Enable your workforce to confidently return to on-site work by deploying Microsoft’s Return To The Workplace app. The app allows managers to view location readiness, conduct employee health screenings, and ultimately ensure a safe environment to return to. Return To The Workplace is available in the AppSource, and is deployed as a Dynamics 365 App within your environment.
The App includes four separate solutions, all of which are interconnected through Common Data Services (CDS) and are all essential to use together to make the solution effective. These four solutions include:
- Location Readiness dashboard (Power BI)
- Workplace Care Management dashboard (Power BI)
- Facility Safety Management app (PowerApp)
- Employee Return to the Workplace app (PowerApp)
Learn how to use the other sections of the solution in this Return to the Workplace Solution Overview.
Prerequisites
The Return To The Workplace app requires two prerequisites:
- Global Administrator: Required to install the app and deploy it within an environment.
- PowerApps Per-App Plan ($10/Month): Required to have at least 1 per app plan to run this app.
Using the App
The first screen gives users the options to get a day pass, look up the status of a facility, or register a guest for entering a facility. There is also an optional self-assessment to select how safe the employee feels to return to work (Yes, No, Neutral). The selection is saved inside a CDS entity and factored into the app’s pre-configured algorithms. Organizations can modify those algorithms with the PowerApp studio to customize how it behaves and/or handles the user’s inputs.
Day Passes
The Day Pass feature allows users to search for active facilities and select one they want to enter. Users can follow the below steps to book a day pass:
- Select Get Day Pass.
- Search for the facility they would like to enter.
- Select Book A Space.
- Select Accept to agree to take the Daily Health Check questionnaire which will be given upon arrival at the facility.
- Select I Agree to confirm that the users’ current health meets the requirements to enter. NOTE: Selecting I Disagree will deny the user from being able to book a space.
- The day pass is generated.
- If a user needs to cancel, they can do so by selecting Cancel.
When it comes time to enter the facility, the user must first complete the Daily Health Check to ensure they are healthy enough to enter the facility.
Then, the user must choose which facility they’d like to enter.
They are given a pass for the facility of choice.
Register A Guest
This feature allows users to generate a day pass for guests to enter facilities. To do so, a user should:
- Select Register A Guest.
- Fill out the guest info and select Next.
- Proceed with the same steps as Get Day Pass.
Look Up Status
This function allows users to view the current status of a facility. The status of facilities is pre-configured by ‘Phases’ inside the Facility Safety Management app.
To utilize the Look Up Status feature, follow these steps:
- Select Look Up Status from the home screen of the app.
- Search and select the facility in question.
- View the current Phase.
- NOTE: If the facility is open and active, the Book A Space button will be enabled.
Safely Get Back To The Workplace
Give your team the ability to control their return to workplace operations with custom safety parameters set through the Microsoft Return to the Workplace app. Employees will have increased confidence in management’s ability to control potential risks and management will feel confident in their ability to control the return to work process and give some responsibility to the employees.
We are excited to join the Thrive family!
Thrive’s recent acquisition of Timlin Enterprises is a collaboration that’s proving to be a game changer in the Managed Services Provider (MSP) ecosystem – offering an enormous opportunity and value to our customers.
This partnership is powerful and there is no other collaboration like it positively impacting and shaping the MSP landscape. The Timlin solutions added to the deep Thrive portfolio of NextGen managed services becomes an innovative vehicle to collectively create a holistic road map for our customers, which includes strategic discussions about the “big picture” of technology and services our customers depend on to achieve their goals. We understand that IT exists to enable and support the goals of the business, but it is not the driver of technology. Instead, IT contains the resources to help deliver those capabilities effectively over time and adapt to the changing needs of the business and supporting platforms like Microsoft 365.
Prior to this acquisition, our customers often had to choose an IT services provider, but then realize that their vendor lacked the capabilities to provide the business productivity and collaboration support that Timlin is known for delivering. This collaboration enables a pivotal head start for our customers as Thrive is now able to explore our customers’ IT and business needs earlier in the process of aligning with their IT service provider.
