Office 365 Archives

The future of Cloud Computing

If you give the Cloud a chance, you will clearly see the advantages of moving your entire business to a hosted, virtual environment. Even though, cloud computing has recently exploded and is gaining momentum, just like everything else that is new to the market; there is a user adoption curve stretched over the lifespan of the product or service. Thinking back to high school, do you remember Rogers Adoption Curve? Once a new product or service is introduced, very few (16%) are the innovator / early adopters. The majority of the population (68%) find themselves in the early / late majority and the last 16% are the laggards who will eventually adopt or never adopt for various reasons. The good news is, Cloud Computing is nothing new and we are approaching the early majority adoption stage. The bad news is, [...]

By Mike McPhilomy| 2018-07-18T11:27:01+00:00 April 27th, 2012|Cloud, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP, Exchange Online, Office 365, SharePoint|

The Cloud Office of Today

Okay, confession time: this blog is late. I usually publish my blogs on Friday’s and an endless number of things have gotten in my way. However, the biggest thing that has gotten in my way is simply this: Writer’s Block! Oh yeah, good old Writer’s Block! But then, recent events have brought me to thinking about the Cloud Office of today. To quantify this, I am speaking of the physical office and how it can be fully deployed in the Cloud. Is it reasonable to expect a Cloud solution to be fully deployable at your office? My recent conclusions are: yes. It is recent that I have had the need to investigate some of the critical elements of a Cloud office that until now have been undefined. The critical element missing has been an online phone system such as Lync Online. So we begin there: In my quest for the [...]

By Robert Houdeshell| 2018-07-18T11:27:01+00:00 April 9th, 2012|Cloud, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP, Exchange Online, Integration, Mobility, Office 365, SharePoint|

Highlights of Convergence 2012

The anticipation of my first Convergence had been building up since January. Convergence is a gathering of Microsoft Dynamics users, partners and ISV’s who come from around the world to crash a city for a few days to learn more about the Microsoft Dynamics family of products and network with fellow business product users. As a first timer, I was warned that I would be going nonstop from early morning to early morning with a few hours of sleep in between. That was not far off from the truth and after coming home and having some time to finally sit and reflect on the past five days, I want to share some of my experiences and takeaways from Convergence 2012. After an already solid two days of GPUG events, meeting up with customers and networking put behind me, Microsoft opened with their keynote Monday morning. Upon entering the arena, it [...]

By Mike McPhilomy| 2018-07-18T11:27:01+00:00 March 22nd, 2012|Business Intelligence, Cloud, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP, Mobility, Office 365, SharePoint|

The Future of Business Intelligence

Let us explore the future of Business Intelligence. Last week I spoke about Windows 8 and it's impact on computing. However, let's further explore the problems, yes problems, with Business Intelligence.Until today, Business Intelligence has been primarily provided by Hyperion, Cognos and other solutions. Many years back, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Analysis Services. However these solutions have been either expensive in their software purchase and/or their implementation. Further complicating things are the differing requirements from the user to the manager to the executive.Therefore, we have seen an emerging trend in business solutions in which we believe you should know about. They are:Audience -- the audience or consumer of the business intelligence will always be the number one concern in Business Intelligence. For example, the CEO and CFO will have a varying set of requirements of what they want to see. The manager of purchasing will want to see something different from [...]

By Robert Houdeshell| 2018-07-18T11:27:02+00:00 March 9th, 2012|Business Intelligence, Cloud, Dynamics GP, Exchange Online, Mobility, Office 365, SharePoint|

Configuring CRM 2011 Email Router with Office 365

We were just migrated from Exchange Online to Office 365. Among the many things that had to be reconfigured to work with Office 365 was the Microsoft CRM 2011 Email Router. There were two distinct tasks. First, give permissions to the account that the Email Router uses to the various mail boxes that use the Email Router. Second, set up the CRM 2011 Email Router. Grant Email Account Full Access to Mail Boxes: 1. Open Windows PowerShell 2. Set your credentials by entering: $LiveCred = Get-Credential 3. Enter the username and password for an account that has administrative privileges in Office 365. 4. Enter the command: $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection 5. Then the command: Import-PSSession $Session 6. For each of the mailboxes that your account needs to access enter the command (mailboxname is the mailbox you want to access and emailaccount is [...]

