The Best Things About Office 365
One of the biggest benefits of using Office 365 is the flexibility to work on it from any location where you can connect to the internet. As it’s completely cloud-based, you can access business emails, Office Programs, and files from any location or device connected to the internet. The desktop-only version of Office can be installed on up to 5 devices per user. These features are highly useful for companies that work with remote employees and operate from multiple locations.

Easy Collaboration
The collaboration features of Office 365 are great, especially when you work in teams. It offers you the flexibility of enabling multiple users to edit and contribute to the same document. They can work on the same version in real-time than working on multiple versions that are later required to be combined.

The program also offers direct access to your files instead of sending them as attachments. Hence, people will now be able to make changes to a single file instead of saving their changes and creating multiple copies of the same file. It also comes with a versioning feature that lets you go back and check older versions.

Gives Access To Latest Versions of Programs
Office 365 offers you access to the latest versions of Office at no extra charge. It provides the latest and the best features without the need of uninstalling or reinstalling Office on every machine. Additionally, Microsoft provides constant upgrades to features across programs and gives access to all its users.

Customized Plans
Office 365 gives you an option to select plans where each includes different features and programs. As each individual in a company doesn’t need the same thing, you have the flexibility of mixing and matching plans. Hence you will not need to pay extra for services that you won’t be using. Switching from one plan to the other is also easy if you think you need to add more features to what you have already subscribed for.

Subscription-Based Payment
Being a subscription-based service, you shell out lower amounts as a monthly fee per user. You won’t have to pay a large lump sum upfront for using Office 365 and its features.

Better Security
Security is a concern for Cloud-based applications but you will be happy to know that Office 365 comes with several advanced security measures. Encrypted business emails, data loss prevention, mobile device management, and advanced threat analysis are some of the numerous security benefits integrated with this program.

The Things You Might Not Like
Like everything comes with both benefits and flaws, Office 365 also has a few issues which we feel can trouble you while using it. Let’s discuss some of those.

Connectivity Is Essential
In case there is no connectivity, you might not be able to access work. Being a cloud-based service, the absence of an internet connection doesn’t allow you to access your files. In case you don’t have a reliable internet connection, this is not the best service for you.

Subscription Based
The subscription feature is both a benefit and a drawback for this service. It depends on your usage and budget. Many users would prefer spending a one-time payment to purchase Office 365 than spending a fixed subscription amount each year.

Compatibility Issues With Business Apps
Access to the latest Office programs also comes with compatibility issues with other programs. Office 365 supports accessing older versions of Office programs but it’s always important to check compatibility with the applications you use before you upgrade Office.

Takes Efforts To Stay Updated With Changing Features
The features of the service change frequently and although you have access to the best and latest version, it can be hard to keep up with lessor known programs like Yammer or Delve.

Most Users Use Only 20% Off All Features
Although it isn’t a con, but worth noting. Office 365 email services or Word apps are some of the commonly used services. However, there are several other features that Office 365 offers. But it is estimated only 20% of those features will be used by most users.

Cloud-based programs and apps are the current big thing in an environment where we are working from remote locations and collaborating more than ever. In case you are searching for a reliable service provider for seamlessly operating and manage your business email in Tampa, FL, contact IB Systems USA. The experienced team has been handling both big and small clients for the past several years.

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How many times have you received an email that was in all capital letters? When people see emails or texts written in all caps, they assume the person is yelling. Sometimes all capital emails occur because our finger accidentally pushes the caps lock button. And you may not and chances are if you look at your fingers while typing instead of the screen, you may not notice until you have a whole paragraph typed out. So you go back and erase everything you wrote to fix it. Not only is this wasting precious time you could use for something else, but you could easily forget to add something in your message if you are forced to erase it.

The good thing is that you can easily change this with a simple trick. Many are not aware of this email advice, so feel free to share it with all your co-workers. Simply hold down on the shift button after highlighting the text that needs to be changed to lower letters. Then click on F3. This will immediately make any capital text into lower case. It also works by changing lowercase to upper case. You may use this in Outlook, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft programs.

If you are a slow typer, one of the best email advice tidbits we can offer you is to speak it. This saves you much irritation when mistakes occur. No matter what device you use for your emails, you can simply speak and your email will be written. If you have a tablet or a smartphone, look for the small microphone symbol. Click on it, say what you wish to be written, and watch it appear on the screen. You will also need to say your punctuation, such as period, exclamation point, or comma. If you use this program, you will need to speak clearly and enunciate your words. You can talk fast if you wish, but just make sure you are understandable.

