Microsoft

The Golden Rules for Archive Storage With Microsoft Office 365 Mail

October 29, 2015 by Graciela

cloudHQ is proud to announce support for Office 365 Mail.

Adding Microsoft Office 365 Mail to our list of supported applications means that you’ll now be able to share, replicate, and backup emails directly through cloudHQ.

The Golden Rules for Archive Storage:

Archive storage should be under your control.
- You should have direct access to your archive which is independent of the service that is archiving your data.
Archive should be stored in standard format which is not proprietary. In other words, your archive must not be in some proprietary format defined company that is doing your archive. For example, archives created by some other backup services are in proprietary format which can be read only thru that backup service. That is bad since that backup service might not be around when you need to access your archive.
Archive your files using a large cloud storage company, such as Amazon.

For companies who are not in the finance or banking industry, you could also consider cloud storage options to include Dropbox or Google Drive; especially if your company is already set up on one of those services. Check with your legal team about regulations for companies in your industry.

2 Major Benefits:

Archive your company’s Microsoft Office 365 Mail to your backup storage location in a way that’s compliant with SEC 17 a-f(4) and with CFTC 1.31(b)-(c) regulations.
- The benefit of doing this is to ensure that e-discovery is accessible and that no emails will ever get lost.
Save all your company’s Email attachments to a dedicated folder in your backup file system like MS Sharepoint or Dropbox, instead of having them disorganized and located throughout your employees’ inboxes.

These features are configurable for everyone in your organization with just a few clicks. We’ll take a closer look at why you should archive all your emails and separate your email attachments.

Scenario 1:
Staying Compliant with SEC 17 a-f(4) and CFTC 1.31(b)-(c) Regulations

If you work in the finance industry, your company is probably required by law to keep your electronic files “preserved exclusively in a non-rewritable and non-erasable format.” That includes your email.

If your company uses Microsoft Office 365 Mail, you can now use cloudHQ to automatically archive all your emails in a way that’s compliant with these regulations.

To stay compliant, we recommend Amazon’s S3 service in combination with Amazon Glacier to host your email archive. Together, S3 and Glacier provide a cloud storage solution that’s reliable and accessible.
You could also use cloud storage provided by small backup companies such as Backupify. However, we caution against storing your long-retention archives that is provided by a smaller company instead of one that is more secure like Amazon.

Smaller companies might go out of business. It’s the truth. Startups often get acquired, leaving customers unsure of what the future will hold regarding a small company’s service, and your data storage it claims to safeguard.
It’s important that storage for your long-retention archive be under your direct control, not owned or managed by the same company which is actually performing your backup. And, most importantly, your long-retention archive should be managed by an established cloud storage company, such as Amazon. Amazon cloud storage will be available for years to come; and additionally, you know the they are passed the risk of being acquired.

Scenario 2: Saving Your Email Attachments

How many hours have you spent digging through old emails trying to find attachments?
Instead of trying to remember who sent the email or what the subject line of the email was, cloudHQ lets you create a filesystem folder to automatically collect any attachment you receive in your Office 365 Mail.
This way, all your attachments will easily be available in one easy-to-find folder inside your OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or SharePoint account.
This can be set up individually, or your system administrator can set up a folder for each user in your company with just a few clicks.

New Office 365 Features Coming Soon

We have dazzling new features coming out for Office 365 Mail users! Stay tuned to be able to:

Automatically sync an Office 365 Mail folder with a folder in any cloud storage (OneDrive, Google Drive, SharePoint, Dropbox, Egnyte, etc.).
Share an Office 365 Mail folder with anyone in the world (not just inside your company).

Whether you need to stay compliant with government regulations, or you just want to find email attachments when you need them, our new Office 365 Mail sync service is the perfect solution.

Get Started Today

Photo used under Creative Commons from GotCredit

How To Increase Sales Performance by Integrating Salesforce and SharePoint

October 21, 2015 by Graciela

Ever worked in a company where the sales team wasn’t on the same page with everyone else? It happens more often than we’d like to admit.