By Tudor Coleman| 2018-07-18T11:27:42+00:00 February 13th, 2012|Office 365|

Dynamics CRM 2011 and SharePoint Online – Installing the List Component for Document Management

After completing our transition to Office 365, I was very excited to start using the integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (in the NjevityToGo cloud) with the SharePoint Online piece of Office 365 (in the Microsoft Cloud). This is a fantastic feature of Dynamics CRM and SharePoint that allows you to manage documents for an account directly within a SharePoint Site. You can add/update/view documents in either CRM or SharePoint and you can take advantage of the powerful search capabilities of SharePoint. Here is a great blog article that explains how this all works.However, as I started working on setting this up, I realized that all of the documentation on installing the SharePoint List Component assumes that you are using SharePoint ON PREMISE, not SharePoint Online. And, the instructions for performing the installation DO NOT WORK with SharePoint Online. AND most of the articles in the blogosphere state that SharePoint [...]

By Chris Dobkins| 2018-07-18T11:27:42+00:00 February 13th, 2012|Business Intelligence, Cloud, Dynamics CRM, Office 365, SharePoint|

Setting up an Android Phone with Microsoft Office 365

To setup your Android Phone with your existing Office 365 email account using Exchange ActiveSync, follow these steps:From the Applications menu, select Email. This application may be named Mail on some versions of Android.Type your full e-mail address, for example tony@contoso.com, and your password, and then select Next. Select Exchange account. This option may be named Exchange ActiveSync on some versions of Android.Enter the following account information and select Next.DomainUsername Type your full e-mail address in this box. If Domain and Username are separate text boxes in your version of Android, leave the Domain box empty and type your full e-mail address in the Username box. NOTE: On some versions of Android, you need to use the domainusername format. Password Use the password that you use to access your account. Exchange Server Use the address of your Exchange server. To find this address, see “Finding the Server Name” later in this topic. As soon as your [...]

By Chris Dobkins| 2018-07-18T11:27:42+00:00 February 13th, 2012|Cloud, Office 365|

Trouble installing Lync for Office 365

The setup program for Microsoft Lync will hang on some machines. If you open Task Manager you will see LyncSetup.exe sitting at 25% CPU. This is a known issue. Try downloading from: For x32 bit Operating System: http://c2r.microsoft.com/oconline/en-us/7577.280/x86/en-US/LyncSetup.exe For x64 bit Operating System: http://c2r.microsoft.com/oconline/en-us/7577.280/x64/en-US/LyncSetup.exe

By Tudor Coleman| 2018-07-18T11:27:42+00:00 February 13th, 2012|Office 365|

Setting up an Apple iPhone with Microsoft Office 365

To setup your iPhone with your existing Office 365 email account using Exchange ActiveSync, follow these steps:If this is the first e-mail account on this iPhone, iPad, or iTouch, tap Mail. Otherwise, tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account. Tap Microsoft Exchange. Tap in the E-mail box and enter your full e-mail address (for example, tony@contoso.com). Tap in the Username box and enter your full e-mail address again. Tap in the Password box and enter your password. Optionally, tap in the Description box and enter a short description for the account. Tap Next on the upper right corner of the screen.Tap in the Server box and enter your Exchange ActiveSync server name and then tap Next. For instructions for how to determine your Exchange ActiveSync server name, see the Finding My Server Name section below. Tap Next. Choose the type of information you want to synchronize. By default, Mail, Calendar, and Contacts are all turned on. [...]

By Chris Dobkins| 2018-07-18T11:27:42+00:00 February 11th, 2012|Cloud, Office 365|

The Financial Case for The Cloud

In this blog entry, I want to take on the financial case for moving your business to the Cloud. First, let's discuss what the Cloud is and what it isn't in the context of business applications. According to NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology) “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.” NIST further defines that there are 5 Characteristics 1) On-Demand Self Service 2) Broad Network Access 3) Resource Pooling 4) Rapid Elasticity 5) Measured Service The Cloud, for purposes of ERP and CRM applications, will be discussed in the context of Software as a Service [...]

By Robert Houdeshell| 2018-07-18T11:27:43+00:00 October 13th, 2011|Cloud, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP, Exchange Online, Integration, Njevity, Office 365, Ramblings|