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Optimising real-estate utilisation is a great way for enterprises to reduce costs – especially as the growing trend towards flexible and remote working has lead to increasingly under-used office space.

We’re also now facing a situation where remote working (and therefore reduced office space) may become more a a norm, against a ‘perfect storm’ of COVID-19, environmental issues, flexible working trends and extreme weather events.

To help streamline the workspace booking process, Microsoft continues to encourage the use of resource mailboxes in Office 365, and is providing new features to assist with booking meeting rooms, Teams Rooms and individual workspaces with Microsoft Teams.

For example, it is now possible to book and schedule meetings using the Teams calendar (as well as via Outlook calendar).

There are still some ‘gotchas’ when booking meetings and meeting rooms using Teams, so in this article we have provided some tips and best practices to help navigate them.

 Teams features to help users book resources

Teams contains a calendar app that is a view of the logged-on users’ calendar.

Integration with Teams means that a meeting can be booked, with a room, attendees and Teams credentials all in one process.

Within the calendar app it is possible to create and edit meetings that contain room bookings.  Selecting the meeting time span required automatically opens a new meeting window.

Adding details to your Teams meeting

Here it is possible to find a free room easily using the location field.

This can be achieved using room lists, or if Microsoft Teams Rooms are being used (see also lower in this article), proximity detection can suggest a nearby room.

Check out this article for more information on proximity detection: https://www.microsoft.com/itshowcase/blog/click-join-internal-meetings-get-a-boost-with-microsoft-teams/

Attendees can be added and the meeting scheduled, which then acts in the same way as creating a room booking in Outlook.

Teams meeting details are automatically added to all meetings booked in the Teams calendar app.

There is also bi-directional synchronisation with the user’s Outlook calendar.  For instance, you can edit items scheduled in the Outlook calendar and have those changes appear in Outlook.

https://office365itpros.com/2019/08/26/teams-new-calendar-app/

Beware Teams Meeting Booking Limitations

For example:

  • the Teams calendar has no concept of multiple time zones
  • you can’t mark events as private, and
  • you can’t drag and drop meetings between time slots.

For this reason users should not expect to organise their diaries using Teams in the same way they can Outlook.

Watch out for Booking Meetings in Channels

A concept that is unique to booking meetings in Teams is the ability to select a channel in which to meet.

Channels are sub-sections of teams, a bit like a topic within a team.

A concept that is unique to booking meetings in Teams is the ability to select a channel in which to meet.

It is important to note that when a channel is selected, the meeting booking is made by the group email address of the channel, rather than the logged-on user.

Whilst the organiser in the Teams calendar app is displayed as the user who made the booking, the corresponding booking in the Outlook calendar shows the organiser as the channel.

Also a Teams channel invitation does not automatically send invites to everyone in the channel.

If you want Team members to receive a meeting invitation you should:

Either way, it would seem that there is currently a bug if you want to book a physical meeting room from a Teams channel.  Check out this thread.

Microsoft Teams Rooms

Utilising a combination of resource mailboxes, the correct Office 365 licence and compatible hardware it is possible to create a Microsoft Teams Room which turns a regular meeting room into a fully video-enabled collaboration space.

No licencing is required for a regular resource mailbox, however, in order to enable a room as a Teams room, a licence is required.

It is possible to apply certain enterprise licences to enable a Teams room, however Microsoft have a licence type specifically for Teams rooms.  The licence includes (amongst other things):

  • Skype for Business
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Phone System
  • Audio Conferencing
  • Microsoft Intune

Once enabled and licenced, the room mailbox is ready to use alongside the appropriately configured hardware.

Working with & booking Teams Rooms

 

By using workspace more intensively and wisely we can reduce our use of buildings and thus our impact on the environment…

Sir Gus O’Donnell, former cabinet secretary and head of the Home Civil Service

Making the necessary changes that enable workforces to adapt to a shrinking office space – especially where that means adopting ‘non-territorial working’ – requires a multi-discipline strategy involving people, design and technology.