With our strong focus on Life Sciences, it is even more apparent that the rapidly changing needs of our customers, as they grow through phases of programs, could create increasing strain on their IT services provider. A larger organization like Thrive helps to solve these issues with their investment in technology solutions and access to more resources as the customers’ needs and complexity escalates.
Thrive has built an organization focused on the people, process, and technology necessary to execute on the best possible total client experience. With the addition of Timlin, Thrive will be able to help this industry operate more efficiently, from initial Discovery through Product Commercialization and beyond, by leveraging Microsoft 365 to improve processes.
This is a really a great position for our team to be in – the opportunity to get involved with the IT and business needs much earlier in the process as we align with our customers’ IT service provider. A solution much greater than the sum of its’ parts.
Interested in learning more? CONTACT US TODAY!
FOXBOROUGH, MA – October 7, 2020 – Thrive, a premier provider of NextGen Managed Services, announces today that it has acquired Timlin Enterprises, an information technology services provider and long-time collaboration partner focusing on the Microsoft 365 platform, Teams and SharePoint. This transaction is Thrive’s first non-MSP, product-capability acquisition, greatly enhancing its existing technology portfolio by adding a proven team with expertise on Microsoft tools.
Timlin, headquartered in Massachusetts, has a deep bench of engineers, consultants, and business analysts spread out geographically across the United States. The company is predominantly focused upon the Life Sciences and Biotech industries, boasting an impressive clientele list, along with additional proficiency in Banking & Financial Services.
The acquisition of Timlin significantly expands Thrive’s Microsoft Collaboration and Digital Transformation efforts to help companies unlock the hidden value they are paying for and not utilizing within the Microsoft 365 platform, increasing employee adoption and driving productivity increases. Additional benefits include enterprise-wide governance, training, management, development, support; Teams integration and collaboration; SharePoint architecture management; SQL hosting and management; Power BI and Power Platform business process automation; and other Microsoft application management.
“We’re very excited to welcome Timlin to the Thrive family and create a separate Microsoft Collaboration Unit,” said Rob Stephenson, CEO of Thrive. “Timlin’s tremendous team of expert technical and consultative employees will provide a huge benefit to Thrive’s Microsoft 365 customers, enabling them to accelerate their digital transformation efforts and enhance employee productivity.”
“Timlin has more than 10 years of experience guiding our valued clients with Microsoft platform adoption efforts, especially in the Life Sciences sector, and we’re proud to combine our highly-skilled team, tools and insights with Thrive to enhance its industry-leading NextGen Managed Services Platform,” said Ryan Thomas, CEO of Timlin Enterprises. “Our whole team is excited to embark upon this journey and spur additional growth for Thrive, as well as to allow Timlin customers access to Thrive’s Cyber Security and Public, Private & Hybrid Cloud-focused services.”
Mr. Thomas, Jeff Johnson, and Joe Piccirilli will continue to oversee the management of Timlin as the Microsoft Collaboration Division of Thrive, along with their existing employees. Timlin engaged BellMark Partners as an exclusive advisor on the deal.
The Timlin transaction is now the eighth acquisition for Thrive since the M/C Partners investment back in 2016.
