Cloud Integration Expertise

Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is Microsoft's growing line of client productivity software and cloud services available on a subscription basis. Microsoft 365 applications and cloud services are offered in a selection of product bundles, called subscription plans, aimed at customers ranging from individual and households to global corporations.

The most popular Microsoft 365 applications can be run on a variety of devices including Windows PCs, Apple Macs, tablets, and iPhones and Android smartphones. These multi-device applications include versions of Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook. PC-only applications include Access and Microsoft Publisher. To accommodate individuals with multiple computing devices, many bundles allow you to run Microsoft 365 applications on several devices. As an example, Microsoft 365 Business and ProPlus bundles allow every Office app to be run on up to five customer devices.

Progent can provide quick and affordable online access to a support consultant with expert knowledge of Microsoft, Mac, iOS, and Google Android software. Progent can help you to understand the many packages offered with Microsoft 365 and integrate your information system with Microsoft 365 in a way that delivers maximum business value. Progent can help you manage cross-platform networks that incorporate Windows, Apple macOS or OS X, and Linux based products. Progent can also help you to implement and manage hybrid networks that transparently integrate local and cloud-based infrastructure.

Microsoft 365 Applications and Cloud-based Services
Microsoft 365 plans are available to serve a broad range of users such as businesses of all sizes, education, state and local government, and home. Some plans, like Microsoft 365 Business Essentials, includes no applications but only cloud services. Other plans, such as Microsoft 365 Business, offers applications but only the OneDrive cloud service. The high-end Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5 plan includes seven apps and seven cloud services. Progent's consultants can assist you to pick an Microsoft 365 plan that makes sense for your situation, assist you to move from older versions of Office applications, and help you streamline the management of Microsoft 365 and other network resources to create an efficient, secure and reliable IT environment.

Popular Microsoft 365 Applications
The most obvious difference between Microsoft 365 apps and their related Microsoft Office releases is that Microsoft 365 applications are subscription based instead of sold. In addition, traditionally licensed Office apps are allowed to be run on only a single PC or Mac at a time and are not updated automatically or upgraded at no extra cost when a major version comes out. As an example, upgrading from Office Word 2013 to Word 2019 requires you to purchase a new copy of Word. Incremental updates to Office apps are provided Microsoft 365 subscribers faster than to users of permanently licensed editions. Also, Office suites bought with a permanent license do not include the Azure-based services that are included with Microsoft 365.

Client applications available with different Microsoft 365 subscription plans include:

Microsoft 365 Word includes the ability to write and review Office files across Microsoft Windows, Android, Apple Mac, and iOS devices while maintaining a consistent look and feel. Users can also co-author Office documents, see which team members are working on shared projects, and observe updates made by others in real time. As with Microsoft 365 Excel and Microsoft 365 PowerPoint, you can easily share from within your documents. In addition, you can check who has rights to view or edit a specific document and who is currently working on the document. For your own documents, you can easily change edit rights. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Word consulting expertise.

Microsoft 365 Excel permits you to use the powerful Exponential Smoothing algorithm to build forecast charts for projecting future trends based on historical data. New data types that are tied to remote databases include Stock and Geography. Stock retrieves the latest stock price, change in price, and other equities information. The Geography data type enables you to designate a country and retrieve specified demographic or economic data such as population or gas costs. As with Microsoft 365 Word and PowerPoint, Microsoft 365 Excel also supports Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images. These images can be rotated, colored, and scaled instantly without any deterioration in image quality. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Excel consulting and training expertise.

Microsoft 365 PowerPoint lets you work with 3D models and provides an expanded selection of animation effects like jumping and rotating. As with Office Excel and Office Word, Microsoft 365 PowerPoint allows you to transform sketches 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. PowerPoint's Media Browser offers easy access to a broad range of media sources such as iPhoto galleries, iTunes playlists, and iMovie libraries as well as standard shapes, Clip Art, and other graphics.

Microsoft 365 Outlook offers important improvements to previous versions of the Outlook email client app by introducing features like the focused Inbox, transparent downloading of OneDrive cloud attachments, display replies to a meeting request for people other than meeting organizers, streamlined email sorting, plus easier group creation and calendar sharing. In addition, Microsoft 365 Outlook users can have their messages read aloud while the sections being read are visibly highlighted. Office intelligent services, when enabled, allows Microsoft 365 Outlook clients to dictate emails. Microsoft 365 Outlook for Mac now supports push email, online archiving, the ability to propose an alternative meeting time in answer to a meeting request, and multiple calendar display. Full Screen Mode permits multiple open messages and enables subscribers to run two Outlook instances in split-screen view. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Outlook and Outlook on the web consulting and training expertise.

Microsoft 365 OneNote for Windows 10 is included in most Microsoft 365 packages, pre-installed in Windows 10, and offered for download as a no-cost mobile application. The older OneNote 2016 release, which includes features not at first available in OneNote for Windows 10 such as Record Video, is still available at no cost but is not being updated with new features. OneNote for Windows 10 introduces a new configurable look common across Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Android, and Web. Other features available exclusively on OneNote for Windows 10 include enhanced ink-to-text, an alert center that indicates changes in your open and recently used notebooks, automatic transformation of drawings into standardized shapes, and a virtual ruler to create straight lines and measure distance.

