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At Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta a range of announcements were made around Office 365 Groups.  We have grouped some of our favorites below. What are Microsoft 365 Groups? When to use Microsoft 365 Groups Yammer and Office 365 Groups

How to make recurring Microsoft Teams meetings more productive The dreaded recurring meeting, 30-45 minutes of your day that are blocked out in your diary. While useful if managed well they can also be a huge time sink and productivity loss. Often people Turn up late Don’t turn up at all Give apologies at the last minute Don’t come prepared or present an update that could be an email or chat With the rise of virtual remote meetings, there is an opportunity to look at recurring meetings differently and use the collaboration features in Microsoft Teams. Usually, recurring meetings are owned by one person and scheduled from their calendar. This means Recordings are saved to the meeting owners' OneDrive and can only be edited by them Adding people needs to be done by the owner Any chat during the meeting takes place as a chat, not a channel conversation People may get chat alerts when the meeting is on even if they have not joined it An alternative is to schedule a meeting in a Teams channel. This means the meeting takes place in a shared location that all attendees have access to. It also introduces a collaborative space for conversations before and after the meeting, along with an easy way to introduce other collaborative Teams features like Planner, and Whiteboard Key differences when scheduling in a channel are: Recording always goes back into the Teams channel ie the SharePoint folder so everyone has access Conversations don’t pop up while the meeting is on when you are not in the meeting (unless you are @ mentioned) Anyone who has access to the channel can view the recording and the conversations, even people that have joined the Team after the meeting took place. A great way for people to get up to speed. Key benefits of this approach are: Makes it easier for people to comment before the meeting, i.e. I can’t make it today but here is my update. The conversation can continue after the meeting in the Teams channel Any supporting documents are in the channel file folder. Some tips about this approach: Guests i.e., people outside your organisation can be invited but they don’t see the chat or files unless they are a member of the team. You need to schedule a channel meeting from Teams, you can’t do this in Outlook The meeting invite is sent from the Team, so has the Team name and email address If you want to have the invite in the participant's calendar you need to include them in the invite list as individuals, not a distribution list. Anyone who is a member of the Team can join the meeting, even if they were not specifically invited. Try it today! For your next team meeting try scheduling it in a channel and give it a go to experience the difference! To learn more about Teams meetings check out the Ripped Orange Mastering Meetings course. #MicrosoftTeams #MicrosoftTeamsChannel #MicrosoftTeamMeeting

Since Xero announced that Workflow Max is being retired in June 2024, we have been busy researching and evaluating options. After narrowing down a list of over 100, we have chosen the following to recommend, support and implement. Workflow Max 2 - By Bluerock - Available early 2024 Work Guru - Great for business that sell time and items e.g. manufacturers. Project Works - Great for professional services firms Next Minute - Ideal for the construction industry Total Synergy - Good option for architects or engineers These products are great options to replace Workflow Max when you are ready. They are also run by great teams, that we are confident will support us and our clients well. Announcing Workflow Max Office Hours There is a lot to learn and decide over the next year, we are launching free monthly Workflow Max office hours. These short sessions will focus on what you need to know as you plan your move. Our first session will cover what you need to consider when choosing a new system and the steps involved in moving. Recent Articles Exporting your data out of Workflow Max When workflow Max is retired in June 2024 your data will also be deleted. While exact detail has not yet been provided, here are a few options to consider if you are moving to a new system now. Workflow Max Retirement - What are your choices? The retirement of Workflow Max retirement means lots of business have to decide what to do with a system that they have used for years. Stay Updated If you or others on your team would like to be updated with options: Visit our Workflow Max Update Hub Register for updates here Join our discussion group Book a call to discuss your options

Today we ran our first Workflow Max Office Hours. This was an opportunity to learn about the changes coming as Workflow Max is retired. This will be a regular monthly session; you can book in for the next one below If you were not able to attend you can view the recording below.