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About Thrive
Thrive is a leading provider of NextGen managed services designed to drive business outcomes through application enablement and optimization. The company’s Thrive5 Methodology utilizes a unique combination of its Application Performance Platform and strategic services to ensure each business application takes advantage of technology that enables peak performance, scale, and the highest level of security. For more information, visit thrivenextgen.com
Thrive: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram
MEDIA CONTACT:
Stephanie Farrell
Director of Corporate Marketing
617.952.0289 | sfarrell@thrivenetworks.com
About Timlin Enterprises
Founded in 2010, Timlin Enterprises helps clients operate as digital organizations by enabling and continuing to advance their Office 365 and SharePoint capabilities. Timlin harnesses each organization’s unique definition of digital transformation, focuses on end users as the key to adoption, leverages a proven methodology, and maintains a commitment to exceptional service delivery using only US-based resources, as proven by a 100% service retention rate. From targeted professional services to Center of Excellence managed services they have the solutions to help organizations adopt the tools available in the Office 365 platform to keep pace with the new speed of business. For more information, visit timlinenterprises.com
About M/C Partners
Based in Boston, M/C Partners is a private equity firm focused on small and mid-sized businesses in the communications and technology services sectors. For more than three decades M/C Partners has invested $2.2 billion of capital in over 130 companies, leveraging its deep industry expertise to understand long-term secular trends and identify growth opportunities. The firm is currently investing its eighth fund, partnering with promising companies and empowering strong leaders to accelerate growth, optimize operations, and build long-term value. For more information, visit mcpartners.com
About BellMark Partners
BellMark Partners, LLC is a boutique investment banking firm providing M&A, capital raising, restructuring, and strategic advisory services to middle market companies with a particular emphasis on the Consumer, Industrial, Healthcare, and Business Services markets. Headquartered in Boston, MA with an additional office in Cleveland, OH. For more information, visit bellmarkpartners.com
Microsoft Bookings, an app included in Microsoft 365, is a scheduling tool that allows customers to easily book appointments with a company. The app incorporates a web-based calendar that integrates with Outlook, ensuring availability always stays up-to-date. Customers can easily schedule appointments during available time slots with the team member of their choice, cancel and reschedule bookings, and enjoy auto-generated emails to keep all parties notified.
The following Microsoft licenses include Bookings:
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard
- Microsoft 365 A3
- Microsoft A5 subscriptions
- Office 365 E3 and E5 subscriptions
Components of Microsoft Bookings
Business Information
All details about your business are configured in the Business Information section. These details, such as your business name, address, phone number, logo, and hours of operations, are visible to your customers.
Services
Business offerings are configured in the Services section. You can specify details such as:
- Service location (virtual or physical)
- Service description
- Pricing
- Staff member assignments
- Maximum number of attendees per service
Staff
The Staff section is where you can specify all items relating to the members of your team relating to the services they provide. This can include:
- Assign to specific services
- Services the business provides
- Hours of availability for each staff member
Customers
When users schedule an appointment or book a service, they are automatically added as a customer in your Bookings app.
Customers can be added manually or imported from a .csv file.
Bookings Page
The Bookings Page is where major app details are configured and where the app is published. These details include:
- Selecting a color scheme/theme of the Bookings app
- Setting the time zone
- Setting email notifications
- Requiring customers to have an Office 365 account to use the app
Calendar
The Calendar is for internal use only — it is only accessible by staff members. All Bookings made by customers will populate in the Calendar. The Calendar view can be switched around to display bookings by Day, Work Week, Week, Month, or Today. Clicking on each booking will display all the information regarding that specific booking.
Home
The Home dashboard displays an overview of the number of bookings made, the estimated revenue from all bookings, and the number of unique customers that have booked.
The Problem
The COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to quickly transition to working remotely. As the pandemic settles and work-from-home mandates are lifted, businesses will have to adjust, once again, to ensure a safe return to the workplace. One of the main priorities during return to work operations is limiting capacities to ensure social distancing is possible.
The Solution
At Thrive, we pride ourselves on discovering ways to leverage existing tools in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem to fulfill even more business needs than they were originally intended for. Why not utilize Microsoft Bookings to ensure a safe and socially-distanced return to the workplace?
By utilizing the Services section for your office building, room, floor, or workspace, you can automate monitoring and limiting capacity with ease. The Staff section can be used for reservations and the Customer section can be used by employees who would like to come into the office.
The Fine Print
The ‘Maximum Attendees’ feature in the Services component doesn’t always work as seamlessly as we would like.
The key to successfully limiting the number of people that can book on a specific day is to add the exact amount of staff members, listed below as “reservations,” as a guideline for the maximum capacity for the office. In other words, make the total number of staff members equal the maximum capacity of people allowed in the office at once to restrict any more appointments.
Bookings require at least one staff member per booking. With three added staff member reservations and myself as an Administrator (by necessity), the app will allow four bookings per day—and nothing more. Even if ‘Maximum Attendees’ was set to one or two, the app would still allow four users to book—which is why this workaround is necessary to get the app to behave how it is intended to.
For this to work, the Availability for the Services must be set to “Bookable when staff are free.”