Microsoft 365 Access, available exclusively on Windows PCs, enables you to utilize Visual Basic for Applications and an extensive set of templates to streamline business operations and create advanced forms and management reports. Microsoft 365 Access comes with the connector library to extract data from a wide selection of popular business applications and data sources for generating quality reports from within the time-tested Access interface. Support for storing Access data in both Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL gives you a world-class database plus SQL syntax for Access apps hosted either on premises or in the Azure cloud. Microsoft Access 365 now includes an improved Linked Table Manager, allows you to add a wealth of new forms and management reports, and permits you to link or extract data from Salesforce and Dynamics 365. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Access consulting services.

Microsoft 365 Publisher, available only on PCs, is a leading user-friendly desktop publishing system that leverages the familiar Office interface to deliver an intuitive platform for creating and sharing modern-looking publications like fliers and white papers that require precise object placement. Since publications can be saved to the cloud, you can deliver a document as easily as providing a link. Publisher's wide use and simplicity allow you to meet deadlines for time-critical jobs without needing rely on the availability of a desktop publishing expert for making eleventh-hour changes.

Microsoft 365 Cloud Services
Microsoft 365 cloud services enable organizations to take advantage of Microsoft's extensive cloud resources to host mission-critical servers like Microsoft Exchange, Teams and Skype for Business. This provides high levels of reliability and security while reducing the significant upfront expense and management effort required for deploying and supporting robust on-premises datacenters. For cases that require some systems to be kept onsite for regulatory compliance, performance, or other reasons, the majority of Microsoft 365 virtual server platforms can be deployed with hybrid architectures that seamlessly support local and cloud-based infrastructure.

Microsoft 365 Exchange Online provides email hosting and supports mailbox capacity from 50 GB to unlimited. Important features include custom domain addresses (name@​your�company​.com), shared calendars and address books, a web version of Outlook, one-click archiving, and simple-to-create collaboration groups. The web-accessible Exchange admin center lets you manage email settings for your company and gives you full control over critical areas such as permissions, security and compliance, mail flow, creating mailboxes and imposing limits, team work, address books, Voice mail, monitoring, and backup. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration and management expertise.

Microsoft 365 OneDrive is Microsoft's popular file sync and sharing platform. Microsoft 365 packages usually come with 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage, enabling you to save, retrieve, and share files across Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac, or iOS and Android devices. By transparently synchronizing your files to your workstation, OneDrive allows you to edit documents even when you are offline. OneDrive simplifies sharing and collaboration, keeping track all changes to help prevent consistency issues. You can start a co-authoring project on any device and move seamlessly to another computer at any time. For advanced collaboration, a variety of utilities permit you to notate and highlight shared documents. Powerful search tools help you to locate files quickly, and analysis tools offer useful information such as the number of people who viewed or shared a file.

Microsoft 365 Skype for Business Online provides cloud-hosted IP voice, HD video, and conferencing. Skype's Online Plan 1 includes IM, real-time presence, peer-to-peer VoIP, and HD video, plus federation and directory search. Online Plan 2 includes scheduled and on-demand conferencing with A/V calling plus screen and application sharing on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, PCs, and Mac computers. For hybrid networks that combine an on-premises Skype for Business Server with Skype for Business Online services, you can create a seamless solution via a Split Domain deployment. Find out about Progent's Microsoft 365 Skype for Business solution design and configuration expertise.

Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online integrates content management with intranet publishing to enable businesses to broadcast and share knowledge and to promote collaboration. SharePoint's admin center now includes usage analysis, Message Center updates, and a Service Health dashboard designed to simplify administrative tasks. Also, you are able to link up-to-date SharePoint team sites to Microsoft 365 Groups, expanding SharePoint sites with group conversations, calendar, and project planning. Innovative capabilities to support cloud coexistence 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. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online integration and development expertise.

Microsoft Teams is the successor of Skype for Business, offering a single portal for meetings, contacts, and information with persistent threaded chat, file sharing, and integrated voice and video conferencing. Microsoft has enhanced the cloud architecture supporting Teams to provide faster conference join times than Skype and to allow integration with Microsoft Cognitive Services such as text-to-voice, language translation, speech recognition, and AI. Progent can help you to try out Microsoft 365 Teams to evaluate the advantages of deploying this next-generation communication technology. Learn about Progent's Microsoft Teams migration services.

Microsoft 365 Yammer is a social network platform intended to be used inside an enterprise and limited to users with an authorized corporate email address. Postings can include files, links, videos, PowerPoint shows, and SharePoint pages. The Discovery connection helps you find information relevant to your job or concerns as indicated by the groups you belong to, conversations you participate in, and people you interact with. You can locate conversations, files, interest groups, followers, and other items associated with a given co-worker. Group Insights inform you how activities such as posting, reading, and liking are trending historically. Notifications inform you about relevant events such as new postings in your groups, comments in your conversations, and new followers.