When workflow Max is retired in June 2024 your access to your data will be changed. While exact detail has not yet been provided, here are a few options to consider if you are moving to a new system now. Moving to new system Most systems have a way of importing data, this may be an uploaded report, or a customised upload from the Workflow Max Export. Some have also built an automated link to extract Workflow Max data. What data should you export from Workflow Max? Just link moving to a new house you potentially don't need to move everything across. At a minimum think about transferring your list of clients, contacts and past and current jobs. Your accounting system will have a list of invoices for you to refer back to. What do you need to keep? Even though you may have transferred information to your new job management system you may want access to more details on past jobs. It's likely you won't be able to or want to import all this data into your new system. There are a few options to dump data from Workflow Max. You can explore these here. However.. this will give you a rather unstructured dump of data that may be hard to search. Export Documents from Workflow Max Workflow Max connects to Google Drive and Dropbox, allowing you to store data in these file storage options and view from within Workflow Max. When you connect either tool to WFM it will suck all the documents out of WFM and put them in a tidy file structure. You can leave them there or download or move them your existing file structure. Watch a demonstration of this here (start at 6 minutes in) Export Time Sheets and more from Workflow Max There are some reporting tools (our favourite is Synchub) that allow you to connect and sync data out of Workflow Max. With a little effort you can also build a simple report in Excel or Power Bi. This could be a great option to export all your data and save it to Excel or Power BI in a structured format. Want to discuss your options? Book a no obligation call with the Ripped Orange team.

The retirement of Workflow Max retirement means lots of business have to decide what to do with a system that they have used for years. The following poll and suggestions is designed to help you provide a structure to make a good decision. frame up your thoughts, you can also book a free call to review your optiosn in more detail. What's happening to Workflow Max and when is it entering retirement ? Workflow Max will stop working at the end of June 2024. Before then you need to decide on a new option and move or save any data you want to keep. There will be a new Workflow Max (WFM2) that will be available for review in December 2023. The developers of this have committed to the same pricing and features as Workflow Max has now. Should I wait to evaluate WFM2? WFM2 will be built on a new modern platform with the ability grow and have future development. Something that was not possible with Workflow Max. If Workflow Max works well for you at the moment and you think it provides good value then waiting to evaluate WFM2 could be a good option. How much more will I need to pay? Workflow Max was great value and had a tiered pricing model when most SAS software has a per user model. This means it was incredibly good value for firms with more than 20 people. Most new system are on a per user per month basis and are around $30 - $60 per user per month. Some systems also have a minimum number of users ranging from 5-10 users. There is a sweet spot in the 10-15 staff area where the additional marginal cost is not a large total cost allowing you to access some great functionality. Any good software should be able to demonstrate a return on the investment made, but for firms with more than 20 staff it will be a step up in investment. What features do other systems have? One of the strengths of Workflow Max was it's ability to flex to suit a variety of businesses. At a high level it supported businesses that either sold time or manufactured things and charged for time and items. You can read more about this here . This wide approach meant that it did not specialise in certain process flows or industries. Key features that other systems bring include: For services business Easier resource scheduling Multi-currency options CRM Capabilities Forecasting abilities Industry specific options Leave management Capacity Planning For manufacturing business Smoother purchase order process More flexibility to manage quotes Inventory management Shared login or kiosk for factories Modern Architecture Workflow Max was built over ten year ago, newer ways of developing open software mean connections are easier to link to other systems. Newer systems will provide out of the box interfaces to Power BI Reporting Zapier to generate automations Integrations to CRM Systesm Integrations to task systems like Asana, Dev Ops etc Integrations to cloud file systems like SharePoint / Drop Box. WFM2 is running an ideas list that you can contribute to here What now? If Workflow Max is not cutting it and you answered yes to the questions above then book a no obligation chat with the Ripped Orange team to discuss your options.

The WorkflowMax login screen will be changing on  Monday 22 January 2018. We wanted to share this information with you early so you can prepare for these changes. Key points: If you are using “remember me” in your browser to login this will not work.   If you have forgotten your password, you will need to request a new one from https://my.workflowmax.com/public/forgottenpassword.aspx your admin user can not reset or let you know what your password is. The remember me function will no longer work, so you may want to consider a password program like Lastpass. The login screen will say “powered by Xero”  Note that this does not mean you need a Xero Subscription or can login to WFM with your Xero login. What do you need to do? If you have a saved bookmark for your Workflow Max login page, replace it with the URL of the new page so it is easy to return to. Logout of your account and log back in. Remember or reset your login email and password so you won’t have any issues come 22 Jan. Keep an eye on the WorkflowMax blog to stay up to date. Read this post about online security best practice.