Salespeople are trying to win business, close deals, and meet their numbers. When they want something, they want it NOW.

Marketing, contracting, documentation, IT, and other support departments, are trying to meet everyone’s needs; not just those of an individual salesperson with a big presentation tomorrow morning.

Depending on demand, sometimes teams aren’t as responsive to their sales department which leaves a double edged sword to swallow: salespeople are left feeling like they have to “do everything on their own,” while other teams are left feeling like their salespeople don’t value their work contribution to the overall sales process.

SharePoint + Salesforce: A Simple Way to Improve Communication Between Sales and Everyone Else

Salesforce.com and SharePoint are two of the most widely-used cloud platforms in the world.

If your sales team is on Salesforce, and the rest of your company uses SharePoint as a central document management system, connecting the two can solve a very common problem at many companies: keeping your salespeople armed with the correct, most up-to-date marketing materials and documents.

By connecting your Salesforce account with SharePoint’s, you give salespeople 2 things:

Easy access to your company’s central documentation database, and
The ability to access those documents without ever leaving the Salesforce platform.

On top of that, you, your marketing team, and your documentation team will gain the ability to know which assets the sales team finds most valuable based on how often documents get used. On the flip side, you’ll also see which assets never get used at all; giving you the opportunity to make revisions or communicate better with your sales team about what those documents are for and when they can be valuable.

How to Integrate Salesforce and SharePoint

Here’s an overview of the steps you’ll need to take to connect your Salesforce and SharePoint accounts:

Step 1: Set Up Lists in SharePoint

To link Salesforce to SharePoint, you first need to set be familiar with the lists feature in SharePoint.

The Microsoft SharePoint site has a comprehensive tutorial, but a simple way to think of lists is as “spreadsheets for SharePoint.” By organizing company documents in SharePoint lists, they can be easily found by your sales team from within Salesforce. We’ll show you how.

2. Connect SharePoint to Salesforce

Using cloudHQ, set up a 2-way sync between your SharePoint and Salesforce accounts.

3. In Salesforce, Check to See if You Can See SharePoint Files

In Salesforce, go to “Files.” You should now be able to see links to all the documents you currently have in SharePoint.

The 4 major benefits of integrating Salesforce and SharePoint this way are:

When salespeople click “open” on a document from within Salesforce, they’ll be automatically taken to the document in SharePoint. No extra login is required.
If your sales team attaches a document from this list to a lead or an account, they’ll always have the correct, most up-to-date version of the document.
No one from Marketing or other support groups has to log into Salesforce to make this happen.
No one from Sales has to log into SharePoint to search for files.

Scenario and Workflow

Let’s take a look at how this might work in an actual scenario:

Your marketing and support teams have collaborated to create a document called ademco_vista40.pdf. You’ve loaded the document into your SharePoint list.

A few weeks later, one of your salespeople is working on a deal with a company that’s interested in the Ademco Vista 40 product.

In many companies, your sales rep would send an email to marketing or support to request “whatever documentation you have on Ademco Vista 40.” Or, s/he would simply search is own computer for documentation, which may or may not be up-to-date.

But because you’ve synced your Salesforce and SharePoint accounts, your salesperson simply searches the files directly from within Salesforce. There s/he finds a link to the PDF your marketing team uploaded a few weeks earlier.

S/he attaches this document to the Account in Salesforce, adding a note about the customer’s interest in the product.

Later, leadership from Sales and the other departments can review reports about who on the sales team used, accessed, or attached each document to an account.

That will give upper management deep insight into which documents the sales team finds useful (so they can create more like them), and which ones they don’t find useful (so they can change those documents or stop creating them).

Conclusion

Improving communication and workflow between your sales team and the rest of your company can go a long way toward improving the overall profitability of your company.

The more your salespeople can focus on selling instead of on trying to find documents, the better your company’s profits will be.

Integrating Salesforce and SharePoint is just one way cloudHQ can improve collaboration and productivity in your organization. Sign up to learn more.

