Cloud Solutions

Office 365 is Microsoft's expanding family of client productivity applications and cloud services available on a monthly or annual subscription basis. Microsoft Office 365 apps and Azure services are offered in a variety of bundles, called subscription plans, intended for markets ranging from students and households to major corporations.

Most Microsoft Office 365 applications can be installed on a variety of computers such as PCs, Apple Macs, iPads, and smartphones. These multi-device apps include versions of Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. PC-only applications include Access and Office Publisher. To address customers with multiple computing devices, many bundles permit you to install Office apps on several devices. As an example, Office 365 Business and ProPlus subscriptions allow every included application to be installed on as many as five customer devices.

Progent can provide fast and easy remote access to a support consultant with expertise in Microsoft, Mac, iOS, and Google Android software. Progent can help you to evaluate the many options offered with Office 365 and integrate your IT system with Office 365 in a way that delivers the highest possible competitive value. Progent supports cross-platform networks that incorporate Microsoft Windows, macOS or OS X, and Linux based products. Progent can also assist you to deploy and manage hybrid environments that seamlessly combine on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure.

Microsoft Office 365 Apps and Cloud-based Services
Microsoft Office 365 packages are designed for a wide range of markets including businesses of all sizes, schools, government, and home. Some plans, like Office 365 Business Essentials, has no apps but only cloud services. Other plans, like Office 365 Business, offers applications but only the OneDrive cloud service. The high-end Office 365 Enterprise E5 package includes seven applications and seven cloud services. Progent's consultants can assist you to pick an Office 365 package that's right for your business, help you to move from older editions of Microsoft Office applications, and help you simplify the management of Office 365 and other network resources to create an efficient, secure and productive IT environment.

Major Office 365 Applications
The most obvious distinction between Office 365 applications and their associated Office editions is that Office 365 apps are subscription based instead of perpetually licensed. Also, traditionally licensed Office apps are supposed to be installed on just one device at a time and are not patched automatically or upgraded at no extra cost when a major version is released. For example, upgrading from Word 2013 to Word 2016 requires that you purchase a whole new copy of Word. Incremental releases of Microsoft Office apps are made available to Office 365 subscribers sooner than to owners of permanently licensed versions. Also, Office suites bought with a permanent license do not come with the cloud services that are included with Office 365.

Applications offered with different Office 365 packages include:

Office 365 Word includes the ability to write and review Office documents across Windows, Google Android, Apple Mac, and iOS computers while maintaining a consistent look and feel. Users can also share documents, see which colleagues are editing various shared documents, and see updates made by others in real time. Just as with Office 365 Excel and PowerPoint, you can easily share from within your documents. In addition, you can check who has permission to view or edit a specific document and who is currently working on it. For documents you own, you can quickly modify authoring permissions. Find out about Progent's Microsoft Office 365 Word consulting and training services.

Office 365 Excel now allows subscribers to employ the industry-standard Exponential Smoothing (ETS) algorithm to build forecast charts for predicting trends based on historical data. New data types that access online databases in real time include Stock and Geography. The Stock data type downloads the current stock price, price change, and other equities information. Geography allows you to select a region and extract current demographic or economic data like population or gas price. As in the case of Office 365 Word and Office 365 PowerPoint, Office 365 Excel also can handle Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images. These can be turned, colored, and resized instantaneously with no loss in quality. Find out about Progent's Microsoft Office 365 Excel consulting and training services.

Office 365 PowerPoint lets you work with three dimensional models and includes an enhanced library of animation effects such as jumping and rotating. Like Office Excel and Word, Office 365 PowerPoint enables you to convert sketches into uniform shapes for flow charts, diagrams, and other objects. Office 365 PowerPoint for Mac includes the ability to incorporate and edit movies from within PowerPoint. PowerPoint's Media Browser utility provides convenient access to a wide selection of media sources such as iPhoto galleries, iTunes playlists, and iMovie libraries as well as standard shapes, Clip Art, and other graphics.

