhere else, and you can create another one. OneNote allows for free-flowing note-taking, and it lets users annotate their content using freehand drawing (with a mouse or on a touchscreen). It’s a great place to brainstorm or to take non-linear notes.

Sharing Is Powerful

Over the years, OneNote has also become a powerful collaboration platform. In all recent versions, users can share a notebook with numerous friends or coworkers, and those users can all edit the notebook simultaneously. This collaboration is powered using either Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft OneDrive, depending on the version and edition (home or professional) being used.

How might this help you? Perhaps you want to create a table, sign-up sheet, or tutorial guide. Get one started, then share it with your coworkers or friends. They can jump right in, simultaneously filling in details, correcting mistakes, and fleshing out written procedures in real time. This is a powerful tool for businesses.

How to Share a OneNote Notebook

To share a notebook, open the notebook you want to share. In the upper right you should see the word “Share” between some other menu options, just below the Minimize button. Click the word “Share” to open the Share sidebar. In this sidebar you can select which notebook or notebooks you want to share. Fill in the email addresses of the people you want to share the notebook with. Next, click the drop-down menu and choose which level of access you want the people to have. You may want them to be able to edit, edit and share, or view only. Next, click the big Share button.

The people you’ve shared the notebook with will receive an email explaining the next steps. Soon they will start working with your document in real time. You can see initials next to people’s changes to help keep things straight. If you’d like to hide those, click “View” up in the ribbon, then click “Hide Authors.”

Now you know the basics of how to use and share notebooks in OneNote. Time to get collaborating!

Endless airline terminals. Overpriced airport food. Overly-close seating on packed planes. What’s there to love about business travel? Sure, there are some road warriors who appreciate never having to clean a room or make a bed as they spend all their time in hotels, but for most people, business travel is simply something to be endured. Even 10 years ago, it would have been challenging to have the kind of high-speed access and seamless experience that you need for video conferencing, but today’s a different story. See how you can save time and money by utilizing some of these next-gen video calling apps.

Business Happens Everywhere

Workers want to be able to be productive anytime, anywhere — and that could include while watching their child’s baseball game, stepping out of a client meeting for a few minutes or even from home on the weekends. This is especially true of small business owners who are never truly off duty. Fortunately, video conferencing software and apps have come a long way from the fuzzy, slow-moving images and poor sound quality of the past to provide crystal-clear images and sound with no noticeable lag. If you haven’t tried it lately, video calling apps are now quite seamless to use and work equally well from your desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

Benefits of Video Calling

Let’s face it: travel is expensive, and the cost is not always justified for the value that you provide. There are certainly times when business travel will still be required, but many negotiations and conversations can happen equally well over a high-speed video call. Phone calls without video are not enough to provide you with the nuanced information that you receive when you’re able to see someone directly in front of you, and video calling fits that bill nicely. Business is increasingly global in nature, making video calls one of the few cost-effective ways to work with teams that are scattered throughout the region — or the world. Until the last few years, it was a bit more difficult to ensure that both individuals or teams had access to the right software and hardware to make video calling truly viable. With the majority of laptops being shipped with high-resolution video conferencing hardware already installed and the prevalence of smartphones, that is no longer the case.

Top Video Calling Apps

While certainly not an exhaustive list, here are a few of the top video conferencing apps that are used in business today:

• Skype — consistently one of the top-rated apps by technology professionals and users
• Zoom — free video calling that allows you to instantly share information from your phone
• Cisco WebEx — businesses professionals love it, and there are extensive shared workplaces available in the platform
• GoToMeeting — quickly and easily collaborate with partners and clients in real time
• Slack— cross between a chat platform and video conferencing, built specifically for team communication

No matter what your video calling needs are, there’s probably a platform on the market today that will fulfill your needs — and cost far less than relying on expensive business travel.