Get Started Now

Photo used under Creative Commons from International Information Program (IIP)

Simplify Your Sharing

August 5, 2015 by Graciela

The Interwebs of Contractor Collaboration: How to Keep It Together

A lot of startups and SMBs are hiring external contractors who have large files to deliver, but contractors face 2 major hurdles:

Sending or receiving large files
(downloading 1G file over a 4G connection will take close to 2 hours):
Once you’ve sent a folder to a client, they can’t rename your file, they can see your (often) personal email address if it’s linked to your Dropbox account, and if you delete the folder after having shared it with your client, your client might reapproach you months later asking for it again.
Anonymity:
Contractors who use their personal Google accounts for their work often find themselves on a slippery professional slope. If you use you Gmail account that shows your name@gmail.com account, you’ll look unprofessional, and if you share any large folders via Dropbox or Google Drive, you’ll easily find that your clients will see your account name- again, it’s often a personal account. The questions begs to be asked: How do you achieve professionalism and yet still provide the work to your clients?

Unique to cloudHQ, you can now send folders directly from within your Google Drive, and you will be able to also ping your employer, teammate, or client automatically when you’re finished your job. They’ll get an email notification to get snapshot of the folder you sent, along with the date and time. Once you’ve shared it, you can add to it or delete it, but your client will always have access to the initial file you sent. This is great because they can rename the folder, they don’t need to download or upload anything, and you’ll have time stamped proof in your archives that you delivered the work.

By sending your folder via cloudHQ, you can send your work in a static format from your Google Drive folder directly to the client while protecting your account privacy. Your clients don’t need to use Google Drive to get your folder either; they’ll receive your document via cloudHQ and will be prompted to access it in any of their cloud services like Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. The current issue with other sharing services, like Dropbox for example, is that you can only share it with read/write access, which is a further security risk if you only want your clients to be able to read your work- not to be able to edit it.

You’ll also be able to “Request a file” from your client in case you need more material in order to complete your job. Your client or teammate will be prompted to include the material that you need in order for you to properly finish your job. (i.e. supporting documents, image specifications, etc).

Click on the “Get Early Access” button below. This is a simple and organized way to work with Odesk, Elance, and UpWork contractors, as well as to let team members in your company know when you’ve completed your section of the task.

Get Early Access

How Companies With a Mobile Workforce Can Still Thrive

July 29, 2015 by Naomi Assaraf

How companies with mobile workforce use cloudHQ

The rise of a mobile workforce is showing no signs of slowing down. The BYOD movement (“bring your own device” movement) is a direct result of employers hiring mobile workforces. With over 96 million mobile workers, and numbers expecting to topple 105 million by 2020, the benefits of mobile productivity is far too great to ignore.

3 Major Challenges Companies Face With Mobile Employees

Mobile use enhances productivity and efficiency in the workplace, but there are still a few challenges that have yet to be resolved. Storage issues, slow or faulty wireless data connections, and apps that don’t play well with others, are just some of the issues currently affecting mobile employee efficiency.

Storage: One of the main challenges of mobile devices is that there is no large storage file system. When you need to upload or download large files, mobile is not only an inefficient solution, but it’s generally hard to view documents on smaller screens.
Connection: Mobile employees that travel will often bump into limited connectivity issues.
Applications: Extensions and plugins that work with desktop programs such as chrome extensions for Gmail, FireFox plugins, and Salesforce extensions, are typically unavailable for mobile. Many that are available for mobile have basic functional issues, especially when it comes to integrating with other apps.

Last week, we heard this story:

“A few months ago, I had just boarded a plane when my tech partner finally sent me an important presentation that I needed to send over to my (impatient) client. I knew that my internet connection on the plane would be sketchy at best, but I also knew how much I really needed my team to vet it and make all the necessary branding adjustments before I sent it over to my client. Unfortunately, my connection was so poor, that it didn’t even send to my team. I even thought of uploading it to our team’s shared Dropbox folder, but even that didn’t go through, and I wound up losing the deal to a competitor.”

