IT Network Support for Mid-size Firms

Microsoft 365 (formerly branded Office 365) is Microsoft's expanding family of productivity applications and cloud services provided on a monthly or annual subscription basis. Microsoft 365 apps and Azure services are available in a variety of bundles, or subscription plans, intended for markets ranging from individual and households to global corporations.

The most popular Microsoft 365 applications can be deployed on multiple computers including Windows PCs, Apple Macs, iPads, and iPhones and Android smartphones. Multi-device apps include versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. PC-only applications include Microsoft Access and Microsoft Publisher. To accommodate users with multiple devices, many Microsoft 365 subscription plans permit you to put Microsoft 365 apps on more than one device. For example, Microsoft 365 Business and ProPlus packages permit every Office application to be installed on as many as five devices.

Progent offers fast and easy online access to a support consultant with expert knowledge of Microsoft, Mac, Apple iOS, and Google Android products. Progent can help you to understand the numerous options available with Microsoft 365 and configure your information network with Microsoft 365 so it delivers the highest possible strategic value. Progent has experience supporting cross-platform networks that incorporate Windows, macOS or OS X, and Linux technology. Progent can also assist you to deploy and manage hybrid environments that transparently integrate on-premises and cloud-based resources.

Microsoft 365 Apps and Cloud Services
Microsoft 365 packages are available for a wide range of markets such as businesses, schools, government, and home. Some subscription plans, like Microsoft 365 Business Essentials, has no apps but only cloud services. Other plans, like Microsoft 365 Business, includes apps but provides only the OneDrive cloud service. The high-end Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5 package includes seven applications and seven cloud services. Progent can assist your organization to pick an Microsoft 365 subscription plan that's right for your situation, assist you to migrate from legacy editions of Microsoft Office apps, and help you centralize the management of Microsoft 365 and other system resources to create an efficient, secure and reliable IT ecosystem.

Popular Microsoft 365 Applications
The most obvious distinction between Microsoft 365 apps and their related Office editions is that Microsoft 365 apps are rented instead of perpetually licensed. In addition, traditionally licensed Microsoft Office apps are supposed to be installed on only one PC or Mac and are not updated automatically or replaced at no extra cost when a major version is released. As an example, upgrading from Office Word 2013 to Word 2019 requires that you purchase a brand new license for Word. Incremental updates to Office applications are provided Microsoft 365 subscribers sooner than to users of permanently licensed editions. Also, Office suites bought with a perpetual license do not include the cloud services included with Microsoft 365.

Apps available with different Microsoft 365 bundles include:

Microsoft 365 Word offers the ability to write and view Office documents across Microsoft Windows, Google Android, Mac, and iOS computers while maintaining a common look and user experience. Users can also co-author documents, see which team members are editing shared projects, and see changes made by team members as they happen. Just as with Microsoft 365 Excel and Microsoft 365 PowerPoint, you can easily share from within your documents. Additionally, you can review who has rights to access a given document and who is currently working on it. For documents you own, you can easily modify edit rights. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Word consulting and training expertise.

Microsoft 365 Excel now allows subscribers to use the industry-standard Exponential Smoothing (ETS) algorithm to build forecasts for predicting future trends using historical data. New linked data types that access remote sources include Stock and Geography. The Stock data type retrieves the current stock price, change in price, and other equities data. Geography allows you to select a country and retrieve specified online demographic or economic information like population or gas costs. As with Microsoft 365 Word and Microsoft 365 PowerPoint, Microsoft 365 Excel also can handle Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images. These images can be rotated, colored, and scaled instantly with no loss in image quality. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Excel consulting services.

Microsoft 365 PowerPoint lets you work with 3D objects and provides an expanded selection of animation effects such as jumping and turning. Like Office Excel and Office Word, Microsoft 365 PowerPoint allows you to transform drawings into standard shapes for flow charts, diagrams, and other objects. Microsoft 365 PowerPoint for Mac adds the capability to incorporate and edit video from within PowerPoint. The Media Browser utility offers easy access to a broad selection of sources including iPhoto galleries, iTunes playlists, and iMovie collections plus standard shapes, Clip Art, and other graphical content.