March was a big month for WFM with Xero announcing that Workflow Max will be retired in June 2024. You can read the full announcement from Xero here: Ripped Orange have partnered with Workflow Max for almost ten years and it's sad to see the product being retired. We will also really miss working with the WFM team. Our initial thoughts and suggestions are here There will be a variety of good options to choose from, and we are reviewing these at the moment and will have updates on your options later this month. If you want to discuss your options, please book a free call with the team below. Stay Updated If you or others on your team would like to be updated with options: Register for updates here Join our discussion group

Spring usually means lot's of new product announcements from Microsoft before the northern hemisphere summer break. Some large announcements in March that interested us were: New Microsoft Teams Application Microsoft Teams has been completely rebuilt and a new version released that will run in parallel with the current version for a period of time. The new version promises to be faster and use less battery and performance on your computer that will be great. It will also be quicker and easier to switch between different organisations. You can read the full announcement from Microsoft here Should you switch now? Probably not. Trial the new experience with a few people, there is some good guidance here on what is and is not available in the new Teams. Key areas that are missing are support for Mac, search and files, expect these to arrive soon. Microsoft 365 Copilot This is ChatGPT but for Microsoft Office. Allowing you in time to "ask copilot" to create documents, presentations etc for you. This will be very interesting and exciting but also opens up lots of questions on how to manage and use it. You can read more about the announcement from Microsoft here

OneDrive is the shared name for Microsoft’s personal cloud storage space.  There are two types, OneDrive for your personal data and OneDrive for Business for work documents that your work or school can control. OneDrive also provides the ability to access and store documents on your computer, phone or tablet using the OneDrive App or OneDrive Synchronisation Client. When it’s working well the Sync client picks up your latest changes and sends a copy to the cloud. Confusingly there have been two versions of the Sync Client, one for personal and one for business users. The business one has been phased out as it was not working as well.  Instead, the personal sync client has been updated to work with both types of sync clients. Team Orange has been testing the new version, and it works well, but it is still early in the development cycle, and not as mature as competitive tools like DropBox or Google Drive.  This is still the first release, and there is a lot more to come, so use caution if upgrading now. You can read more about the new “Next Gen” Sync Client - Improve your OneDrive sync experience #OneDrive #OneDriveforBusiness #SyncingOneDrive

At Ripped Orange we train on many applications, we also use the tools we train and many more on a daily basis. Here is a quick overview of some of the applications we use daily. For some applications it’s a bit like a builder's house that is never finished, for others we are really happy and have the application adding real value. File Sharing SharePoint Dropbox Google Drive SkyDrive Social Media Hootsuite Facebook Twitter Linkedin Blogger Office Applications Office 365 Word Excel Access PowerPoint OneNote Google Apps Project Visio Financials Xero Workflow Max Marketing and CRM Microsoft CRM – 2011 Mail Chimp Survey Monkey Eventbrite Google Analytics Google Add Words Communications Linc Skype 2 Talk Last Pass Outlook Gmail The challenge we have is similar to many organisations. How to evaluate what is available and what will suit our needs. For some tools, this is easy for others there are a variety of comparisons and trade-offs to be made. #Officetools #whatsoftwaretouse

Mobile phones have come a long way from the brick phones of a decade ago.  The smart phone now has more computing power than your average 5 year old desktop computer. The challenge many of us face is finding useful things to do with a smartphone that goes beyond texting, calling and taking photos. There are millions of apps to choose from across the Apple, Andriod and Windows 8 Store. Many are useless but there are a few gems. Many smartphones also include apps and there are a variety of map applications that will do a great job of pinpointing where you are and where you want to go.  While these are not as accurate as the GPS in your harvester they are close.  Google maps is the standout but Nokia, Bing (Microsoft) and Apple all have good maps. This brings you to the question of which is the best phone Apple Google or Windows?  That’s a bit like asking who your favorite child is. Each have their benefits and offer a full solution, however they work best when you stick with one flavor, ie Apple and iCloud, Microsoft Phone and Office 365 and Google and Google Apps. One of the biggest challenges with smartphones is actually having a connection so you can do something smart with them. This is a challenge in many areas of New Zealand.  However it is getting better and there are numerous solutions to either boost up your coverage or even provide a Wi-Fi network across the farm. So how do you get smart with your smart phone?   Here are some of our favorite apps: Maps and Navigation Google, Apple and Microsoft all have good map apps, which allow you to save a map offline allowing you to read the map when you are offline or download the map in via Wi-Fi.   The satellite view is also great, while you can’t check the crop with it, it’s a cheap way to get an aerial view. Sharing maps is also a good way to direct a contractor to exactly where you want them to spread that fert. Find my friends This is a great way to see where your friends, family or staff are and track or be alerted when they move.  It’s a bit of a big brother approach and possibly not ideal for tracking your prize bull but it does give you a view to where everyone is iCloud, Dropbox and Skydrive and Drive (Google) All these cloud based storage options allow you to store a copy of important documents, photos etc on your device first and then synchronize them when you are able to use a faster and cheaper internet connection. Next month we will cover the most popular use of mobile phones social media #Ios #Mobile