You can also speak on Windows using the Cortana assistant. If you use G-mail, you may wish to use one of the free Chrome browser extensions.

It is crucial to send emails at the right time. How many times have you received either an email or phone call and was turned off because it was the wrong time? Maybe you received a phone call from a telemarketer on a Sunday or were called after an acceptable hour at night. Chances are, you were not super happy, so you did not care about what the person on the other end was selling or talking about. The same goes for email. There are certain times of the day that are better to have your email read.

It can be a trick to figure out when to send an email. Some say right in the morning is most beneficial, but others say right before or right after lunch. Honestly, what works for one company may not work the best for another. Our email advice from Pure360, which is an email marketing firm, says that sending an email before 10 am is a good time. They also feel that between 2 and 3 in the afternoon works well, along with between 7 and10 pm.

If you will not be available to send emails at these times, you can always schedule your emails to be sent at the correct times. An example of this is that Outlook has an option to delay delivery by clicking options after composing a message, the tap on delay delivery. The final step is to tap on do not deliver before.

If you are still uncertain about what email advice to follow, consider contacting IB Systems USA. With a professional service on your side, you can be sure that your emails will be sent at the best times in the most professional manner possible.

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Google announced Gmail back in 2004 when their solution was offering just 1GB of storage space, not to mention that it was considered an April Fool’s Day joke, since it was released on April 1. As for Outlook, it’s basically a reinvented Hotmail, which is around ever since 1996. Eventually, Microsoft bought Hotmail the following year and rebranded it as MSN Hotmail, then Windows Live Hotmail. Finally, in 2013, they reached the final name: Outlook.

Ok, so we know their history, but in terms of features and offerings, which one is better?

Interface

From this point of view, both clients come with a clean interface, offering a couple of default colour themes. While Outlook borrows a few design characteristics from Windows’ UI style – also known as Metro – Gmail recently went through a redesign which improved the user experience, as it puts the accent on simplicity, allowing the users the concentrate more on emails.

Storage

As mentioned above, Gmail is now offering a lot more than in 2004. To be more specific, users have 15GB of free storage, but this also includes Google Drive. However, you can always buy additional storage, if you’re the type of users that get tons of emails per day. The size of the attachments is limited, to a maximum of 25MB.

As for Outlook, it offers the same amount of storage for each account, but until recently, it was unclear how much storage you get, depending on what other Microsoft products you are using. However, if you have an Office 365 subscription, you eventually get 1TB of storage.

Folders and labels

Gmail managed to differentiate itself from the competition, as it offered labels instead of folders. This allowed users to tag their messages using different labels, instead of moving emails from one place to another. However, emails are now organized into Primary, Social, Promotions and Updates tabs, saving you a lot of time.

Moving on to Outlook, it has a classic folder structure and uses categories instead of labels. You can put a message in multiple categories, while the client itself tags specific messages with categories accordingly. This feature is known as Quick View.

Extensions and integrations

As you would expect, Gmail can be easily integrated with Google Docs, so you can – for example – open up attachments in Google Apps, then save them to Drive. And this is not everything since there are a lot more third-party apps which can be integrated within Gmail, besides traditional ones, part of the Google ecosystem.

In Outlook’s case, there’s still a lot of work to do from this point of view. Still, the email client integrates perfectly with Office 365 apps, as well as OneDrive, not to mention the ability to easily access Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Online.

Despite the differences between the two clients, as well as their plus and minuses, we can’t exactly decide upon the best. Sure, a lot of people claim that Gmail is by far the best option, due to its seamless integration with Google services, but in the end, it’s just a matter of personal preferences.

If you have trouble deciding which of these two is the best for your business, IB Systems can provide the support needed. Backed by more than 20 years of experiences, a team of experts is always ready to give you the advice you need in your decision-making process.

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For those of you who aren’t familiar with Lotus Notes, it’s mainly an environment for messaging and app development, acquired by IBM for a then-record fee of $3 billion. In the meantime, the original Notes platform was rebranded as Domino, while the actual Notes name was kept for the client. However, as soon as Microsoft’s Outlook was introduced, the enthusiasm around Domino faded.

Back to the present days, there is a whole new roadmap now, promising to deliver a new version of Lotus Notes in 2018, as well as another one in 2019. As for the one we’re getting soon, it’s absolutely loaded with goodies!