For example:

  • The personal benefits of working from home or having a shorter commute should be made clear as part of a hot-desking initiative – it has to be a two-way contract.
  • Office interiors should be designed to be more vibrant and flexible, with a variety of difference workspaces, storage options and fun areas for socialising – there should be compelling reasons to come into the office for team building.
  • Technology to help remove the stress of booking and finding free workspaces should be adopted.  The needs of other stakeholders such as the facilities management team also need to be addressed by whatever you choose.

If you use Office 365, the great news is that you already have the ideal platform on which to build and streamline resource booking and management.

The room booking benefits that Office 365 offers include:

1. A familiar Outlook & (increasingly familiar) Teams UI –These are the default collaboration and scheduling applications that are already embedded in users’ working practices.

2. Sophisticated calendaring – With Office 365 you have:

  • Support for shared calendars across co-workers
  • The ability to delegate calendar management to team members
  • Support for shared calendars across Outlook & Teams

4. Robust, centralised security –Your existing platform uses Windows auth and AD access rights/privileges to govern access and enable SSO.  This can be used to govern who can book what resource.

3. Advanced scheduling – Powerful tools like the Resource Booking and Scheduling Assistants and Cortana make it easy to find the right time for a group of people and coordinate schedules across multiple time zones.

5. Business continuity – Using regular Outlook calendar and other Microsoft-standard infrastructure means failover and protection against obsolescence is built-in.

6. A reasonably* robust room and resource booking model –You’re probably already using Microsoft’s native resource mailbox capability for booking rooms…

It therefore makes 100% sense that any solution you choose to streamline resource booking and management uses this functionality and doesn’t try to replicate it with a separately managed, secured and disjointed platform.

Available on-premises or in Microsoft Azure, our resource essentials solutions have been developed from the ground up to run in your Microsoft environment and leverage your existing investment in terms of user skills and infrastructure.

This means that issues like user learning curve, security, calendar privacy, delegate access, cross-time zone timings, integration with Microsoft conferencing, duplicate meetings, etc, are all non-issues.

Building directly onto your Office 365 platform we deliver:

  • Smart room and desk booking screens and devices for outside meeting rooms, receptions, lobbies, etc
  • Support for RFID badges and tags for on-screen authentication
  • The ability to book virtually any additional resources such as catering, special requests such as vegan & allergens, equipment, seating layouts
  • Facilities management dashboards for managing catering requests, rearranging meetings
  • Ability to strip meeting subjects out to avoid sensitive information being displayed on booking screens.
  • Management reporting including utilisation reports
  • *Fixing the shortcomings of native resource mailboxes, such as smarter handling of recurring meeting requests, a dashboard for FM/admin staff to manage and view all bookings, visitors, and much, much more.

 

See our room & desk booking solution in action

Discover how we can help you manage your meeting rooms & desk bookings in order to utilise your estates more effectively.

There’s no doubt that Microsoft Outlook Calendar makes a logical place for staff to book resources such as meeting rooms.

Apart from being convenient for end users, behind the scenes, Microsoft Exchange provides an underlying framework that makes it easy to scale and deliver an enterprise-wide solution.

Are you making the most of functionality in Exchange to help with resource bookings?

It’s got virtually every feature you could want of a corporate and indeed a personal diary.  It even has some basic capabilities that make it easier to book rooms and other resources such as equipment and catering.

For example, with Outlook calendar it’s now possible to:

  • Let users list & book meeting rooms according to location
  • View the facilities available in each room (e.g. built-in projector, capacity)
  • Request catering for a meeting
  • Make bookings subject to approval (e.g. by a member of the facilities team)

Written by our resource booking expert, Jim Fussell, our white paper explains what is possible in ‘native’ Microsoft Exchange or Office 365 and Outlook calendar in order to book your meeting rooms & desks.

It also provides tips aimed at technical staff to help them get the most out of these facilities.

See also our new eBook that looks at a new resource type in Microsoft 365 aimed at booking shared workspaces.

See our room & desk booking solution in action!

Discover how you can build on your Microsoft 365 environment to streamline your workspace and facilities bookings.

With the GDPR and other industry-specific regulations in full force, it’s not a good idea to take it on faith that your employees are up to date on their compliance responsibilities.