– Stefan Frank, Bionomie Cosmetics

What Stefan experienced is an inefficient technology infrastructure. We don’t believe that anyone should ever have to go through that again.

The Solution? Cloud App Synchronization.

The reliable solution to consider is cloud app integration to protect your cloud and enhance collaboration.

There are 4 major benefits:

Storage:Storage may be an issue on mobile, but in the cloud, you don’t have to worry about it. By creating a sync between two cloud apps, you can send and receive large files using mobile without using up storage on your mobile device.
Connection:While you will need a stable connection to upload a file directly from a mobile device, a cloud app sync eliminates this need. Automatically sync your emails, complete with attachments, to the cloud app of your choice – Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. By using permissions, your team members can automatically have access to the files, and you can concentrate on boarding your plane instead of dealing with an unreliable internet connection.
Mobile User Interface: Most extensions and plugins are unavailable or faulty on mobile. However, using a cloud app sync allows all of your extensions and plugins to work as intended, whether you are operating a mobile device or desktop PC.
Collaboration:Collaborators that are using different cloud apps can still work together efficinetly on the same file at the same time with a cloud app sync. For instance, if one collaborator is using Google Drive, and another is using Dropbox, they can both work on the same file simultaneously.

That’s the magic of cloudHQ, the most reliable cloud app sync service on the market today.

How Does It Work?

There are three important features that help companies maintain an effective email solution:

Organization of emails
Saving emails to shared folders
Evernote/OneNote integration with email

There is one simple solution to all three features: cloudHQ.

Now all emails and attachments will be available to every authorized team member who needs access to them. No more forwarding emails or stressing over uploading large files with an inadequate internet connection. cloudHQ is the middle man, working tirelessly in the cloud so that you don’t have to.

Get Started Now
Want to give it a try? Check out cloudHQ for FREE with a fully-functional trial.

How To Integrate Google Apps with Dropbox for Business In 5 Easy Steps

July 9, 2015 by Graciela

5 Invaluable Benefits of Integrating Google with Dropbox.

Ever wonder why top companies like EMC, JC Penney, and Gartner integrate all their cloud apps?

Here are the top 5 reasons to consider implementing a cloud platform integration:

Sharing: When a folder is shared in Dropbox, it’s automatically shared with a group from within Google Apps or/and Microsoft Office365.
Formatting: Imagine automatically having a cloud format converter that can convert document formats to be delivered as though it was natively created in the platform from which you access it. For example: A Dropbox for Business document can be viewed and edited in Google’s native formats (Drive, Sheets, and Slides).
Integration: All comments on any documents are replicated between Google Docs and Dropbox.
Collaboration: Revisions to any files are immediately updated in real-time to other platforms, to provide the ultimate collaboration experience across cloud apps. Everything is always up to date regardless of where you access the file.
Make it easy to find your documents: Gmail users can automatically save their email attachments to Dropbox, Google Drive, or even MS Office365, and use their reliable search feature to immediately have access to their documents, rather than having to manually search through all their email attachments- especially where there are multiple versions of these attachments.

How to Integrate Google Apps with Dropbox for Business in Seconds

Just follow these 5 simple steps, and you’ll be up and running.

First, head to the installation wizard which will guide you step-by-step through this process.
Click on “Install cloudHQ for Google Apps”.
Sign into Google Apps.
Connect Dropbox for Business by signing in as the administrator.
Setup Your Integration: Just choose which users you want to enable a Google Drive and Dropbox integration, and you’re done!

Why Google? Google Apps is feature-rich and affordable.

Google Apps is one of the most popular cloud computing solutions for businesses, with over 5 million business users, including 60% of all Fortune 500 companies. The Google Apps suite includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Hangouts, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Sites, and Google+. All of these services are available through the $5-per-month basic Google Apps subscription. With millions of satisfied users, what is it about Google Apps that is so attractive to businesses?

Google Apps’ 4 major benefits

Company domain email on a large-scale via Gmail.
Google Calendar, keeping all meetings synchronized company-wide.
Google Contacts, where all company contacts are integrated between Google services.
Google Drive as an effective storage solution combined with an entire suite of office tools that has the ability to create, edit, store, and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms.