Takeaways
We encourage you to try customizing your Microsoft features to best fit your needs. Microsoft Bookings’ capabilities reach far beyond simply scheduling and can be a great way to assist with keeping your team safe while returning to work.
As always, Thrive is here to help you keep up with these quick transitions. If you would like assistance to get the most out of your Microsoft 365 investment, please contact us today.
In the second blog of this series, we discussed how Access Reviews in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) provides a guided review of a group of Microsoft 365 users to help determine if their continued access to tenant resources is required. The third and final tool designed to control and audit access to company resources is Privileged Identity Management (PIM). PIM works synergistically with the other tools to help keep a watchful eye on the collaboration space without impeding productivity.
In Part 3, we’ll discuss PIM in detail. This tool is designed to provide just-in-time escalation of permissions to ensure higher permission levels are only available when needed and can be applied with governance in mind.
Privileged Identity Management
Setting up Privileged Identity Management
PIM is designed to support a “least privileged” model by making granular roles available to users requiring elevated functionality. In addition, users with continuous excessive access are vulnerable in the event their account is compromised, so when not-needed users’ accounts have no extraneous permissions. When needed, a user simply requests elevation into a specific role that has been made available to them. Depending on configuration, the assignment is either automatic or requires approval and/or justification.
The first step in configuring PIM is selecting which roles should be available under which circumstances. This configuration is found under Identity Governance, in the Manage section, by selecting Roles. The Roles screen presents a large list of Roles along with a Description of the Role’s intended usage. The screen will also display how many users are currently Active in a Role and how many users are eligible to be activated in the role.
For example, suppose you want to allow an Administrative Assistant to occasionally reset passwords without involving a tenant Global Administrator. To set this up, click on the Helpdesk Administrator Role in the list, or use the search to filter the list. Selecting this Role will list all current assignments for that Role, including Eligible, Active, and Expired. Pressing the “Add assignments” button will begin the process.
The first screen will show you the Role you have selected, with a link to select member(s) to assign to the role. Pressing the hyperlink under the Select member(s) will bring you to a search for all users within your tenant.
Select the user and press the Select button to add them to the list of members eligible for the Role. Selecting Next navigates to the Settings section, where you determine the Assignment type and durations. Leaving the type Eligible will require the user to request elevation when needed, which is the intention in this case. If you want the assignment to be limited in duration, such as covering an employee who is on leave or vacation, you can set dates for the start and end of the assignment by un-checking Permanently eligible and select dates. Selecting Assign will move that assignment into the Eligible list.
Additional settings can be applied to the Role by selecting the Settings button at the top of the Assignments screen for the Role.
From this screen, there are many configuration options to allow for more granular control of how the escalation process is executed, including approval and notification options.
The first section covers the Activation process itself. Here you can set a maximum duration for the escalation, require Azure MFA, justification, ticket information, or even approval. If requiring approval, you can select who provides the approval from this screen as well.
The next section covers Assignment, where you can decide if permanent Eligible assignments are allowed, permanent Active assignments, and whether justification and/or MFA is required for Active assignments.
The final section provides rich configuration for Notifications to be sent regarding this process. Notifications can be enabled for when members are assigned eligible to the role, when they are assigned as Active to the role, and when eligible members activate the role. This last alert would trigger when escalation has occurred. Each section of notification includes three options: Role activation, Notification to requestor, and request for approval. All of these options are enabled by default, with default recipients being Admin, Requestor/assignee, and Approver. Additional recipients can be added for most notifications.
Requesting Elevation
Once a role is configured to be available, a user can request escalation by going to Azure AD, navigating to the Identity Governance screen, and selecting “Activate Just In Time”. There, they will see all Roles for which they are eligible, and have the opportunity to request being assigned to that role. Pressing Activate will start the process to be added to the role.
Depending on configuration there may be approval and / or justification needed for the assignment to be completed. They can also set a Duration, up to the configured maximum, for how long the assignment should be in effect.
Once completed, they will be in the Active roles section until the duration has been met, or they manually Deactivate the assignment.