Over the past weeks, the IBM staff toured across Asia, explaining crowds what they should expect from Domino 10, currently available as a closed Beta. And since you’re all looking forward to knowing when it will go live, IBM collaboration executive Mat Newman revealed that a second beta will be available by the end of July 2018.

Specifically, this beta will offer the possibility to test Domino (for Windows and Linux), the Notes client (for Windows and Mac), Notes, Designer and Admin clients (for Windows), Verse on Premises (for Windows and Linux) and, finally, the DominoDB NPM package for Node.js.

Obviously, the latter is the most important item, considering that one of the main reasons why Lotus Notes didn’t manage to “shine” was because the development environment was pretty much a silo. Therefore, integrating Node.js will transform it and give users the possibility to come up with more modern and portable apps.

But this is not everything…

Verse on Premises is another thing we’re looking forward to, as it’s considered IBM’s attempt at creating a new and sleek collaboration tool that relies on analytics to help discover the messages that need attention.

Besides this, we’re also waiting to see IBM’s multimedia and instant messaging collaboration tool, expected by Domino shops who just don’t want to be left behind by Slack or Microsoft Team users.

Finally, we should mention the fact that there are actually way more features to be launched with this new version, including tablet support, Docker images, as well as telemetry readable by New Relic. All these can take Lotus Notes to the same level as many other modern applications.

As for Domino 11, it’s expected to make its debut in 2019, promising to bring a low-code development environment, similar to what Oracle, Salesforce and ServiceNow are already doing.

IB Systems USA, Florida’s sole IBM Lotus Foundations business partner, will be among the first to make use of the new and improved platform. Providing consulting services in IBM Lotus Notes and Domino technology since 1994, they can provide all the help you need to integrate the new version into your business.

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Cloud email is slowly becoming the norm for some companies. It was a hesitation transition for most but the options and benefits of storage and function overcame the apprehension for the time being. It’s taken some big companies to reassure people’s faith in cloud email. First of all, far too many IT pros just couldn’t explain it well to the layperson and the layperson only wanted to know if it was secure and cheap. The developers realized that they had to explain the options better and not us so much geek tech talk. The IT pros had to realize they needed to assure each function of cloud email and not try to sell all the bells and whistles and then hit people with more money than they’re paying now to mange.

When corporations realized some of the benefits they finally bucked up and the field and practice are growing now. Time is usually the best indicator of the success of something and so far the cloud email format has proven itself durable, reliable, and secure. Companies are finding such are far easier to work with and it saves them considerable time, effort, and money.

The competitors saw the rise in efficiency and next they jumped on the bandwagon. The diversity of businesses using Office 365 and cloud email rose too. It’s the prime software for the office and busy business. What then happened is the developers were able to monitor and examine and analyze the data regarding the usage of these cloud email process. As that data came in, it allowed them to upgrade properly and enhance all features. This I making cloud email less expensive and without fear.

Next has come the troubleshooting. Different companies get different kinds of email demands. Knowing how to configure the cloud email to accommodate this took some time but it’s been refined and gets better every day. If you ask companies that use cloud email now as to when they first stated, there’s enough data now that covers the various s challenges and strategies that it makes it easier to apply what has been learned to make things pay back even greater results.

If you find cloud computing emails options to be intimidating, have no extra fear. In stead hire a professional developer company and website management pro like Ibsi-US. They are experts in everything web, computing, and new and innovative processes. Their staff is trained in multiple levels of expertise that means they can handle whatever problems that may arise.

On top of that they’re constantly learning the new and innovative processes that makes cloud email work more efficiently. You can be with Ibsi-US your cloud email choices will be looked at carefully by one or more of the pros and they’ll work out an affordable service that you can be alerted to and can add your own twists and experiments to see what works best.

The bottom line here is don’t let fear hold you back from a computing decision. It’s where your customers start coming out shorted. You can sometimes be so secretive and worrisome that nothing gets done and you end up behind the curve of your competitors. Email is one of the most vital of ways to communicate. You need to know what your customers think and to send out personal data that they can be wary of.

Remember, it’s not about how fearful you are, but how ready you are.