Why Dropbox for Business?

Because Google Apps also has 4 major downfalls:

Google Apps simply isn’t as versatile as the mighty mix of Dropbox & MS Office365.

Collaboration: Not everyone you work with uses Google Apps. Many employees, contractors, clients, and partners use different cloud storage services; the main one being Dropbox as their preferred storage solution.
Sharing: First, Dropbox has no file size limit, so you can share files of any size. However, Google Apps does have a very high file-size limit of 5 TBs, so large file sharing shouldn’t be a problem with either service. The largest differences are how they sync and share files.
Spreadsheets: Many businesses use Microsoft Office, and there is no way to avoid the fact that even if you use Google Apps, you will come across Microsoft Office files on occasion, possibly on a daily basis. Google Apps does integrate with Microsoft Office files, but Dropbox has a better integration system with spreadsheets created in Microsoft Office, so many contractors, partners, and clients that are working with Office spreadsheets choose Dropbox over Google Drive for this reason.
Storage Quota and How it Affects Speed: When you upload a file to Dropbox or Google Drive, it’s stored on servers. If you revise a large file, Dropbox only syncs the chunks of the file that were actually changed. Google Drive re-uploads the entire revised file. When you’re dealing with large-sized files in the terabytes range, this can be a huge difference in speed and bandwidth. The file sync process utilized by Dropbox can actually improve speed up to 10 times faster. One other notable stat – Dropbox and Google Drive both keep copies of your versions (original and revised copies of the file). However, Dropbox does not count these versions of the file against your storage quota, while Google Drive does.

Okay, so Google Apps and Dropbox both sound great! What’s the problem?

They’re not integrated. You have two great services that many companies are using, and you’re stuck having to constantly and manually update the information between them. As an example, let’s say your client is using Google Apps, your contractor is using Dropbox, and you’re stuck in the middle trying to figure out how to collaborate and share files between all three companies. You need to access files on Google Apps from your client, but you also have to access files on Dropbox from your contractor. What a dilemma!

Let’s say that Ann shares a legal draft of a document via Dropbox with John who uses Google Apps. John must download the file from Ann, then upload it to Google Apps before he can edit it. But what happens when Ann realized that she needs to make some changes to the document, and does so, but in Dropbox. John will never receive the revised copy, so he’ll never have the updated version of it. The result: two team members who have DIFFERENT copies of a legal company document. Obviously, you can see how this can easily become a very pricey mistake down the line.

Why cloudHQ?

Because we easily integrate Google Apps, MS Office365, Dropbox for Business, and more to achieve:

Easy sharing
Native formatting across cloud apps and platforms
Cross-Platform Integration
Easy Team Collaboration
A Simple Way to Find All Your Documents

Get Started Now

Integrate Evernote with Google Apps And Simply Business Workflow

July 2, 2015 by Naomi Assaraf

Evernote never stops trying to make everyone’s life easier. With over 100 million users, Evernote wants to be the home of things you need to remember.

That’s great for Evernote users, but what about Microsoft OneNote users, Google Docs, or Slack users? Sure, each have different features, but they’re all trying to be the home of our cloud-based memory. Some integration is possible, but there’s a limit to how many online accounts people will use. Interestingly, 85% of smartphone users use apps, but only 5 apps experience heavy traffic.

Digital Overload

Even for work, hyper-connected professionals are reluctant to use additional online services. This can cause problems if different teams, freelancers, contractors, and clients are all using different services, isolated behind numerous walled platforms. The one exception is Google Apps for Business, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Here’s A Simple Guide to Sync Your Google Apps for Work with Other Apps To Increase Your Productivity

We need a new solution for our workplace of fragmented platforms; of which is seemingly inevitable. Luckily, cloudHQ makes it easy.