For a lot of organisations, it’s mandatory for employees to be regularly retrained on organisational codes of conduct and industry regulations or compliances. That can be a time-intensive and costly exercise using traditional training methods, and a monotonous chore for employees.

Thankfully, the increasing availability and adoption of Learning Management Systems (LMS) for corporate and compliance training, has made these issues far easier to overcome. We’re particular fans of Microsoft’s LMS365 for corporate and compliance training, let’s take a look at some general LMS benefits and why you should be using LMS365 for compliance training but first let’s outline what we will be covering in this article:

What is a Learning Management System?

A learning management system (LMS) is essentially a software application or platform that enables the creation, administration, delivery and tracking of eLearning or online training programs. Depending on which LMS you’re using, these programs can have varying degrees of integration into your existing environment. They can be completely standalone experiences or seamless components of daily workflows.

We are fond of Microsoft’s LMS365, find out more about our learning management software for the modern workplace.

Major benefits for corporate training

There are several benefits of LMSs over more traditional learning environments. One of the most obvious is that they are unaffected by time zones or geography and can accommodate a variety of learning styles and schedules.

Even more important for corporate applications, however, is the ability to deliver enterprise-wide training in an easy-to-manage, easy-to-track, and centrally managed way.

Targeted and scheduled training modules with completion reminders and comprehension tracking make it simple to monitor user progress and address any shortfalls quickly. Course content delivery that leverages gamification also encourages learner participation, and tight integration into existing work environments (available on platforms like LMS365) minimises “barriers to entry”.

It’s also very useful to be able to deliver training programmatically, making it possible to streamline and automate processes like onboarding new staff.

Find out more about how our LMS can benefit your compliance and procedure training needs.

What makes LMSs a great fit for compliance training, specifically?

When your company’s reputation and well-being is on the line, you don’t want to take chances on employees forgetting or neglecting their compliance training. However, ensuring everyone (organisation-wide) is up to date on their responsibilities isn’t easy – even if it is essential to prevent potentially expensive litigation. Learn more aboutdelivering collaborative learning.

Using an LMS helps overcome these challenges in a variety of ways:

Quick, easy course creation and roll-out

Most LMSs have intuitive course creation interfaces that make it easy to create – and adapt – courses as your corporate needs change. This is very useful in the compliance space, which is constantly evolving.

For example, Microsoft recently extended sensitivity labelling functionality to Office applications on Windows. Labelling can be a potent tool in an organisation’s compliance toolbox, but requires a fair amount of understanding and labelling expertise from users. Since labelling policies vary dramatically from business to business, standardised training is of little use. Using an LMS would make it relatively easy to build a custom course around your corporate labelling policies and help you make the most of this powerful, built-in functionality.

Flexible and Fun Course Content Delivery

Let’s face it, reading corporate policies and legalese isn’t anyone’s idea of fun. LMSs can help you deliver learning content through a variety of media and interactive learning activities. Implemented well, these can entice and incentivise employee engagement, making the whole experience more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Most LMSs also offer mobile device compatible training for participation on-the-go. The flexibility to engage whenever and wherever they learn best can have very positive effects on employee information retention and long-term outcomes.

Pro tip: Remote employees and mobile device use can increase a company’s risk of data breaches – make sure you secure these channels and provide adequate training on out-of-office safety protocol.

Automated Reminders and Notifications

With the help of an LMS, you can ensure compliance training is completed on time, every time, with convenient, customisable and trackable automated reminders and notifications.

Even better, some LMSs (like LMS365) let you tie training modules to activities that form part of a normal workday. For example, context-sensitive mini-modules or procedural reminders can be triggered when a user navigates to a specific SharePoint page. This is a great way to relate training to real-world applications and develop the right habits to ensure ongoing compliance.

Comprehensive Assessments and Reporting

LMS assessment and reporting capabilities tend to be extensive, including live tracking of engagement and completion, as well as automatic grading of performance.