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While major server, hardware, and at-cost maintenance email service providers can be effective, such as using Microsoft Outlook along with enterprise software such as Microsoft Exchange, they can also be quite costly. Additionally, they require a lot of maintenance, personalized organization, and can be limited in not only how flexible email access might be to you and your employees, but also “server uptime”. Counting on a large email provider and a well-established company like this is good, however, for many in this day and age of modern technology, it is not the most practical, or effective solution.

Dependent upon your technical experience and level, different software, such virtual email servers, or cloud technology may best suit you and your business needs. Unfortunately, even major providers of email services can be especially costly, which leads us to the value and significance of cloud email technology.

Using a cloud email service provider ties a lot of loose ends that other services cannot provide, saves you time, costs, and manpower which can maximize your business efficiency, ability to communicate with personnel – and of course your customers. Even better, many cloud email services have “in-house” maintenance, virus protection, and offer customization features that much older, competing for products, software, and servers just can’t compare to. While cloud email technology is still considerably new, many service providers include extra management tools, administrative powers, and allow you to personalize your main control panel, rules for sharing information, and help you keep all of your private, customers, and financial data in one place, a “virtual” location, which means it can be accessed from anywhere.

Typically, regular maintenance, updates, and virus protection can easily cost into the thousands of dollars or more annually if purchased or paid for separately – and if you have a substantially large business might even cost this much or more monthly. And while “older concept” email services, server technology, and software’s can be useful and productive in maintaining accountability and security, they often involve the physical downloading of software, various registration fees, monthly and annual fees, and other server – or even hidden fee – costs which is not practical or desirable to most modern businesses today. Because cloud email technology is still such a new concept, this means that more major companies, new companies, and other professionals are maximizing this opportunity to develop their own versions, types of services, and compete with one another which truly benefits you as a prospective customer for maximizing both flexibility and costs.

Just keep in mind, as you would with any other product or software, take the time to carefully weigh your options of different cloud email service providers, look for special deals, promotions, and compare one to another to maximize savings and efficiency. Cloud email service providers also have the benefit of not requiring physical servers or hardware on your end, and often don’t even require any downloading for you or your employees which means you can access pertinent information or data on-the-go with ease, and confidence. Many cloud-based email services are also designed to be used on any type of mobile device, may it be android or iOS (apple), and will even allow you to modify data, or access your control panel to make changes on the go.

Image Credit : rawpixel

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While many modern email providers still have the capability to link to IMAP and POP3 accounts, many individuals and professionals alike elect not to do so, and the continued modernization of email providers has heavily contributed to a lack of desire, as well as blatant level of inflexibility among such email account access utilities.

Meanwhile, the modern world of correspondences—emails—and communications for various professionals and individuals alike continues to gravitate towards an even more sophisticated and modern concept; the cloud network and information to data storage, restoration, and accessibility.
Unlike basic POP3 and IMAP accounts, individuals find many common—and free—email service providers much more convenient because it simply takes care of all the minor tasks that consume time, such as filing, receiving, organizing, and automatically storing correspondences with predesignated options. The flexibility and accessibility of today’s modern email service providers also heavily contributes to the choice of using these internal, pre-programmed or designated platforms. Not to mention, now cloud service networks make it all the more simply to access email and other files or data with ease, contrary to the complex requirements or experiences commonly associated with the more “old fashion” POP3 and IMAP email providers or utilities and services.

Maintaining access to emails hosted on a server remains a breeze with modern email service providers, and likewise accessing or viewing emails is also made simple and more practical, as the read or accessed status simply and immediately carries across all platforms within the same account—so gone are the days that you read an email on one device, yet it remains unread in another or manual folder and file management is necessary.

Another big reason that individuals and especially professionals rely on popular and more modern email providers such as Outlook 365, or perhaps cloud-networking email services is because the storage capacity, as well as flexibility and process is made much more durable, consistent, and simple. Gone are the days of managing, copying, storing, and protecting PST files and the complications involved with such. Therefore, those—especially business owners and professionals—that rely less on POP3 and IMAP accounts can dedicate more time and energy on more productive tasks rather than management roles or troubleshooting correspondences, files, servers, etc.

Lastly, thanks to synchronization features and access, those whom opt-out of many retro-like POP3 and IMAP email service providers and rather rely on cloud-based email technology, can in turn access and enjoy the pleasure of having most of their data or correspondences restored, managed, and even retrieved with much greater convenience and less of an individualized demand involved.