7-Step Guide

Login to cloudHQ
If you’re an IT admin, select the multiple user set up and follow the wizard.
If you’re just looking to sync your personal cloud services, just select the single user setup. From there, follow the wizard in selecting which apps you want to have in a folder within your Google Drive.
Select Evernote, Slack, and any other services you want to sync to Google Drive
Go through the authentication for each cloud app you want synched with your Google Drive
If you want to sync a folder in your Google Docs or a Gmail label with or anyone else; like external freelancers, teammates, clients, etc., you could share your folder with them. This way, as they update that folder in their clouds, you’ll be able to see their work, and they’ll see yours in real-time. No email attachments necessary… just check your Google Drive folder and collaborate like a team!
And you’re done!

Instead of multiple conversations, documents and attachments bouncing around different platforms, resulting in some teammates not having access to all the information they need – everything is centrally consolidated. Making decisions is easier when data can be accessed by all stakeholders.

Lead your team, and keep it tight with cloudHQ.

Get Started Need help? Just ask us!

How to Use Microsoft OneNote With Dropbox and Salesforce

May 21, 2015 by Graciela

Microsoft OneNote is one of the most useful tools in Microsoft’s growing suite of cloud services. Conveniently, with cloudHQ, you can easily sync it with other cloud-based services, which is a great way to get more done quicker because these days it can feel like no one has enough time.

Here are our top tips for 3 of the most essential cloud services in any businesses’ tool kits:

1. OneNote + Dropbox for Business

Within OneNote is Office Lens, which is a great new way to photograph documents, whiteboards, and business cards.

Take a picture with OneNote, which has a built in lens equipped to help the app extract data from documents.
OneNote automatically converts business cards into a digital format, which makes it easier when trying to remember that guys name from that networking event the other week.
Next, save the file directly to Dropbox.
You can also set up a sharing link with Dropbox and email that to colleagues who may also need the contact information you’ve just collected.

Pro Tip: Reach out to Dropbox on Twitter if you have any difficulties sharing or saving files from OneNote (they respond quicker than via other channels).

2. OneNote + Salesforce

Nearly one year Microsoft and Salesforce announced a strategic partnership, which is one reason behind the recent acquisition rumors. Whether Salesforce joins the Microsoft family or not, these integrations across multiple services are hugely beneficial for SMB’s & Enterprise customers.

This integration was across all key platforms (Windows, Office 365, OneDrive), enabling Salesforce and Microsoft customers to be more productive, more easily. Many Salesforce staff were using OneNote as soon as it came out, with many calling for an easy integration that never arrived.

With cloudHQ, you can sync all of this data directly, allowing you to use OneNote within Salesforce, rather than switching between the two apps.

Book an appointment with a Cloud Infrastructure Expert now:

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Top 7 Microsoft SharePoint Tips

April 29, 2015 by Graciela

Not long after Microsoft SharePoint was launched, it was described as “the next must-have technology” for businesses, with press releases and articles claiming it was “one of the fastest-growing products” in the company’s forty-year history.

Microsoft is known for shipping billion-dollar products, with SharePoint being one of those. In 2014, Jared Spataro, general manager of SharePoint announced that they achieved “double-digit growth for each of the last 18 quarters,” which ensured they hit $1 billion in revenue “faster than any other Microsoft product,” according to TechRepublic.

Very impressive.

Analysts are impressed, with Forrester saying that “Microsoft probably [has] more net new growth opportunity sitting in front of them than probably anyone in the market,” with an emphasis on SharePoint and Azure, an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud service.

Top 7 Tips to Increase Productivity with Microsoft SharePoint

For businesses, SharePoint is a swiss army knife, but increasing productivity means knowing your way around. Here are a few ways you can get the most from SharePoint.

1. Make Your Salesforce Reports Available in Sharepoint’s Team Site

Get everyone on the same page. When you sync your Salesforce reports in real-time to Sharepoint, you can give your entire team the knowledge of what’s going on with your business, so that they know where they need to hustle most.