Depending on your chosen system, your LMS may also be able to leverage advanced analytics to highlight specific trends and statistics from course modules. These can be integrated into business intelligence platforms to draw some very useful insights, including:

  • Learner engagement, timelines and completion levels
  • Performance on an individual and/or group level
  • Potential knowledge gaps that need further reinforcement or clarification
  • Areas in which course material could be adapted to better serve its purpose

Having access to this kind of comprehension-level reporting is particularly valuable in the compliance space. A lack of understanding can seriously hinder the adoption of new behaviours – a frequent requirement as legislation continues to evolve.

Auditable reports also help organisations prove due diligence in their compliance training remit, further minimising the risk of falling foul of legislation.

Easy Certification Management

For industries or organisations with mandatory certification requirements, keeping track of who has successfully completed what can be an ongoing headache. With the help of a good LMS, however, you can automate most of the certification management and retraining processes, including:

  • Tracking course completion and understanding
  • Enforcing regular retesting
  • Automatically updating procedural content to reflect latest corporate protocol

In which compliance areas can LMSs be of help?

LMSs are extraordinary tools for almost any type of education or training. When it comes to compliance, their application is particularly useful for organisations in financial services, law, healthcare etc. which have very specific compliance regulations. However, an LMS can be useful to virtually any organisation for training in the following areas.

The GDPR and other data protection legislation

Using an LMS to train employees on their role in safeguarding data makes it far easier to accommodate the evolving nature of this space. Periodic training updates can be actioned for a relatively low financial and time investment, and regular reminders can be triggered to reinforce good habits (such as securing company mobile phones and laptops).

LMSs also make it possible to track employee training and measure understanding to make sure users (both remote and in-office) are genuinely equipped to handle all relevant data-related situations. This reduces the risk of employee data breaches, for which employers may be held vicariously responsible (as in the case of UK supermarket company Morrisons). In these cases, an LMS’s comprehensive training records could also be of use in proving due diligence to strengthen an employer’s legal defence.

Pro tip: Your LMS also needs to be GDPR compliant, so make sure you’re using a reputable platform that conforms to international data privacy standards.

Health and safety

Mandatory health and safety training often comes at a high cost, and isn’t always as effective at minimising incidents as organisations may like. LMSs can offer a more effective way of driving the necessary knowledge home through engaging and flexible learning environments that encourage and incentivise learner participation.

They’re also able to track engagement and assess understanding to give employees the strongest possible foundation on which to build long-term behavioural change.

Information governance

The need to correctly label data items according to their sensitivity and data retention requirements is something that end users are becoming increasingly involved in.  Its processes tend to be a lot more nuanced (and frequently affected by technology advancements and updates) than other areas. This makes the flexibility of an LMS extremely valuable, particularly when using a platform that ties into your existing infrastructure and can trigger updates and policy reminders based on user activity.

Codes of conduct

Data breaches aren’t the only areas employees can be held vicariously liable for their employees’ conduct. Discrimination, bullying and harassment in the workplace can all have serious repercussions for employers as well. By providing training on appropriate workplace behaviour, anti-discrimination and equal opportunities policies, employers can demonstrate an active commitment to a non-toxic work environment and reduce their likelihood of liability.

An LMS can not only make this training easier to implement, update and monitor organisation-wide, it can also deliver content in a compelling manner that supports genuine understanding and drives real change.

Why introduce an LMS which uses existing technology to manage training

One of the biggest reasons we love LMS365 (apart from its great functionality) is because it integrates so seamlessly with the Office 365 environment.

Users don’t need to sign into a different learning platform to access their training or reminders. Instead, access management is aligned with their active directory entry. That means learning plans, courses, personal progress reports, certificates and more are all automatically accessible through completely familiar Office 365 channels.

That familiarity can make a big difference to user engagement and adoption.

Pro tip: LMS365 can also tap into Office 365’s productivity and social apps to add an element of friendly competition – or teamwork – to the training environment.

Choosing an LMS that integrates with your environment is about more than just learners’ user experience, however. It also makes the creation and administration of courses far easier. With LMS365 you can build, deploy, track and schedule everything relating to your training programme using Office, Outlook and SharePoint. No need for third-party web services or ongoing maintenance fees, and no integration costs.

Have you used (or considered) an LMS for compliance training? Leave a comment below and let us know the pros and cons that affected your experience or decision.