Microsoft 365 Power BI is a set of online services integrated with Microsoft 365 that enables businesses to create sharable dashboards and on-demand reports that offer real-time consolidated views into vital facets of your business. Microsoft 365 Power BI dashboards can aggregate data from multiple internal and external repositories such as Microsoft Excel, on-premises SQL Server Analysis Service, the Azure cloud, or popular databases like QuickBooks, Google Analytics and Salesforce. Dashboards and reports created by Power BI can be refreshed in real time via data streaming. You can save and distribute your visualizations in the cloud with Microsoft 365 OneDrive. Native Power BI mobile applications are offered for Windows computers plus Apple iOS and Google Android smartphones. Learn about Progent's Microsoft 365 Power BI Online design and development expertise.

How Progent's Cloud Experts Can Assist Your Business with Microsoft 365 Integration
For businesses who need quick online access to a top-tier Microsoft 365 configuration expert, Progent offers a full sele3ction of support services such as solution design, deployment, troubleshooting, software development, administration, and education. Progent's Microsoft-qualified support consultants, Cisco-certified network infrastructure experts, macOS and OS X technology support professionals, iOS technology integration experts and Android experts can help you to integrate your network with Microsoft 365 applications and services.

ProSight Remote Management and Monitoring Services
Progent offers a family of budget-friendly, fixed-price managed services designed to allow small and medium-size businesses to benefit from the same best-of-breed technology used by some of the world's top enterprises. Progent's ProSight series of network monitoring and management services covers all key aspects of modern networking including email content filtering, behavioral-based threat defense, cloud-based backup and disaster recovery, infrastructure monitoring and management, VM cloud hosting, and network asset documentation management. Learn more about Progent's remote management and monitoring (RMM) services.

Contact 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 Solutions from Progent
The choices offered for public cloud services are expanding continually, making it a serious challenge for information system managers to select the right cloud strategy for their organization. Progent has in-depth experience helping companies ranging from startups to large enterprises to plan, deploy, and maintain hybrid networks that integrate various cloud services from major public cloud providers. Progent's cloud integration experts can help you to understand the relative advantages and pitfalls of different public cloud offerings and can show you how to build a cloud-centric or hybrid ecosystem that provides maximum competitive value.

Public cloud products supported by Progent's consultants include:

Progent's Azure cloud planning and integration consultants can assist you with every phase of Azure cloud migration including requirements analysis, prerequisites evaluation, system architecture, pilot testing, deployment, centralized administration, performance tuning, license management, disaster recovery strategies, security planning, and compliance assessment. Progent can assist you to configure and troubleshoot firewalls and VPN tunnels so your clients can securely access to Azure services, and Progent's Microsoft-certified consulting experts can assist you set up key Microsoft technologies to work in Azure including Windows Server, Exchange, SQL Server and Skype for Business. Progent can also help you to create a hybrid environment that seamlessly combines on-premises datacenters with Azure services.

Microsoft has made a strong effort to enable seamless hybrid ecosystems that combine Microsoft 365 and local Exchange deployments. This allows you to have specific mailboxes hosted on your on-premises datacenter or private cloud and other mailboxes resident on Microsoft 365. Progent's certified Exchange consultants can help your organization with any facet of planning, implementing and troubleshooting your hybrid Exchange solution. Progent's Exchange consultants can deliver as-needed support to help you resolve challenging technical bottlenecks and also can provide extensive project management outsourcing to ensure your hybrid Microsoft 365/Exchange solution is carried out on time and within budget. For details about Progent's consulting support for hybrid Microsoft 365 Exchange and on-prem Exchange environments, refer to Microsoft 365 Exchange Online integration with on-premises Exchange.

Progent's Amazon AWS cloud planning and integration experts can provide affordable online consulting to assist companies to access Amazon AWS cloud services such as Amazon EC2 for virtual server hosting, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for expandable cloud storage, and Amazon Glacier for low-cost archival storage. Progent can assist you with every phase of Amazon AWS migration and troubleshooting including requirements analysis, readiness evaluation, architectural design, pilot testing, deployment, administration, performance tuning, licensing management, backup/restore mechanisms, and security strategies. Progent can provide advanced expertise with firewall configuration and VPN connections and can show you how to create all-cloud or hybrid ecosystems that seamlessly incorporate Amazon AWS cloud services. Progent can provide as-needed support or Progent can provide comprehensive project management outsourcing to help you move efficiently to the Amazon AWS cloud 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 crucial sales activities such as listings, orders, payments, fulfillment, and reports. By leveraging Amazon's extensive online ecosystem and automating their sales processes, merchants can expand their market, lower their operating costs, improve response time to customers, and add to their profits. Progent's Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) consultants can work with your development team and provide programming, workflow integration, project management support, and mentoring so you can cut development time and speed up your return on investment.

Progent's Google Cloud Platform planning and integration consultants offer cost-effective remote and onsite consulting to assist businesses of any size to migrate all or part of their core IT infrastructure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This can save time and hardware costs and allow the use of Google's state-of-the-art AI and machine learning tools. Progent can help you with every phase of Google Cloud Platform migration and troubleshooting including needs analysis, preparedness assessment, system design, testing, deployment, administration, performance tuning, software license management, backup/restore mechanisms, and security.