Archive for category: Cloud Connect

Tips & Tricks:

In Outlook for iOS, it’s now possible to convert an email message directly into a calendar event! Simply select the message in Outlook, select the ellipses at the top right of the message and hit ”Schedule”!

Question of the Month:

“Is Microsoft backing up any of my data? I thought that was the whole purpose of moving into Office 365!”

While Office 365 has its own protections in place to make it hard to accidentally delete data, ultimately the protections that Microsoft puts in place is to ensure that they are not responsible for any data loss while your data is residing on their infrastructure. While this is an improvement for your data in terms of redundancy and safety of your corporate data compared to hosting your own Exchange Server, Microsoft is very quick to point out if any data loss is a result of accidental (or purposeful) deletion by a user or external factors such as malware or phishing attempts.

Microsoft will not help beyond what protections they have in place in a crisis. For example, if important emails are deleted from the “Deleted Items” folder in OWA or Outlook, Microsoft will politely explain that there’s nothing further they can do, those emails are gone forever! It’s the same with OneDrive and SharePoint – in cases that Microsoft isn’t directly responsible for the data loss, the data is gone forever!

IOTAP has a myriad of solutions to back up and better protect your data in Office 365.

Webinar Spotlight:
On January 16^th, at 11 AM (EST) and on January 17^th, at 11:30 AM (IST), we will be holding an Office 365 webinar for you, our most valuable clients! The purpose of this webinar will be to discuss security best practices in Office 365 as well as the various ways that IOTAP can secure your data. We’ll be covering:

• Multi-Factor Authentication (Included in Office 365!)
• Best Practices for Office 365 Admins
• Options for Sharepoint, OneDrive and Exchange Online backup options.
• And more!

Register for the Upcoming Office 365 Webinar!

For Eastern Standard Time – Office 365 Webinar
For Indian Standard Time – Office 365 Webinar

Tips & Tricks :

We’ve covered Microsoft Dictate in previous CloudConnect Newsletters. At the time, it was a piece of software that had to be installed from a separate site, and it was built under Microsoft’s “Garage” brand – meaning that it was experimental and while Microsoft knew they liked the idea, it wasn’t quite ready for a generalized release. 

Question of the Month :

Office 2019 is out?! But it’s still 2018! How do I get the latest apps?! 

Any new Office App installation downloaded from the portal will include the newest versions of the apps. Microsoft has updated the official instructions to indicate that Office 2019 is here. For anyone with an existing installation, hang tight! IOTAP doesn’t recommend uninstalling your existing applications for the sake of getting the new Office suite.

When you uninstall the Office 2016 suite, all your preferences and settings will be uninstalled as well. For example, you’ll have to go back into Outlook and set up your profile and mailbox again, ugh! Instead, the new apps will come as an update to your existing suite in the coming weeks. By updating this way, your settings and preferences will remain intact!

Product Spotlight :

Considering a growing number of questions and popularity of SharePoint among our user base, we’ve decided to extend a special offer for our partners who have Business Premium Office 365 licenses or better.

We can now offer a fully-built SharePoint Intranet Suite for your place of work for $1 per user per month. This is an 80% discount that will only be in place until the end of the year – so please reach out and let us build your intranet for you before it goes away!

Product Spotlight :

We’re proud to announce that due to our ever-better relationship with Microsoft, we’ve been granted a (singular) Azure Cloud Consult! We’d love to use this opportunity to sit with you, our chosen customer, and go over your existing environment and see how we can use Azure to save you money and optimize business processes.

Microsoft is holding us to a deadline of August 30th to get this scheduled, so don’t delay! This consult will be scheduled on a first come, first served basis.

Question of the Month :

• I got a notification from Microsoft that they’re adding anti-spoofing protections. I want this protection; how do I get it?

No actions required. Just wait until September 1st! In the past, this was a feature that was reserved for organizations with Office 365 Enterprise E5 licenses. Microsoft has now chosen to extend this coverage for organizations with Business Premium licenses or better.

After this change takes place, your organization will have access to enhanced anti-spoofing functionality that utilizes cloud intelligence, sender reputation plus patterns to identify potentially malicious domain spoofing attempts. The new functionality works in conjunction with existing standards-based email authentication checks (DMARC/DKIM/SPF). Once this feature is enabled, messages that fail our extended implicit authentication checks will be automatically sent to the junk mail folder. You can use policies to customize these actions and turn this functionality on and off.

We are also updating the Get/Set-PhishFilterPolicy cmdlet to allow you to block/allow domains that can send spoofed emails, as well as the Get/Set-AntiphishPolicy cmdlet to let you modify the policies applied to spoofed messages. After the cmdlet changes, we will also roll out policy options in the Security and Compliance Center.

If you have domain ‘allow’ or ‘safe’ sender policies or transport rules in place, they will not be impacted.

Policy options for these changes will be available after September 1. We’ll begin rolling this out and will be enforcing changes after September 21, 2018. We anticipate rollout completion in the following weeks.

• What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

If you wish to disable enhanced anti-spoofing functionality, you will need to set policies before September 21, 2018. After September 21, we will begin rolling this feature out worldwide and will enforce the available settings.

To access settings and make changes you’ll need to use Get/set-Antiphishpolicy PowerShell cmdlets (after September 1). The same will also be possible via the Security and Compliance Center (under Threat Management->Policy->Anti-Phishing) once those changes are rolled out for EOP.

• None of what you said makes sense! I just want to be protected from spoofing! Can you help me make sure I’m set up when the time comes?

Of course! Just reach out to us at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to get you protected against spoofing.

Tips & Tricks: After a brief hiatus in late 2017, Microsoft FindTime has made its return to full-functionality, now as a part of your Desktop Outlook client! Originally FindTime was created as an experiment by Microsoft for Outlook Web Access. After such a great response in the test, Microsoft has released a full-fledged add-on for Outlook on your Desktop! […]

Hello, to our most Wonderful Clients! We find that there’s a lot of interest – and a lot of misconceptions – about Microsoft Teams in our IOTAP family these days. Thus, we’ve decided to devote this month’s Cloud Connect Newsletter to answering questions about Microsoft Teams and if anyone is on the fence, [email protected] I’m worried […]