Learning management 365 solution

Manage compliance and all other training activities effectively with LMS365

When our customer wanted to give staff a quick and easy way to authenticate on-screen meeting room bookings and check-ins for its Microsoft Exchange-integrated room and desk booking system, the obvious answer was to use RFID Cards.

Adding RFID card reading capability to the chosen room screen technology was the easy part of the solution.

The process of linking the RFID card details with the corresponding users’ Active Directory profile would be the bigger challenge.

Given that staff ID cards were already in circulation and being used in conjunction with a totally separate door entry system (that was not already integrated with AD), the option of gathering users’ ID cards for registration via a central service would be difficult to orchestrate.  It would also be a very resource-intensive process.

The Solution:

By integrating the client’s meeting room touch screen booking system with our self-service AD update utility, it was possible to enrol users’ ID cards via strategically placed touch screens in reception and outside meeting rooms, either:

  • At their convenience, as and when the staff member was passing the screen, or
  • The first time they wanted to make an on-screen booking or check-in to an existing booking.

Self service ID scan page 1 Self service ID scan page 2

Using on-screen instructions (see example screens above) staff members could be guided through the process of registering their Card and then entering their Windows credentials.

We could then securely store the card credentials alongside the relevant AD record for the card holder.

Following enrolment, users were able to book rooms, desks and other resources with the swipe of a card.

By capturing the details of exactly who was booking resources, and importantly, who was checking in (or failing to check-in) to a booked resource, meant the customer had an accurate insight as to exactly how their office space was being used, and where savings could be made.

This is just one use-case.  If you don’t want to open up AD for updates – no problem.  We also support virtually any RFID technology, including Indala, Hitag, CASI-RUSCO, MIFARE®, NFC, LEGIC & HID.

Self-Service RFID Card Enrolment

Get in touch to discover how we can help you with RFID authentication.

 

This article was written pre-Covid-19 – check out our more recent article on this subject here: How Covid-19 has Eased the Introduction of Desk Management for Organisations

For those of us who’ve spent half our lives behind a dedicated desk, or in a private office, having a workplace with no seating assignments (and fewer workstations than employees) probably sounds like a recipe for chaos. Where on earth would we store our potted plants and emergency chocolate in this adult version of musical chairs? Would we have to participate in some sort of land-grab every morning just to secure a spot for the day?

While it’s certainly a break from tradition (and not everyone’s cup of tea), hot-desking is becoming an increasingly popular modern workplace solution. Far from the outlandish arrangement it may seem, the flexibility it offers can make for a very civilised and productive work environment – not to mention saving businesses as much as 30% on their overheads!

Getting hot-desking right isn’t always smooth sailing, though – and not just because of logistical complexities. Our Essential meeting room and desk booking system makes the organisational side of hot-desking relatively easy (and extends to meeting-room booking, visitor check-ins and “hot-parking” solutions, too). In our experience, the real challenge comes not from technology, but from the human side of the equation: the emotive and practical issues that come into play.

Making change easier

Encouraging employees to adopt a hot-desk environment isn’t always the easiest thing to do. As it turns out, giving a person a dedicated desk and then taking it away doesn’t have a great effect on morale.

Us humans are creatures of habit and breaking out of our routines and comfort zones is a tough sell. Oddly enough, in the case of hot-desking, we’ve found the bigger the change, the more easily it’s accepted.

The most successful hot-desk transitions we’ve seen have been part of a bigger change…..

The most successful hot-desk transitions we’ve seen have all been done as part of a bigger change: a relocation, a renovation, a consolidation – even a migration to Office 365.

It seems that by introducing broader changes, and communicating the benefits clearly, people feel less like they’re losing what was “theirs” and tend to be more open to new concepts. These include flexible working opportunities, use of collaboration technology to minimise travel for meetings, the option to work at a nearer office location, and so on.

Forming new habits

Even if employees are 100% on board with desk-sharing, there are still a few new habits they’re going to need to form for the system to work. Just remembering to book a desk and release it back into the pool when they’re done for the day can take a bit of getting-used-to.