This is a great starting point for any morning standing meetings, and a practice that is invaluable to all teams. Depending on the report you choose to share, it should look similar to this:

2. Project Management: Contractors, Dropbox, and Sharepoint

Office 365 Sharepoint is an excellent system for complex project management. The great thing regarding SharePoint is that you can create a Project Site, a feature-rich project planning tool so that all project related work (schedule, documents, designs, etc.) are in one place, where you can easily collaborate with teammates, and plan your project execution.

The problem with using it: Most complex projects usually involve clients, independent contractors, or any other team members who might using different cloud applications, depending on what their project role is. Without a systematic way to get outside platform work into your Sharepoint Project Site, you’re usually left with the Project Manager having to manually sift through documents, files, designs, in order to download them to his/her computer and then upload them to the correct Sharepoint Project Site. Since Adobe Photoshop files can be multiple hundreds of megabytes in size, very soon, most people experience the project site becoming out of sync, and the Project Site becomes useless. This is a frustrating process. Here’s our life hack:

Since designers are probably using Dropbox, you do the following:

Create a Dropbox account
Tell your contractors / designers to share their work via Dropbox with your account
Sync your Dropbox account to your Sharepoint Project Site
Done! Everything will always stay up to date and you’ll save hours of work. And best of all, there will be no more painful manual uploading of files into your Project Site.

3. Uploading a lot of files: 2 Simple Options

Until Microsoft fully replaces Internet Explorer, probably with “Project Spartan”, a good way to upload a lot of files is to open a document library within a web browser. Explorer is ideally suited for this task.
The best way to upload a lot of files, especially if you don’t want to use Project Spartan, is to use Evernote or OneNote and have that sync’ed with your Sharepoint account via cloudHQ. The process is quick and painless, and you only need to set it up once for a continuous sync so that you can always have up to date notes, regardless of which app you want to use at that moment in time.

4. Maintain Inbox Zero, with Yammer

In 2012, Microsoft wanted to strengthen their enterprise services with Yammer, a “social network” for businesses, which they bought for $1.2 billion. Whether you are working with colleagues, either in the office, remotely or with clients, this is a great way to keep emails to a minimum and get more done.

Getting everyone who needs to be connected in (including those outside your organization) a Yammer Group saves time, which is more convenient with the SharePoint integration.

5. Create Alerts

Sometimes you want or need to know what’s happening with a project, especially if you aren’t in the office. Conveniently SharePoint has an Alert Me button in virtually every content area, which means you can receive emails or texts whenever changes are made to you document.

This can be customized so that you receive alerts either for every change, daily or weekly. You can also disable this feature once you are ready to disengage from a project.

6. Seamlessly Integrate With Excel

Microsoft Excel is one of those multi-purpose workhorses most of us couldn’t cope without. One way to take its usefulness to a new level is integrated with SharePoint, which can be done fairly easily. Providing you are using Excel 2010, or a newer version, you can click Import Spreadsheet from the Site Actions menu, which opens your spreadsheet in SharePoint. You can also import any number of cells, and then share with others as needed.

Saving the spreadsheet in OneDrive will give you a cloud-based backup, which will make collaboration easier, because you can then just share the spreadsheet and the person who receives your sharing link, and they can just open it in their preferred platform.

7. Create a Master Calendar

One of the most difficult things about working as a team is ensuring everyone’s schedules synch up to ensure key tasks are delivered on time and decisions happen quickly. SharePoint makes it possible to combine up to 10 calendars into one, making it easier for you to find time for meetings and other collaborative activities. This can be a bit tricky, so here are the steps:

Go to the Calendar tab
Click Calendars Overlay
Then click the New Calendar link
Next, give SharePoint the URL, name and description of the calendar
Click OK
Repeat for all the additional calendars you want to add
Once you are done all of them will be combined into one Master Calendar, which you can share with your team, boss or clients.

SharePoint has some impressive functionality. Whether you are an existing customer or thinking about using it, there is a lot you can do. Here’s a visual walkthrough for some of the features and cheats discussed in this article.

Ultimately, whatever your cloud infrastructure goals are, we’re here to provide your business with secure file collaboration, consolidation, and backup with Microsoft Cloud products, such as SharePoint or OneNote, as well as others like Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox.