Summary
Privileged Identity Management in Azure AD Identity Governance provides just-in-time elevation to targeted roles, helping to protect users’ accounts during normal usage, but providing an easy, governed method of escalating privileges when needed. As with the other facets of Identity Governance, PIM provides a healthy balance of productivity and security within the Microsoft 365 platform.
Need a refresher?
In our first blog of this series, we discussed how entitlement management in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Identity Governance creates Access Packages to control the scope and duration of access to groups, applications, and SharePoint sites. The two additional primary tools designed to control and audit access to company resources include Access Reviews and Privileged Identity Management. These three functions work synergistically to help keep a watchful eye on the collaboration space without impeding productivity.
In Part 2, we’ll discuss Access Reviews in detail. These are about auditing access to ensure previously-granted permissions are still appropriate and necessary.
Access Reviews
Setting up an Access Review
An Access Review is a scheduled, guided review of a group of Microsoft 365 users to help determine if their continued access to tenant resources is required. The review can be performed by multiple users and can be set to report on dispositions and, in some cases, automatically take action based on the dispositions set.
The first step of creating an Access Review is naming and describing its purpose. You will also set a start date and frequency if the intention is to perform the review periodically. Frequencies include weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. Occurrences can run indefinitely or can end by a specified date or after a number of occurrences. The review will also have an end date, after which the review will close and the “upon completion settings” will be applied.
Next, you determine who will be reviewed and who will be performing the review. The users to review can be Members of a Group or users Assigned to an Application on the tenant. Additionally, you can scope the review to include Guest users only or include all users. For Reviewers, you can select the Group’s owners, specific tenant users, or allow for self-review by the users. You can also associate the review with a Program (similar in concept to a Catalog for Access Packages) or choose the Default Program.
Next, we’ll set the “Upon completion settings,” which determine the action to take when the end date of the review is reached. The first choice is whether or not you’d like to auto-apply the results. With this setting enabled, any user whose disposition is to Deny access will automatically have their access removed upon the completion of the review. The second option is to determine what actions to take if reviewers don’t respond. These options include “No change,” “Remove access,” “Approve access,” or “Take recommendations.” The last option is based on Azure AD’s auto-set recommendations, which are primarily based on the last time the reviewed user utilized the system.
The final settings, under Advanced, include options to Show recommendations, Require a reason on approval, Mail notifications, and send Reminders to reviewers. All are currently enabled by default.
At this point, we are ready to start the review process. After pressing the Start button, the new Access Review will be added to the Access Reviews section within the Identity Governance module. The listing will include the name, the resource being reviewed, the status, and when it was created.
Clicking on the review will show an overview of the settings as well as a chart showing the status of the resources being reviewed. There are also pages to view the Results and the Reviewers. You can even send automated reminders for individual reviewers with the press of a button.
Performing a User Access Review
If the Mail Notifications option was set to Enabled, reviewers should receive an email with a link to begin their review. The email will have a hyperlinked button to take the user directly to the review page.
The Review page will show all relevant information, including who requested the review, when it is due by, the names of any other reviewers, and the progress made so far. It will also list each Resource being reviewed with their name, email address, Access Info (statement about whether they have recently logged in), and a recommended Action.
This list of users can be filtered based on Status (Reviewed, Not Yet Reviewed, All), Recommendation (Approve, Deny, All), or Action (Approved, Denied, Don’t Know, All). The reviewer can click on a single source to review or multi-select resources using the checkboxes, then press the “Review n user(s)” button. Reviewing resources opens a dialog with options for the disposition and comments. Actions can be Approve, Deny, or Don’t Know. The recommended action will be highlighted already. Don’t Know is useful if there are other reviewers who may have more insight or knowledge of the resource being reviewed.
Although all Resources may have been reviewed, the Access Review will stay open until its end date has been reached to allow for changes or other reviewers to provide input. If desired, a review can be manually stopped so action can be taken. This can be done by the user who originally set up the review using the Access Review overview screen. At that time, the actions will be automatically applied if the “Upon completion” setting’s “auto apply results to resource” is enabled, or the Apply Results button can be pressed if not.
The results of the review can be reviewed in the Results section of the Access Review.