In this, structured change management frameworks like the Prosci ADKAR Model can be extremely useful. ADKAR focusses on getting employees to understand and support the reasons behind the change, thereby encouraging enthusiastic, sustained participation rather than reluctant adoption of new behaviours. This can make all the difference in a hot-desking environment, which takes time and repetition to become second nature.

The right technology can make forming new habits dramatically easier for everyone involved…

The right technology for driving change and forming new habits can make life dramatically easier for everyone involved – particularly if it integrates with tools and processes that are already part of the normal workflow (like Outlook and Teams).

Planning for success

Implementing the right rules for your desk-booking system, in the right way, is just as important as choosing the right system to begin with.

These are a few of the things we’d suggest thinking about and discussing with your solution provider in advance. (Fair warning: this is by no means an exhaustive list – every office has different challenges and unique idiosyncrasies to consider.)

  • Will employees be allowed to book desks in advance, or only within specific time windows e.g. 24 hours ahead?
  • Will certain departments or senior staff require priority booking, or first right of refusal, before releasing specific desks into the pool?
  • What happens if an employee leaves early or doesn’t arrive for work? (Consider check-in and check-out procedures or automated free/busy indicators on desks.)
  • Will your desks be booked by location, or available on a first-come, first-served basis to the employees who have reserved a slot for the day?
  • How will you find specific employees in-office if they don’t always sit in the same spot? (Do you need a live mapping of seating arrangements?)
  • How will you arrange fixed infrastructure like desk phones or computer hardware? (Well-designed login procedures make it easier to move between workstations without losing functionality.)

The Essential Solution

Check out our adoption and change management and workplace booking solutions designed specifically for Office 365 enterprises.

You still need a good game plan to define the processes and outcomes you require, but they are a great foundation for enabling change in a way that leverages your investment in end user skills and IT infrastructure.

See our room & desk booking solution in action!

Discover how we can help you manage your meeting rooms & desk bookings in order to utilise your estates more effectively

Prior to Microsoft 365, enterprises were fully responsible for providing their own business continuity and data protection.

A multi-pronged, belt and braces approach for backup, that included the following elements, was typical:

  • Multiple backup copies written to physical storage disks or tapes
  • Use of secure offsite locations
  • Full & incremental backups
  • A regular cycle
  • Recovery testing

Along with the requisite backup hardware, procedures and people, most enterprises invested in third-party backup and recovery solutions to meet their Microsoft Office-specific needs, with value-add functionality that included:

  • Granularity down to individual message restores
  • Fast, touch-of-a-button restores

With the shift to Microsoft 365, the expectation is that failover, backup and recovery is ‘baked in’.

According to Essential’s CTO, Dave Kellett, however, “Organisations used to the sophistication on offer with third-party backup and restore solutions will be somewhat disappointed by what’s on offer from Microsoft.”

So let’s dig a bit deeper into what protection you are actually getting for your subscription fee.

1. It’s more about prevention & resiliency – not backup per se

There’s a raft of security services and ‘fail-safes’ on offer in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem to protect your data from malicious corruption and malicious (or inadvertent) deletion in the first place.

There’s also infrastructure services to protect the integrity of your data.

But nowhere does it say in Microsoft’s service descriptions: “We provide a guaranteed backup and recovery service”.

In fact, with respect to Exchange Online, Microsoft specifically states, “Although lagged database copies are used in Exchange Online, it is important to understand that they are not a guaranteed point-in-time backup.”

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/assurance/assurance-exchange-data-resiliency

So what should you know about Microsoft’s backup and recovery capability?

2. Restores by Microsoft are slow

As a base level of protection, Microsoft runs an automatic backup of your all your primary Office 365 apps (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, etc) every 12 hours, and keeps those backups for a period of 14 days.

In the event that all your in-place preventative measures fail, you can restore from backup by logging a call with the help desk, but this is a notoriously slow and inelegant process.

It could take up to 4 days for your system to be fully up and running again and this timescale may be unacceptable for your organisation.

Also, there’s a lack of granularity.  For example, with a SharePoint restore you can only restore at site collection level (unlike specialist backup solutions that go down to document level restores). This means there is a chance any work done by users since the last backup will be over-written, and this could include work carried out in the last 11 hours and 59 minutes.

