If you are deploying, or even considering, Microsoft Phone System, we thought this blog post might be helpful. We tell the story of our Microsoft 365 Business Voice journey, starting with Microsoft Teams and later deploying the Microsoft Phone System to be used within Microsoft Teams on our desktops, on our mobile devices, and on traditional desk phones that are Teams enabled. 

The KnowledgeWave team is excited to make training available for the Microsoft Phone System, also referred to as Microsoft Teams Phone. Teams Phone brings the power of traditional PBX systems to a tool that over 145 million of us touch every day, Microsoft Teams! You can make traditional calls from Teams, Outlook, or your mobile phone. Because it’s a PSTN service you can receive your work-based calls within the Teams app, on your PC, your mobile device or a Teams supported device.

Microsoft has done it again!  

Microsoft just published last week, news about a refresh of the Office Applications for Microsoft Windows. Aligned with the new release of the Windows 11 first Insider Preview, Microsoft is rounding the edges and shinning up their workhorse Office applications. The refresh of Office, which Microsoft shares will shine on Windows 11, will also be available to anyone using Microsoft Windows 10.

I recently had the pleasure and opportunity to present to members of the Chief Operating Officers (COO) Business Forum based in Michigan, organized by Crown Talent Assets. The COO Forum is a great resource for business executives to explore and learn about new and emerging ideas, solutions, processes, and tools.

As its popularity continues to grow, businesses are using Microsoft Teams to present and (in many cases) are inviting external guests to meetings on the platform. The meeting experience is new for many users, especially the end-user consumer, and the businesses inviting them don’t always understand the attendees’ experience.

As part of our Adoption and Change Management (ACM) practice, we highlight the need to measure for success. It’s even a section on my Office 365 User Adoption Checklist. KnowledgeWave has had the opportunity to beta test Microsoft Productivity Score for the last several months and we are super excited that it’s now available in general release to all Office 365 Administrators. (If you don’t see it hang tight, it’s coming) The use of Productivity Score will help organizations power their digital transformation with metrics that can dive into how users are using modern technology like Microsoft Teams.

Data is a popular topic these days. OK, it has been since the days of the mainframe. We just have more of it now. With so much data being collected across so many locations, a tool like Power BI lets us connect to that data. Power BI enables us to present data visually, and provide intuitive details, insights and modeling examples in a familiar Microsoft Office experience.

KnowledgeWave is pleased and excited to be providing a no-cost awareness webinar recording that is available on-demand on a topic that is fast becoming a popular conversation we have with clients using Office 365, Power BI. What is Power BI, and What Can it Do, as well as why you should consider using it are all at the heart of this webinar presentation.

In this post, I wanted to share specifically how you can disable users from creating Microsoft Teams and how can you remove the 'Create a Team' box within the application. Let me be clear, it is my opinion that you must provide some sort of starting architecture if you want to promote Teams usage and foster user adoption of this powerful tool.

Our team writes a lot about Microsoft Teams, and for all that we write, we put even more into real-world action for our clients. In this post, I’ll share a process for Teams Governance, using a Template Policy. Using templates to govern Microsoft Teams creation empowers businesses to set their own standards.

I’m always puzzled by organizations that insist on old-school training approaches when everything else seems to be moving to the cloud.

If your team is using the cloud to get work done, then it’s to your advantage to make sure that everybody knows how to use the cloud effectively. And what better way than to offer cloud-based training, aka Training as a Service (TaaS).

The explosive rate of deployment and migration to Microsoft Teams is off the charts. I wrote last month, How to Rapidly Deploy and Adopt Microsoft Teams because so many people were and continue to reach out to our company for training specific to using Teams. In that post, I shared what companies are doing to deploy Teams quickly and how they can still maintain some governance.

When discussing training needs with clients we commonly see two driving factors for Microsoft Teams Training requests.

We have seen a large spike in requests for Microsoft Teams Training as a result of businesses across the globe moving to remote work solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies are rushing to implement solutions like Microsoft Teams and Zoom to remain functional while employees (who can) are working from home.

Microsoft has seen a 775% increase in the use of its cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing, and the use of Microsoft Teams is now a daily activity for over 44 million users. Microsoft has done an amazing job, with little impact on the quality of service, meeting this unprecedented surge in demand. The need to work remotely continues to increase as stay-at-home orders around the globe continue to expand.

As an IT professional, you're probably up-to-speed on the idea of automation. Automation of repetitive tasks simplifies processes providing efficiencies and saves you and your team time.

In response to increased requests regarding the need to work remotely, we wrote our blog post last week: How to Be an Effective Employee While Working from Home. We also created a free webinar that ran for several sessions discussing how employees can maximize their efficiency and effectiveness while working from home (or pretty much anywhere).

After the live webinars, we received requests from multiple clients and prospective clients for access to the recorded version. Today, we have uploaded this premium webinar to YouTube for all to access. The webinar video is embedded below.