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March 14, 2022 In Managed IT Services, Office 365 By admin

Microsoft Teams Gets Optimizations To Use Less Resources

Do you use Microsoft Teams and do you have an older PC that struggles with Teams video meetings?  If so there’s good news.  Microsoft has recently upgraded Teams and halved the power used by Teams video meetings to make life easier on people with older hardware.

Of course, even if you’ve got newer hardware this is still very good news because odds are excellent that the video meeting that you’re participating in isn’t the only thing you’re doing on your PC. Anything that Microsoft can do to make Teams less resource-intensive means you’ll have more resources for other uses.

Robert Aichner is a program manager at Microsoft Research.

Aichner had this to say about the recent improvements:

“We’re committed to ensuring great calling and meeting experiences for users on low-end hardware as well as those on high-end workstations and high-resolution monitors.

One of the factors we’ve addressed is the difference in power requirements for different customer profiles by ensuring Teams meetings are as energy-efficient as possible, regardless of setup.”

Video meetings rely on three power-intensive processes:  Capture, encoding and rendering.

Again, per Aichner:

“Isolating and optimizing each of these processes enabled us to reduce power consumption up to 50% for energy-intensive scenarios such as having over 10 users in a meeting when everyone has their video turned on.

A simple 3×3 video grid once required nine distinct rendering operations. By combining the streams and composing them into a single video, we have been able to consolidate operations in video rendering and significantly reduce the power requirements for each device used.”

The company made major improvements by redesigning how Teams handles grid videos with multiple participants.

Microsoft has stiff competition in the arena where Teams is operating, and there are several viable alternatives, which is why Microsoft is spending so much time and applying significant resources to the task of continually improving Teams.

So far it is working.  Microsoft Teams is a great productivity tool, and these changes just make it better!

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March 10, 2022 In Managed IT Services, Office 365, Our Blogs By admin

Microsoft Rolls Out New Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center Capabilities

The pandemic has expedited cloud migration timelines, and IT administrators have had to accomplish gargantuan tasks in record time, such as moving workflows to the cloud, securing company devices, and ensuring 24/7 data access. As the cloud becomes an increasingly pivotal part of business operations, Microsoft continues to improve the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center by adding new features that will make data management easier.

OneDrive sync health

With the OneDrive sync health feature, maintaining data integrity is easier than ever. IT admins can now readily check for sync statuses or errors by going to the OneDrive sync health dashboard and generating reports for specific administrative purposes. From the dashboard, admins can generate insights ranging from executive summaries to specific sync statuses of given devices, enabling them to filter the information they need so they can take action immediately in case they find sync issues.

Intelligent insights

Intelligent insights include features like Apps Inventory, Add-In Inventory, and Security Currency that allow IT, administrators, to strategically find and mitigate any issues. With these tools, they can gain an in-depth understanding of the organization’s Microsoft 365 environment and be privy to information such as:

  • What devices are running Office apps and which versions they’re running;
  • What Office add-ins are installed or running; and
  • Which servicing channel each device belongs to.

Knowing all this information can help administrators identify and manage unsupported Office versions and add-ins to ensure security and compliance.

Servicing automation with controls

This feature streamlines and automates Microsoft 365 Apps servicing to eliminate manual deployment and accelerate the rollout of updates and security patches. With this new feature, IT admins only need to apply a specific servicing profile to a set of devices to automatically deliver monthly updates for users or groups.

Admins can also specify exclusion date periods, or when Office apps updates should not run, such as during holidays or company meetings. They can schedule these dates to happen only once or regularly, depending on their organization’s schedule.

Servicing profiles: Rollback to a previous version

For businesses that use a servicing profile, admins can now roll back devices to the previous version if users encounter issues with the most recent version of the Monthly Enterprise Channel. For instance, if there’s an issue in Outlook’s latest update that hampers employee productivity, your IT team can revert Outlook to the previous stable version.

IT administrators can also view, pause, and resume updates on a per-device basis. If a user experiences issues during rollout, for instance, administrators can pause that user’s update and restore their software to a previous version while an IT personnel troubleshoots the issue.

Microsoft 365 Apps health

Microsoft 365 Apps health calculates an organization’s overall app health based on three criteria: app reliability, app performance, and supported versions. It also gives pertinent information such as Office app session crash rates and who reported such crashes, making it easier to identify issues and see how well Microsoft 365 apps are running during and in between deployments.

With these new features, administrators can better manage Microsoft 365 apps, and users can count on better experiences and fewer downtimes. If you want to learn more about how technology can increase your business’s operational efficiency, call us. Our IT experts are always ready to help.