Office 365 Outlook offers important enhancements to prior versions of the Outlook email and calendar application by introducing useful features like audio cues, transparent downloading of OneDrive cloud attachments, visibility of responses to a conference request for people who are not conference organizers, streamlined email sorting, plus easier group creation and shared calendars. Also, Office 365 Outlook subscribers can hear their messages read aloud while the portions being read are highlighted. Microsoft's Office intelligent services, when activated, also allows Office 365 Outlook subscribers to dictate messages. Office 365 Outlook for Mac now supports push email, online archiving, the ability to suggest a different meeting schedule in answer to a meeting request, and multiple calendar visibility. Full Screen Mode permits multiple open messages and permits users to run two Outlook sessions in split-screen. Learn about Progent's Microsoft Office 365 Outlook and Outlook on the web consulting services.

Office 365 OneNote for Windows 10 is incorporated in most Office 365 bundles, pre-installed in Windows 10, and available for download as a no-cost mobile application. The earlier OneNote 2016 release, which has some features not initially provided in OneNote for Windows 10 likes Record Video, continues to be available at no cost but is no longer being updated. OneNote for Windows 10 sports a fresh configurable interface consistent for Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Google Android, and Web. Other features available only on OneNote for Windows 10 include improved ink-to-text capability, a notification center that indicates changes in open and recently used notebooks, automatic transformation of drawings into standardized shapes, and a virtual ruler to draw straight lines and measure distance.

Office 365 Access, available only on Windows PCs, allows you to utilize VBA and a rich set of templates to automate business processes and create advanced forms and reports. Office 365 Access comes with the connector library to integrate data from a broad selection of leading business apps and data sources for generating quality reports from within the time-tested Access interface. Support for storing Access data in both Microsoft SQL Server as well as Microsoft Azure SQL provides an enterprise-class back end and SQL syntax for Access applications hosted either on premises or in the Azure cloud. Office Access 365 now includes an updated Linked Table Manager, lets you add new forms and reports, and enables you to link or extract data from Saleforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Find out about Progent's Office 365 Access development and troubleshooting services.

Office 365 Publisher, offered exclusively on Windows PCs, is a popular user-friendly desktop publishing system that takes advantage of the familiar Office interface to provide an easy-to-use program for developing and sharing modern-looking publications like datasheets and newsletters that call for precise object placement control. Because publications can be saved to the cloud, you can deliver a document as easily as sending a link. Publisher's popularity and simplicity make it possible to meet deadlines for time-critical jobs without needing depend on instant access to a desktop publishing specialist for making eleventh-hour changes.

Office 365 Cloud Services
Office 365 cloud services permit organizations to take advantage of Microsoft's vast cloud resources to host business-critical servers such as Exchange, Teams and Skype for Business. These services provide enterprise-class levels of reliability and protection while reducing the significant upfront costs and management hassle associated with deploying and maintaining robust on-premises computer facilities. For cases that require some systems to be kept on-premises for regulatory compliance, throughput, or other issues, the majority of Office 365 server platforms can be implemented using hybrid architectures that transparently support local and cloud infrastructure.

Office 365 Exchange Online offers email hosting and supports mailbox sizes from 50 GB to whatever you can afford. Important features include custom email domain addresses (name@​your­company​.com), shared calendars and address books, the Outlook Web app, one-click archiving, and simple-to-create collaboration groups. The web-accessible Exchange admin center allows you to control email settings for your company and provides full control over critical areas including user rights, security and compliance, mail flow, making mailboxes and imposing limits, team work, address books, Voice mail, monitoring, and backup. Find out about Progent's Office 365 Exchange Online configuration and administration consulting.