Microsoft 365 Outlook offers significant enhancements to previous releases of the Outlook email and calendar application by adding features like audio cues, transparent downloading of OneDrive attachments, visibility of replies to a conference invitation for people other than conference organizers, simplified email sorting, plus easier group creation and calendar sharing. Additionally, Microsoft 365 Outlook users can hear their messages read aloud while the sections being read are highlighted. Office intelligent services, when enabled, also allows Microsoft 365 Outlook clients to dictate messages. Microsoft 365 Outlook for Mac now supports push email, online archiving, the ability to suggest a different meeting schedule in answer to a meeting invitation, and multiple calendar display. Full Screen Mode allows multiple open emails and permits subscribers to run two Outlook instances in split-screen view. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Outlook and Outlook on the web configuration and troubleshooting services.

Microsoft 365 OneNote for Windows 10 is included in most Microsoft 365 packages, installed by default in Windows 10, and available for download as a no-cost mobile application. The earlier OneNote 2016 release, which includes functions not initially available in OneNote for Windows 10 likes Record Video, is still available for free but is no longer being updated with new features. OneNote for Windows 10 sports a fresh customizable look common for Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Android, and Web. Other functionality offered only on OneNote for Windows 10 include enhanced ink-to-text capability, an alert center that shows modifications in your open and recent notebooks, automatic transformation of freehand drawings into standardized shapes, and a digital ruler to draw straight lines and make measurements.

Microsoft 365 Access, offered exclusively for Windows PCs, enables you to utilize Visual Basic for Applications and a rich set of templates to streamline business operations and create modern-looking forms and management reports. Microsoft 365 Access includes the connector library to extract data from a wide selection of leading business applications and data sources for generating aggregated reports from within the time-tested Access interface. The ability to store Access data in both Microsoft SQL Server as well as Microsoft Azure SQL gives you an enterprise-class back end plus SQL syntax for Access apps deployed either locally or in the Azure cloud. Microsoft Access 365 now comes with an updated Linked Table Manager, allows you to add a wealth of new forms and reports, and permits you to link or import data from Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Access development and training services.

Microsoft 365 Publisher, offered only for PCs, is a popular user-friendly desktop publishing tool that takes advantage of the familiar Office environment to provide an intuitive program for developing and sharing modern-looking documents like datasheets and newsletters that call for exact object placement. Since documents can be saved to the cloud, you can deliver a document simply by sending a link. Publisher's wide use and ease of use make it possible to hit deadlines for time-critical jobs without having to depend on instant access to a desktop publishing professional for implementing eleventh-hour edits.

Microsoft 365 Cloud Services
Microsoft 365 cloud services permit you to leverage Microsoft's vast cloud infrastructure to host business-critical servers such as Microsoft Exchange, Teams and Skype for Business. These services provide high levels of reliability and security while saving the significant investment costs and management hassle required for deploying and supporting self-sufficient on-premises datacenters. For cases that call for some systems to be kept onsite for regulatory compliance, throughput, or other reasons, the majority of Microsoft 365 server products can be implemented with hybrid architectures that seamlessly combine on-premises and cloud-hosted resources.

Microsoft 365 Exchange Online offers email hosting and allows mailbox capacity ranging from 50 GB to whatever you can afford. Key features include custom domain addresses, shareable calendars and contact lists, the Outlook Web app, single-click archiving, and easy creation of collaboration groups. The web-accessible Exchange admin center lets you control email settings for your company and provides full control over crucial areas such as user rights, cybersecurity, mail flow, creating mailboxes and defining limits, team work, contact lists, Unified Messaging, monitoring, and backup/recovery. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and administration expertise.

Microsoft 365 OneDrive is Microsoft's popular file sync and share platform. Microsoft 365 subscription plans typically include 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage, allowing you to store, retrieve, and share files across Windows, Apple Mac, or iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. By transparently syncing your files to your desktop, OneDrive lets you edit documents even when you are not connected to the Internet. OneDrive simplifies sharing and collaboration, keeping track all changes to prevent consistency issues. You can start a co-authoring project on any computer and move seamlessly to another computer at any time. For enhanced collaboration, an array of tools permit you to annotate and highlight shared documents. Advanced discovery tools enable you to locate files fast, and analysis tools provide insights like how many people viewed or shared a file.