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March 9, 2022 In Managed IT Services By admin

Companies Need to Keep Their Vendors’ Security In Mind

Data breaches have a tendency to destabilize relationships. With so many data-related problems befalling businesses nowadays, it is important that each side of every data-driven relationship understands its role in the protection of other organizations’ data. Today, we’ll take a look at the issue and how to determine if your partners are putting in the effort required to keep your data secure. 

Are Your Vendors Properly Protecting Your Information?

We’ve seen businesses have a litany of challenges protecting their sensitive data over the past several years, and as threats get more sophisticated it poses more problems. Additionally, many businesses outsource a fair amount of their operational and support efforts, which can negatively affect their security.

So, how do you know that your vendors are protecting your information?

You ask them, of course. 

Before you onboard any new vendor, you should come up with a questionnaire that asks the right questions about how they handle their own cybersecurity, and more specifically (and importantly) how they go about handling your information. 

At Net Activity, we do this for all of our clients to ensure that they are partnering with reliable companies that, at the very least, are attempting to do the right things to protect sensitive information. 

Questions You Should Ask Your Vendors

The first thing you should consider when making up some questions to ask your vendors about security is: do you understand the answers? If you don’t know what you are doing, you could just assume any thoughtfully answered response would be sufficient. This is far from true and is a liability, especially in trying to ascertain what risk your business is facing by doing business with a company. We can’t stress enough that if you don’t have someone that knows what they are doing, you need to find someone, as this will serve you much better in times like this.

Let’s go through a couple of important questions you should ask if you do have the competence available to sufficiently measure risk from the answers:

  • Do you collect, store, or transmit personally identifiable information (PII)?
  • If so, do you store your PII onsite or in the cloud?
  • How do you provide users access to the PII you store?
  • Can PII be accessed remotely?
  • Do you constantly monitor all services, systems, and networks?
  • What regulatory bodies does your business operate under? Do you have proof of compliance?
  • What kind of encryption do you use for data-at-rest? Data-in-transit?
  • Do you consistently patch your software? 
  • Do you have mobile device management and IoT management systems?
  • Do you utilize legacy systems that aren’t supported by manufacturers?
  • What cybersecurity tools do you use?
  • Do you have language in your agreements about vendor cybersecurity? 
  • How are your continuity systems?
  • How would you go about the situation in the event of a data breach?
  • What authentication procedures do you use? 
  • Do you train your employees on the best practices of cybersecurity?

 

There are many more questions you can ask, and you should ask them if you find them necessary. Vetting your vendors is a great way to know if they have your best interests in mind. 

If you would like to partner with a company that not only has your best interests in mind but also can help you ascertain if your other partners do as well, give Net Activity a call today.

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March 7, 2022 In Managed IT Services By admin

How Do Hardware Shortages Affect Business Decisions?

How often over the past year or two have you gone to replace a device on your infrastructure, only to find that the price has increased or the device simply isn’t available? This is an issue with the current hardware shortage, particularly for business electronics. Since businesses depend on technology, it becomes critical that you understand how this shortage impacts your day-to-day operations.

 

As you are probably aware, there is a hardware shortage out there for computing devices due to a component shortage. This shortage stems from semiconductors, and it’s bleeding into every facet of device creation, from manufacturing to acquisition. Naturally, this creates issues for businesses that need to invest in new hardware for their employees. Here are just a few of the ways this shortage has impacted businesses like yours.

Price Point

As the costs of components increase, so do the costs of the devices they are a part of. This is an unfortunate side effect of the costs of manufacturing increasing, and the consumers ultimately pay more for devices. This can also impact the costs associated with services offered by providers, as they need to purchase and maintain equipment to manage these services.

Timeline for Acquisition

With hardware being in short supply, you can expect the acquisition of any new devices to take a bit longer than usual—particularly if you are looking for something very specific. We recommend that you build out a hardware acquisition timeline so that you know when and how often you need to perform hardware refreshes on your infrastructure.

It Makes Upkeep Even More Important

Finally, since devices are more expensive and harder to come by, you should understand that the upkeep of your current hardware infrastructure is even more important than before. If something critical fails within your infrastructure and you are unable to immediately replace it due to shortages, what happens? Be sure to take care of what you currently have so that you can get as much value out of it as possible before it kicks the bucket.

We recommend that you work with us, or another quality IT provider to ensure that your hardware needs are met within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We have the connections and working relationships with vendors and know the most reliable ways to get you the technology resources you need to succeed. Plus, it’s always better to have someone else do the legwork for you so you can avoid the frustrations that come from devices simply not being available when you need them most.

To get started, reach out to us at 216-503-5150.

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