Office 365 OneDrive is Microsoft's popular file sync and share platform. Office 365 subscription plans typically include 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage, enabling you to store, access, and share files across Microsoft Windows, Mac, or iOS and Android devices. By transparently synchronizing your files to your work station, OneDrive allows you to modify documents even when you are not connected to the Internet. OneDrive simplifies sharing and collaboration, tracking all changes to help prevent consistency issues. You can initiate a team project on any computer and switch seamlessly to a different computer at your convenience. For advanced collaboration, a variety of utilities allow you to annotate and highlight shared documents. Advanced discovery tools enable you to locate files quickly, and analysis tools offer insights like the number of people who viewed or shared a file.

Office 365 Skype for Business offers cloud-hosted voice, video, and conferencing. Online Plan 1 offers IM, presence, peer-to-peer VoIP, and video calling, plus federation and directory search. Online Plan 2 includes scheduled and ad hoc conferencing with A/V calling as well as screen and application sharing on Apple iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets, Windows PCs, and Apple Mac computers. For hybrid networks that integrate a local Skype for Business Server with Skype for Business Online cloud services, you can deploy a seamless environment using a Split Domain deployment. Find out about Progent's Office 365 Skype for Business Online solution design and configuration consulting.

Office 365 SharePoint Online combines content management with internal web publishing to allow businesses to distribute and share content and to facilitate collaboration. The SharePoint admin center has been enhanced with interactive usage analysis, Message Center updates, and a Service Health dashboard designed to streamline administrative tasks. Also, you can now connect current team sites to Microsoft Office 365 Groups, enhancing your existing SharePoint sites with group discussions, schedules, and Planner. Innovative capabilities to support cloud coexistence now include hybrid taxonomy and auditing as well as an updated development architecture for creating SharePoint environments on-premises, in hybrid implementations, and in Office 365. Find out about Progent's Office 365 SharePoint Online integration and development services.

Office Teams is the successor of Skype for Business, offering a single portal for meetings, contacts, and information with persistent threaded chat, file sharing, and built-in IP voice and video conferencing. Microsoft has designed the cloud infrastructure supporting Teams so it can provide faster meeting join times than Skype for Business and to allow integration with Microsoft Cognitive Services like transcription, translation, speech recognition, and AI. Progent can assist you to test Office 365 Teams to evaluate the benefits of migrating to this next-generation communication technology. Find out about Progent's Microsoft Teams solution design consulting.

Office 365 Yammer is a social network product designed to be used within an enterprise and restricted to users who have a valid company email address. Postings can include files, web links, media, PowerPoint shows, and SharePoint content. The Discovery connection makes it easy to find content relevant to your work or interests as indicated based on groups you are a member of, discussions you contribute to, and people you communicate with. You can locate conversations, files, groups, followers, and other information associated with a specific colleague. Group Insights inform you how events like posting, viewing, and liking are trending historically. Notifications tell you about relevant activity such as new postings in your groups, comments in your conversations, and new followers.

Office 365 Power BI is a stack of online services integrated with Microsoft Office 365 that allows you to create sharable dashboards and on-demand reports that offer real-time insights into key areas of your business. Microsoft Office 365 Power BI dashboards can consolidate information from a broad array of internal and outside repositories like Microsoft Excel, on-premises SQL Server Analysis Service, Azure, or popular sources like Zendesk, Google Analytics and Salesforce. Dashboards and reports developed on Power BI can be updated in real time via data streaming. You can save and share your visualizations in the cloud with OneDrive. Native Power BI Online mobile applications are offered for Windows computers as well as iOS and Google Android smartphones. Find out about Progent's Microsoft Office 365 Power BI Online integration expertise.

How Progent's Consultants Can Assist You with Office 365 Solutions
For businesses looking for quick remote help from a high-level Office 365 configuration consultant, Progent can provide a comprehensive sele3ction of support services such as system design, configuration, troubleshooting, software development, management, and education. Progent's Microsoft-qualified integration consultants, Cisco-certified infrastructure engineers, macOS and OS X technology consultants, iPhone and iPad consultants and Android consultants can help you to enhance your network with Office 365 applications and services.