Microsoft 365 Skype for Business offers cloud-based voice, HD video, and conferencing. Online Plan 1 includes IM, presence, VoIP, and HD video, plus federation and directory search. Online Plan 2 includes pre-scheduled and on-demand conferencing with audio and video calling as well as screen and application sharing on iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets, PCs, and Apple Mac computers. For hybrid environments that integrate a local Skype for Business Server with Skype for Business Online services, you can deploy a seamless solution using a Split Domain implementation. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Skype for Business planning and integration expertise.

Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online integrates information management with intranet publishing to enable businesses to broadcast and share content and to facilitate collaboration. SharePoint's admin center has been enhanced with interactive usage analysis, Message Center updates, and a Service Health dashboard intended to simplify management. In addition, you can now connect up-to-date team sites to Microsoft 365 Groups, enhancing SharePoint sites with shared conversations, schedules, and Planner. Features to support cloud integration now include hybrid taxonomy and hybrid auditing as well as an enhanced client-side development model for building SharePoint environments locally, in hybrid implementations, and in Microsoft 365. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online configuration and development expertise.

Microsoft Teams is the successor of Skype for Business, providing a unified portal for conversations, contact lists, and content with persistent threaded chat, file sharing, and built-in IP voice and video conferencing. Microsoft has designed the cloud environment that hosts Teams so it can provide faster conference join times than Skype and to enable integration with Microsoft Cognitive Services like transcription, language translation, speech recognition, and AI. Progent's consultants can help you to try out Microsoft 365 Teams to evaluate the advantages of migrating to this innovative collaboration technology. Find out more about Progent's Microsoft Teams migration services.

Microsoft 365 Yammer is a social network platform designed to be used inside an organization and restricted to clients who have an authorized corporate email address. Postings can include files, web links, videos, PowerPoint shows, and SharePoint pages. The Discovery feed makes it easy to locate information that relates to your work or interests as indicated by the groups you have joined, discussions you follow, and people you communicate with. You can find conversations, files, interest groups, followers, and other information associated with a specific colleague. Group Insights inform you how activities like posting, reading, and liking are trending historically. Notifications alert you about relevant events such as updates in your groups, input to your conversations, and new participants.

Microsoft 365 Power BI is a stack of cloud services integrated with Microsoft 365 that enables businesses to build and share dashboards and custom reports that offer up-to-date consolidated views into vital areas of your business. Microsoft 365 Power BI dashboards can consolidate data from multiple local and outside repositories like Microsoft Excel, on-premises SQL Server Analysis Service, the Azure cloud, or popular sources such as QuickBooks, Google Analytics and Salesforce. Dashboards and reports developed on Power BI can be updated in real time via data streaming. You can store and share your visualizations in the cloud using OneDrive. Native Power BI Online mobile apps are available for Windows devices plus iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Power BI Online integration consulting and training.

Planning Activities for Microsoft 365 Migration
Progent can provide the support of a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Architect to assist your company to plan an efficient migration to Microsoft 365 tailored to your IT environment. Prior to presenting this migration plan, Progent's cloud expert will conduct a series of information gathering tasks that include running tools like IdFix, the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA), and specialized scripts for reviewing your AD, messaging, and Mobile Device Management setup. Critical information that cannot be discovered using these techniques will be determined via interviews with your IT staff.

Key activities managed by Progent in developing an optimal Microsoft 365 migration plan can include:

• Lead a Project Kickoff session with your IT team to confirm project goals, services to be utilized, customer and contractor responsibilities, timelines, etc.
• Develop a Risk and Issue Tracking document.
• Develop an Exchange Hybrid migration plan explaining how new services and required changes to the ecosystem will be made.
• Examine the existing Azure AD Connect Identity Management setup and uncover any gaps.
• Identify and develop a plan for mail-enabled applications such as multifunction printers, monitoring systems, and other systems that currently submit SMTP messages.
• Develop end-user communication to be sent out by your Service Desk.
• Determine existing Exchange mailbox sizes and item counts to help plan for email migrations.
• Review your network bandwidth measurements to verify you have sufficient bandwidth and nominal latency to support Microsoft 365.
• Review your current Mobile Device Management (MDM) system to ensure it will operate with the Microsoft 365 services and features.
• Run the IdFix utility to identify potential AD issues and detect duplicate email addresses and user principal names (UPNs), invalid characters for object attributes, and UPNs with non-routable domains.
• Conduct an Architecture Review session with your IT staff to identify problems that could block an efficient migration.
• Create a way to allow email to be directed to Dynamic Distribution Groups.
• Provide a list of ports and IP ranges for firewall rules.
• Help you to identify mailboxes that have been granted elevated rights to another mailbox.
• Create an implementation plan that defines the processes involved with your migration to Microsoft 365.