Image credit: Markus Gann

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Thanks to a new innovation via Outlook for IOS mobile devices, email is becoming more advanced than ever. While many people commonly associate Outlook as a mediocre, ancient software found on old and modern PC’s in which is heavily disorganized and difficult to navigate, this is far from the case for the newest Outlook app available via IOS—and sooner than later Android devices alike.

Users are excited for the Outlook app because it correlates with your other Microsoft and email related applications to further assist you in automatically scheduling appointments via text received-only, forwarding, creating, and deleted contacts as necessary—all the while showing a high-response capability of filtering out unwanted junk mail or otherwise items of low-priority. Even more excitingly, like some famous social apps, deleting or keeping email will be as simple as swiping left to remove, and swiping right for each item.

The platform for Outlook mobile is most practical for email usage on mobile devices, including tablets, because it integrates such a strong combination of previous technology-learned, combining with technology acquired and developed over time via pc technology and application compatibility, capability, and accessibility.

According to statistics, upwards of 50 billion emails continuously are added to the annual sending rate each year, as of 2006, to-date. Without emails, many older as well as the majority of modern businesses otherwise suffer from a strong inability to effectively communicate amongst one another, its personnel, and customers alike. Believe it or not, email continues to be a heavy tool, resource, and element to more effectively advertising a business, products, and client (customer) retention as well.

Most impressively of all, is that the mobile Outlook application (automatically) combines your emails with your current contact list, enabling you to save contacts, make sense of senders, verify recipients before sending, and overall managing your Cloud data, contacts, appointments and more all directly into your email, Outlook, application through direct, meaningful integration.

For anyone serious about better managing their social and work life, Outlook email for mobile devices is hands-down the way to go. As the mobile-application software continues to be developed, upgraded, and advanced, users will be able to more heavily contribute to its interactions with each user in a unique manner. Ultimately, such technology is easily comparable to practically having your very own “personal assistant”, and as such, a technology like this will only continue to grow as technology-based communications demands continue to increase.

Microsoft, unsurprisingly continues to buy out competing mobile email applications as it sees fit, not only to knock out the competition, but also to integrate the total technology dynamics of each unique application; in turn making it nearly the most “ultimate” mobile app, communications, and emailing platform for the future.

Image credit: Nagy-Bagoly Arpad

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And talking about migrations, a majority of these happen to be towards Microsoft and/or Sharepoint. Most individuals are of the opinion that despite the security of sending mails using Notes or Domino, the mail interface of MS Outlook tends to be more user-friendly. The typical mail page of MS Outlook or Sharepoint displays contacts more clearly as well as offers greater convenience in making use of multiple identities in comparison to Lotus’s Notes.

Nevertheless, migration presents users with a good opportunity to reassess and readjust their capacities and processing systems in order to carry out day-to-day business activities more efficiently. However, before you can switch over to using SharePoint, conducting a SWOT analysis of continuing to use the platform of Lotus Notes for your everyday tasks is imperative. You can also consider the scenario where you marry the use of Lotus and Microsoft with a view to bring down overall costs of operation as well as optimize their collaborative use.

The fact that the Notes platform was incredibly adaptable and safe to use made it immensely popular with application developers. Notes, from the beginning and evermore with the later versions like Lotus 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, and so on, was perfect for turning ‘chat forums’ and ‘bulletin boards’ into web-based shared workspaces. Then again, databases and applications of Lotus Notes are encrypted or coded which means that these can be accessed exclusively by authorized Notes ID users.

High adaptability of Notes made sure that it could be customized and integrated for use with CSS, JavaScript, HTML5, Python, and PHP for website design and development. Even two decades after its development, Lotus along with Domino, its server equivalent continues to be used by nearly one million users globally.

Although replacing Lotus email with MS Exchange is more or less uncomplicated and clear-cut, one cannot simply while away the migration costs associated with it. Then again, one has to keep in mind the cost of training manpower for getting acquainted with the new process as well as the time it’ll take for making the transition. Irrespective of the route you ultimately take for migration, it’ll take at least 2-3 years for completing the makeover process and for the same to start delivering.

In workplaces and business environments, where Lotus Notes/Domino has been in use for a fairly long period of time, continuing with its use in its present form and scale will be practicable. Notes/Domino is undoubtedly your best bet if your activities tend to be mainly internal where you need to accord a high premium to security of data. For those IT organizations and establishments that generally outsource their tasks, moving away from Lotus Notes and adapting to an updated deployment service platform will be more meaningful.

Image credit: IBM

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