ProSight Remote Management and Monitoring Services
Progent provides a selection of low-cost, flat-rate services intended to enable small and mid-size organizations to benefit from the same best-of-breed IT solutions used by some of the industry's top enterprises. The ProSight series of outsourced network management services addresses all critical aspects of information technology such as email protection, security and compliance, cloud-based backup/recovery, network infrastructure management, virtual server cloud hosting, and IT asset documentation management. Learn more about Progent's remote management and monitoring (RMM) services.

Contact Progent for Office 365 Integration and Support
If you are trying to find an Office 365 consultant, call Progent at 800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

Public Cloud Integration Solutions from Progent
The options offered for public cloud products and services are expanding continually, making it hard for information system managers to determine the best cloud strategy for their business. Progent has in-depth experience assisting companies of all sizes to design, implement, and maintain hybrid networks that integrate multiple cloud services from leading public clouds. Progent's cloud integration consultants can help you to understand the relative advantages and shortcomings of different public cloud options and can help you build a cloud-centric or hybrid network that delivers maximum business value.

Public cloud products and services supported by Progent include:

Progent's Azure integration experts can assist you with every stage of Microsoft Azure integration including needs analysis, readiness evaluation, system architecture, pre-production testing, implementation, centralized administration, performance tuning, software license management, disaster recovery preparedness, security planning, and compliance assessment. Progent can assist you to set up and debug firewalls and VPN tunnels so your clients can safely access to Azure-based services, and Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting experts can help you set up key Microsoft platforms to work in Azure including Windows Server, Exchange, SQL and SharePoint. Progent can also help you to set up a hybrid environment that seamlessly combines physical datacenters with Azure services.

Microsoft supports seamless hybrid networks that combine Office 365 Exchange Online and local Exchange. This permits you to have specific Exchange mailboxes hosted at your on-premises datacenter and other mailboxes resident on Office 365. Progent's Microsoft-certified Exchange consultants can help your organization with any phase of planning, integrating and troubleshooting your hybrid Exchange solution. Progent's Exchange consultants can provide as-needed expertise to help you through challenging technical issues and also offer extensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing to make sure your hybrid Office 365 solution is successfully completed on schedule and on budget. For details about Progent's online consulting expertise for hybrid Office 365 and on-premises Exchange systems, see Office 365 Exchange Online integration with on-premises Exchange.

Progent's Amazon AWS planning and integration consultants offer affordable online consulting to help companies of any size to integrate Amazon AWS cloud services such as Amazon EC2 for virtual machine hosting, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for scalable cloud storage, and Amazon Glacier for value-priced long-term archiving. Progent can assist you with every phase of Amazon AWS migration and troubleshooting including requirements analysis, readiness evaluation, architectural design, testing, deployment, centralized administration, performance optimization, software license management, disaster recovery mechanisms, and security. Progent offers advanced expertise with firewall configuration and VPN connections and can show you how to deploy cloud-based or hybrid ecosystems that seamlessly integrate Amazon AWS cloud services. Progent can provide occasional consulting or Progent can deliver comprehensive project management outsourcing or co-sourcing to help you move smoothly to the Amazon AWS cloud platform.

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is a library of APIs that allows Amazon sellers to improve the efficiency of their business processes by automating crucial sales functions including listings, orders, shipments, fulfillment, and finances. By tapping into Amazon's vast online selling environment and automating their sales processes, vendors can expand their market, reduce their operating costs, accelerate response time to customers, and add to their bottom line. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) consultants can work with your development team and provide application programming, workflow integration, project management support, and training to help you cut development time and expedite your ROI.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform integration experts offer affordable remote and onsite support to help businesses to migrate any part of their critical IT infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This can save time and hardware costs and allow access to Google's state-of-the-art machine learning technology. Progent can help your IT team with every phase of Google Cloud Platform integration including needs analysis, preparedness assessment, system design and review, testing, deployment, centralized administration, performance tuning, licensing management, backup/restore mechanisms, and security and compliance.