Summary
Access Reviews in Azure AD Identity Governance provide a simple, consistent, and governed method of reviewing and controlling access to company tenant resources. By combining Access Reviews with Access Packages, administrators can tightly control who has access to which resources and ensure they retain the appropriate access only as long as required, all while maintaining agility and simplicity for users.
Next up: Privileged Identity Management. Configure just-in-time role escalation to implement a least-privileged security model for day-to-day operations while providing a rapid but governed path to escalated roles as required. Stay tuned!
For those using Zoom, hopefully you are carefully reconsidering your use based on the recent security concerns exposed. In this blog, I’ll review the features of Zoom relative to Teams to make sure users are aware of what they get and are giving up with each platform in the event they could take advantage of features that allow them to communicate and work better.
Unlike a simple “review site,” I’ll address this from the view of a remote worker trying to get their job done and highlight the differences in functionality. This comparison is not intended to target the “social distancing cocktail party” crowd, though they may benefit from it as well.
Security
Zoom should essentially be treated like an “open conversation” until they get their security issues fixed. The platform is easy to hack and Zoom has previously admitted to collecting and sharing users’ personal data. If security is a real concern, I would not recommend Zoom for anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable with any random person hearing.
Microsoft Teams does not use users’ data for anything other than to provide better services. The Microsoft 365 platform, in general, is designed around data loss prevention and information protection. However, it has more to protect as it is designed for persistent storage and collaboration on sensitive information, not just a simple video conferencing platform.
Web Conferencing
Zoom is simple — which is part of what made it vulnerable. It’s really just an audio/video conferencing tool. Zoom makes it easy to set up a virtual meeting, meet, chat, discuss, and be done. It also doesn’t require any advanced authentication or account management besides your name.
Teams has similar functionality, but may take a moment longer to set up a conference due to the intent of the platform. For example, Teams was built for integration with Microsoft 365, not as just a standalone product. Its scheduled meetings can be done from within its own calendar interface, which pulls directly from your Outlook/Microsoft calendar. You can also create meetings for Teams directly within Outlook and never open Teams.
Video Calls & Chat
When it comes to one-on-one or multi-person calls and chatting, Zoom is heavily built around the ID of a meeting or user, which is sent out for attendees to “join.” This system is designed to help users schedule meetings or start ad hoc video conferring meetings quickly, but it gets a lot less user-friendly when you want chat with someone, view their availability, jump on a video call, and add/remove people from that context.
Teams is designed around the individual, not the meeting. Chatting with someone, adding another person to a chat stream, sharing documents and notes, and collaborating on files are Teams’ main goal. It’s called “Teams” for a reason — it’s meant to let smaller groups of people work together.
It’s important to know that when sharing documents or data with people in ad hoc chats or video calls, that data is stored in OneDrive and available indefinitely if you want to continue working on it.
Since Teams is part of the overall Microsoft 365 ecosystem, all the data is searchable and discussion/chats can be sent out via email.
Telephone Integration
One of the biggest differences between Teams and Zoom is telephony. Zoom allows you to use a web link or a dial-in number for those joining from phones, but that’s pretty much where it leaves off. Teams has advanced integration with true calling capabilities because it was designed to replace telephone systems as well.
For example, with the proper licensing, I can call a telephone or join someone else’s conference via a traditional dial-in number with Teams, treating it like it was a telephone. In a voice meeting or chat, when I want to add a user, I can choose to call their telephone to dial them in. If Teams knows the user, it allows you to choose to invite them via telephone or their traditional online user account.
If you want the ability to add legitimate telephone capabilities (including receiving calls and voicemail), Teams is a much better choice.
Complete Internal Communication
Teams was created to be a complete internal communication hub — a context-based front-end to a lot of the work we perform on a daily basis. Its capabilities include: emailing, chatting, meeting, co-authoring documents, setting up calendar items, working on projects, and collaborating with both internal and external users on various secured topics and data.
Teams allows users to work with documents in secure channels, synchronize data to desktops, and co-author documents, adding workflow and automation to them as well. It also allows users to notify others when certain changes are made or reduce notifications on items they don’t need to hear about.