Book an appointment with a Cloud Infrastructure Expert now:

Talk to a Cloud Expert

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Cloud Migration: Risk Vs. Value

February 3, 2013 by Dizdar Senad

More and more companies are realizing the value of the cloud and that the move to the cloud is inevitable. A study by McKinsey & Company estimated that by the year 2015, corporations will spend over $70 Billion per year on cloud services. Large corporations have a tough enough time migrating to the cloud, as they must change their infrastructure to deal with a high number of employees. For small businesses, this can also be a challenge to change the entire IT strategy, even with a lower number of employees. Once the decision has been made, both corporations and small businesses must determine exactly how they will migrate to the cloud, as well as weigh the value and the associated risks with such a move.

The cloud migration

Different industries will face different challenges in the move to the cloud. Migrating a large corporation requires strict regulation of data transfer and storage. For small businesses, the changes will be less severe, and will mainly deal with changes to the infrastructure. Most forms of communication between employees of small companies include using Microsoft Office and emailing documents or using USB drives to transfer large files. One of the top reasons companies in this situation migrate to the cloud is so they can have a whole new world of file transfer, storage and sharing opportunities at their disposal. Dropbox, Box and Google Drive are just a few of the cloud services that will complete company projects quicker and more efficiently. Files can be transferred to multiple recipients just by dropping the files into a shared folder. No more dealing with insecure email transfers and USB drives that can be lost or stolen.

The first step is deciding which type of cloud service the company will be moving to. There is public, private or hybrid cloud to choose from. Public is the most common as it is the most manageable and cost-effective option. Private cloud is better regulated and offers more control, but it can be an expensive task to build and maintain. A hybrid of private and public is the solution for companies that need strong regulations and control for some content but also has a need for public cloud.

Risk Vs. Value

When you are making preparations to move your company to the cloud, there are several important things you should know and understand. You need to do an assessment to understand the value and how to minimize the risks.

The cloud value includes: scalability (during company growth or downsizing), organizational flexibility, minimizing infrastructure and labor costs, less restrictions on capacity, and increased implementation speed to decrease or eliminate the lag between IT and business.

The associated risks include breaches in security, accidental or malicious data loss and problems (such as file corruption/data loss) of an unknown cause.

Companies that manage their own infrastructure face these risks. So the question must be asked- who is more capable of a fast reaction if any of these events were to occur? Companies lower their risk by this determination- will it be the IT department or an independent, professional third-party vendor such as cloudHQ?

Data Protection, replication and secure backup with cloudHQ

Storing and managing data in SaaS applications can be a risk if not properly regulated and secured. Many IT departments do not go far enough to ensure that all data is securely backed up to protect data against unauthorized access and deletion, accidental deletion, application malfunction, or user error. This is where cloudHQ can come in and take over. CloudHQ provides a secure backup of all data, replicates all data between various cloud services (Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, Basecamp, Box, etc.) and provides quick and simple restoration of all data if a problem causing data loss were to occur.

CloudHQ makes it easy to centralize all company data- such as all Evernote notes and all Google Drive documents to one central account for easy accessibility. The replication between cloud services eliminates delays in case a server goes down- for instance if you are working in Google Drive and the servers go down, you can continue working on the same documents in any of the other cloud services that cloudHQ has continuously replicated data to. The backup protection is where cloudHQ can really save you money- if a file is accidentally deleted, maliciously deleted, or corrupted or lost; cloudHQ makes it easy to restore the file from another cloud service.

A company’s move to the cloud has enough challenges and cloudHQ reduces the number of these challenges by providing complete peace of mind that all data being transferred to the cloud is secure and backed up. It also makes project management easier, as the same documents and files can simultaneously be created, revised and edited by multiple users on a variety of different cloud platforms.

Weigh the pros and cons; the value and the risks; and determine what the best course of action for your company will be. With cloudHQ backing you up with their superior backup, replication and data protection, you can be sure of a highly successful move to the cloud.

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