To put it simply, Microsoft’s current backup system is ‘there’, but it arguably lacks the sophistication and service levels that you may be used to if you’ve previously experienced 3rd-party specialist solutions for on-premises environments.

3. Restores can be labour-intensive for you

We often hear tales from IT teams of spending hours helping staff recover from inadvertent data loss.  For example, constantly having to restore individual items to users OneDrive by using Microsoft’s eDiscovery tools to recover items from places like second-stage recycle bins and retention folders.

As well as proving to be a huge time sink, this also presents privacy issues as it requires giving the person doing the recovery access to the information those items contain.

Having a recovery capability that minimises intervention and indeed, enables a self-service approach to recovery where required, might prove valuable to your company.

4. There’s no guarantee

Another key aspect of the Microsoft backup service is that there are no guarantees around protection of your data. 

It’s worth reviewing your Microsoft Services Agreement and reading ‘the small print’ – specifically 6b.

Although this paragraph relates to service continuity, the recommendation from Microsoft to ultimately ‘be responsible for your own data’ is clear…..

Along with PSTs, Public Folders are usually the last data repository to be dismantled when you’re migrating to Office 365.  They’re typically big and full of static content, much of which is ‘ROT’ (redundant, outdated and trivial information).

Many public folders, however, contain active, business-critical information, especially where mail-enabled public folders have become enmeshed in business processes, such as the transport company we work with that uses public folders to manage and share all communications relating to all its shipments.

This means they can’t leave them behind. Apart from upsetting users and impacting efficiency, you might compromise future legal discovery situations.

For a while, Microsoft didn’t have the equivalent to public folders in Office 365.  They eventually capitulated with the provision of a ‘modern public folder service’ in Exchange 2013, – even so, large ‘legacy’ public folders are proving to be tricky to move with any degree of ease and success.

Industry experts signposted Groups as the obvious alternative to public folders – and bet development dollars on tools to help move your public folders to Groups, but these never really got traction.

We are knee-deep in the migration of some of the UK’s largest public folder estates and discovering that even the best tools on the market are stopping short of providing a silver bullet.  

In fact, many vendors, such as Quadrotech and MessageOps, have simply thrown in the towel when it comes to providing a fault-free public folder migration tool.

There’s no wonder!

Here’s a snapshot of just 6 obstacles we’ve been navigating recently in migrating public folders:

Large public folders

Part of the challenge of moving on-premises public folders to modern public folders is that you must partition them up into sub 100GB* sized chunks and distribute them in a way that ensures optimum accessibility and performance for users.

There’s a whole bunch of limitations you need to consider to ensure you stay within Microsoft’s recommendations.  This includes a limit of 10,000 sub-folders and 1 million items per folder, the number of concurrent users accessing a public folder and many more – check out this article from Microsoft for more information.

Archived public folders

Archived public folders content complicates the sizing process. Emails that look like a few KBs in size when you run an initial analysis could be linked to much bigger emails and attachments (and cumulatively ‘blow’ the 100GB limit as you try to migrate).  Taking a two-step approach and first re-hydrating archived content into Exchange is a good approach for knowing exactly what you’re dealing with, but it means you must be able to cope with an interim storage challenge and a protracted migration timeline.

Public folders you *think* haven’t been archived

Even if you feel confident that certain Public folders haven’t been archived, it’s highly likely they contain archived items that you don’t know about.  This is because users might have dragged short-cutted (archived) items into them. To tackle this, you will first need to map all the relevant retrieval paths, which could be from several legacy archives, and then rehydrate the original items into Exchange prior to the migration.

Too many options as to where to move your public folders

Migrating legacy public folders to modern public folders in Office 365 is just one option open to you.  Navigating your way through the alternatives (e.g. SharePoint, Groups, shared mailboxes, Teams – even non-Office 365 platforms) and understanding their limitations and benefits is mind-boggling, e.g.:

  • Groups – Good support for public folders collaboration features and better mobile support, but have a flat structure and no permissions granularity;
  • SharePoint – great versioning support, check-in/check-out, but not mail-enabled.
  • Shared Mailboxes – Good hierarchy support and granular permissions, but not possible to mail-enable specific folders and customize the mailbox view to exclude default folders such as calendar, contacts, drafts, deleted Items, sent items, etc.