Teams provides for persistent notes integrated into meetings or work “locations” and @ mentions and hashtags to message people and groups specifically or allow them to search for tagged data and conversations.
One of the most important aspects of Teams is the ability to create multiple teams to work on specific content or projects and make sure those locations are private, secure, and audited, only accessible by the intended groups or users you define.
Platforms
Both applications are available on all typical platforms: PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. There isn’t a big distinction here in terms of availability, and both tools can be browser–based.
Price
Teams has a free version and the paid access starts with a $5 minimum licensing. However, most organizations already have Microsoft 365 Business Premium ($12.50) or E3 ($20) licensing, which includes a fully–functioning version of Teams at no additional cost. Prices increase if you want to use Teams as your office phone.
Zoom has a free version with some meeting time limitations, and their standard pricing is approximately $15-20 per month.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is that, in many ways, Teams and Zoom aren’t even comparable.
Security aside, if all you want to do is create a video/audio conference calls from a computer, Zoom is certainly easier to set up and use. Because the functionality is very specific and limited, there isn’t much else to do with it.
Teams, however, is designed to be an enterprise collaboration and productivity tool for business that do a lot more than calling and conferencing. The integration of documents, data, workstreams, permissions, and sharing all lend themselves to a deeper overall product. This product does come with some complexity and governance challenges that need to be addressed unless you simply want to use it for video conference calls.
If you want to do more with the tools you have and prefer software you can manage internally via settings, provisioning, and auditing, Teams is the clear choice for you.
Relational drop-downs are something that come up quite frequently but aren’t always straight forward.
PowerApps gives you a relatively friendly manner of creating simple relational drop-downs when using the “Depends On” functionality but this falls apart when utilizing anything but simple fields (text, number, etc.) and trying to further drill down into filtered results. You may have noticed that when you start trying to use Choice fields to filter your drop-downs on, it is not inherently possible.
In our example, we will work off a mock Products list in SharePoint. The SharePoint Products list will be made up of the following columns (yours can vary):
- Product Type – Choice field – Choices: HDD, CPU
- Title – Text (Product Name)
- Manufacturer – Choice field – Choices: Timlin, Generic
- Configuration – Choice field – Choices: 250GB, 500GB, x1, x2
Below is a screenshot of how this list looks and some sample data we have input for testing.
Once your list is setup, we can hop straight into PowerApps. If you aren’t familiar with how to get started, simply click on the “PowerApps” button followed by the “Customize Forms” button.
We arranged our fields in the PowerApp to go in the following order: Product Type, Manufacturer, Configuration and Title.
The end goal of this is to have it so the end-user will go through the menu one by one and be provided a final filtered list of products that follow the selected Type, Manufacturer, and Configuration.
You might notice from the screenshot of the layout of the PowerApp above that there are duplicate fields. The reason for this is that the more advanced filtering we will be doing on the fields does not work when using the out of the box choices column in PowerApps.
To circumvent this, we unlock each of these data cards and add a “Dropdown” control (to make things easier, set “AllowEmptyField” to true in the properties of each drop-down we add).
Currently, the fields are disabled just as a visual aid but in normal circumstances, you can set the value of the fields to the value of the drop-down and have them hidden in the background so nothing is visually different to the end-user. In our example, Product Type won’t need to be filtered in any way so we can leave that card alone.
Our options in Product Type are CPU and HDD.
In this instance and given the sample data above, when we select “CPU” we will want to see both the Timlin and Generic manufacturers (we will filter this even though each manufacturer has a CPU, there will be instances in production where a manufacturer will exist that does not offer a CPU product).
To filter the Manufacturer drop-down based on the Product Type, we can set it’s “Items” property to the following formula (keep in mind that the numbers or names of the Data Cards may vary on your application):
Distinct(Filter(Products, ‘Product Type’.Value = DataCardValue2.Selected.Value),Manufacturer.Value) – DataCardValue2 is associated with Product Type
Using the “Distinct” operation, we ensure that we do not pull back the same manufacturer more than once. The second parameter following the filter (Manufacturer.Value) is the return value, which in this case is the Manufacturer value that we want.