Progent's ProSight family of Remote Management and Monitoring (RMM) Services
Progent offers a family of low-cost, fixed-price managed services designed to enable small and mid-size businesses to utilize the same best-of-breed IT solutions deployed by many of the world's leading enterprises. The ProSight line of outsourced network management services covers all key aspects of modern networking including email content filtering, security and compliance, cloud-based backup and disaster recovery, infrastructure health monitoring, VM hosting, and IT asset documentation management. Find out more about Progent's remote management and monitoring services.

Get in Touch with Progent for Microsoft 365 Expertise
If you are trying to find a Microsoft 365 consultant, call Progent at 800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

Cloud Integration Services from Progent
The options available for public cloud products and services are expanding continually, making it hard for information system managers to determine the optimum cloud strategy for their organization. Progent has in-depth experience assisting companies ranging from startups to large enterprises to design, implement, and manage hybrid environments that integrate various cloud services from leading public cloud providers. Progent's cloud integration experts can help you to evaluate the comparative benefits and shortcomings of competing public cloud options and can show you how to build a cloud-centric or hybrid network that provides maximum competitive value.

Public cloud products supported by Progent's consultants include:

Progent's Microsoft Azure planning and integration experts can assist you with every aspect of Azure cloud migration such as requirements definition, prerequisites evaluation, solution design, pilot testing, deployment, centralized management, performance tuning, software license management, disaster recovery strategies, security planning, and regulatory compliance assessment. Progent can assist you to set up and debug firewall appliances and VPN connections so that your clients can safely access to Azure-based resources, and Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can help you integrate key Microsoft technologies to work in the cloud including Microsoft Windows Server, Exchange Server, SQL and Skype for Business. Progent can also help you to create a hybrid environment that seamlessly integrates physical datacenters with Azure resources.

Microsoft allows you to create seamless hybrid ecosystems that integrate Microsoft 365 and local installations of Exchange. This allows you to have certain mailboxes hosted on your physical datacenter and other mailboxes resident on Microsoft 365. Progent's Microsoft-certified Exchange consulting team can help you with any phase of designing, implementing and troubleshooting your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange solution. Progent's Exchange consultants can deliver occasional expertise to help you through challenging technical bottlenecks and also can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to make sure your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange solution is completed on time and within budget. To learn more about Progent's online consulting support for hybrid Microsoft 365 Exchange and on-prem Exchange systems, see Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration solutions with on-prem Exchange.

Progent's Amazon AWS cloud integration experts can provide cost-effective online consulting to assist businesses of any size to access Amazon AWS cloud services such as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for virtual machine hosting, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for scalable high-performance storage, and Glacier for low-cost archival storage. Progent can assist your IT team with every aspect of Amazon AWS integration including requirements analysis, readiness assessment, architectural design and review, pilot testing, configuration, centralized administration, performance optimization, licensing management, disaster recovery solutions, and security strategies. Progent offers advanced expertise with firewalls and VPN access and can show you how to deploy all-cloud or hybrid ecosystems that efficiently integrate Amazon AWS resources. Progent offers occasional consulting or Progent can provide project management outsourcing or co-sourcing services to help you move efficiently to the Amazon AWS platform.

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is a collection of APIs that enables Amazon sellers to improve the efficiency of their business processes by automating key sales activities including listings, orders, payments, inbound and outbound fulfillment, and reports. By leveraging Amazon's vast online selling environment and automating their sales, merchants can expand their reach, lower their cost of sales, accelerate response time to customers, and add to their bottom line. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) developers can work with your development staff and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and mentoring to help you cut development time and speed up your return on investment.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform (GCP) planning and integration experts offer cost-effective online and onsite support to assist organizations of any size to move any part of their core IT infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This can save management hassle and hardware expense and allow access to Google's cutting edge machine learning technology. Progent can help you with every phase of Google Cloud Platform migration and troubleshooting including needs analysis, readiness assessment, system design and review, testing, configuration, administration, performance tuning, software license management, backup/restore solutions, and security.