The Filter operation is ensuring that we are only getting products in the list that match the product type we selected in the first field. One other thing we want to do on this drop-down is to set up a variable that stores the filtered results so we can easily filter our next field. To do so, we can change the “On Change” operation to the following formula:
Set(ManufacturerFilteredProducts, Filter(Products, Manufacturer.Value = DataCardValue4.Selected.Value)) – DataCardValue4 is associated with Manufacturer
This will provide us with the list of products we have filtered on Product Type and on Manufacturer.
Next, we will want to set up our Configuration drop-down to only show us products that have the Product Type and Manufacturer the user has selected. To do so, we can set the “Items” property on the Configuration drop-down we added (the control, not the field) to the following:
Distinct(Filter(ManufacturerFilteredProducts,’Product Type’.Value = DataCardValue2.Selected.Value),Configuration.Value)
We should now have a drop-down with only the results that match the Product Type and Manufacturer the user chose in the previous two fields.
Lastly, we will want to make sure that when a user chooses a configuration that the product names that appear in the “Title” drop-down are those that match all of the previous filters. To do so, we set the “On Change” property of the Configuration drop-down to a new variable (FinalFilteredProducts).
This variable will filter the results we stored in ManufacturerFilteredProducts based on the Configuration value the user chooses and store the results for use in the Title/Product Name field. We can do this via the formula below:
Set(FinalFilteredProducts, Filter(ManufacturerFilteredProducts, Configuration.Value = DataCardValue3.Selected.Value)) – DataCardValue3 is associated with Configuration
Finally, we want to make sure that the only Titles we get back are for products that are related to all three previous drop-downs. This is simply just the Title rows in the FinalFilteredProducts variable we just created. To do this, set the “Items” property on the custom Title drop-down to the following:
FinalFilteredProducts.Title
This should produce a fully filtered list of choices for the products (as shown in the original screenshot). Given the sample data, if a user were to look at SSDs made by Timlin with a 250GB capacity, the only title we should get back is the “Timlin 250GB SSD”, which we do (shown below).
Interested in diving in deeper to Filtered Relational Drop-downs? Reach out to our team here to set up a free consultation call.
One of the features in Microsoft 365 which can be overlooked is your User Profile.
Delve User Profile pages contain a lot of information about your business users, including:
- Contact information
- About
- Projects
- Skills and Expertise
- Schools and Education
- Interests and Hobbies
- Additional Information
When you have accurate data in these fields, it can be a huge benefit to your organization, especially large organizations with multiple locations and/or where a good percentage of people work remotely.
Having users keep profiles up to date, enhances People Search and the ability for users to efficiently find the right resource or expertise.
With accurate data, users can better search for colleagues, whether they’re looking for expertise on a subject, wish to collaborate on a particular project, or just want to see if there is any fellow alumnus in the company!
While what Microsoft provides out-of-the-box is a good start, often we need to enhance the profile with custom fields.
We can do this by adding Custom properties to the User Profile service, making the property searchable, and choosing to display property under the Additional Information section within Delve profiles. The custom property can be edited by administrators from User Profile service or directly by users at the Delve profile page.
Below, I have outlined how to create a new custom user profile property.
If you need any help, please reach out and we’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Creating a New Custom User Profile Property
Login to your SharePoint Online admin center and go to Manage User Properties within User Profiles. Select “New Property.”
Assign the new property a Name, and Display Name. Choose the data Type you want property to contain.
When configuring the property, we need to determine how we want the property to behave.
- Should the users be able to hide this property so only they can view it, or should we require it’s shown to Everyone?
- Do we want users to be able to edit this custom property, or only allow Administrators?
These scenarios are managed through your Policy and Edit settings.
To display the custom property in Delve profile page, and to be able to manage it within User Profile service > Manage User Profiles > Edit, enable the setting “Show in the profile properties section of the user’s profile page”.
Select “Show on the Edit Details page” if you want a user to be able to edit the property.
By default, the new custom property will be Indexed by Search service.
After creating a custom property, it will immediately display under Additional Information in your Delve profile pages.
As mentioned, if you need any help with this process, please reach out and we would be happy to answer any questions you may have.