You also have the option to archive off static public folders content to other locations such as a cloud-based archive, in which case you need to consider things like end-user access, access control, eDiscovery and so on.

Migrating public folder permissions

When you relocate public folders content, mapping access rights correctly is vital – especially with concerns like the GDPR to contend with.  This step is relatively straightforward if you’re migrating to public folders online, but not if you’re moving to a non-Office 365 platform, such as an Azure-based archive.

Even though you can extract email recipient information as the basis of governing access, coping with very large public folders combined with the additional overhead of expanding the members of distribution lists, creates a whole new challenge.   You might also take your migration as an opportunity to tidy up and streamline permissions.

Tackling invalid characters in public folders

Trailing spaces, the wrong sort or dash (that longer dash they use a lot in the US), back and forward slash – these all need to be removed from your legacy folder names prior to migration. Otherwise, the default may to move their contents to the parent folder and blow the storage limit.  In actual fact, this is the easiest bit to tackle.

Final thoughts

Each project has its unique technical challenges.  It’s clear that the key to working out your best migration strategy is to perform in-depth analysis before you start.

Check out our free public folder analysis tool.

It’s unlikely you’ll find a single silver bullet for your specific needs, but following your analysis we’ll be happy to make recommendations and share with you what we’ve learned so far in terms of the best tools and techniques around to help with your move.

Having difficulties migrating public folders to Office 365?

Analysis is key! Request a quote and get a free trial to our analysis tool

Are you being locked in by your cloud vendor?

Whenever I get on a flight I always count the number of rows to the nearest exit, so I can grope my way out of a smoke-filled cabin if the worst should happen.  A totally pointless exercise, as in reality I’d be toast, but at least it makes me feel better.

What is worth doing is checking your exit route if you’re planning to store your content in a hosted cloud service.

A common tale of woe relates to hosted email journaling vendors, whose built-in export tools are simply not up to the job of wholesale extraction when the customer wants to ‘move on’.

“It took us between 16 hours to a day to extract just one mailbox into a PST, which then needed to be re-imported.”

“We had to run a series of searches using the “from address” to collect all the emails belonging to each user.”

By all accounts, data extraction is not a fun exercise when you’ve got TBs of data to move.

Check your exit route

What’s involved in getting your data back out of the cloud has to be a primary consideration if you are planning to migrate into it.

Ask your prospective cloud vendor these questions:

  1. How easy will it be to get my data out,
  2. How quickly can I get at it? Will it be over the network or on a disk?
  3. What about chain-of-custody during the extraction process?
  4. How will I know I’ve got everything back?
  5. What format will it be in when I get it back?
  6. How much will it cost?

Cloud storage vendor escape route

If you’re stuck in a hosted journal service, or are contemplating your best options for zero lock-in cloud storage, get in touch!.

Productive meetings have been a hot subject since that Elon Musk leaked email. But why did Elon chose to target meetings in order to increase company output?

Did you know that that the average Executive spends about 18 hours a week at meetings?

Yet, almost half of us view meetings as one of the biggest time-wasters at work.

Elon is not alone in thinking that effective meetings can increase productivity.

Why effective meetings are so important

Does that remind you of your meetings? Take heart because we’ve all been there.

Everything in business is about reducing costs and increasing profit. You will be surprised at how much a meeting costs and the impact they have on your bottom line. That’s why it is very important to aim for effective meetings.

Forward-thinking organisations and individuals alike have found several new approaches to drive effective meetings. Some approaches are straightforward, but some are more radical.

Most CEOs agree that being on time, reducing meeting times and setting the agenda early are ways to improve meeting effectiveness. Some have taken more extreme tactics including removing chairs and banning phones and laptops during meetings.

Technology can also have a positive impact on running meetings more effectively. From assisting with scheduling meetings to facilitating meetings altogether; there are several tools that can supercharge your meeting efficiency.

Streamlining the Scheduling Process

Finding the right time and place for your meeting can be a huge time sink before you even start your meeting. You get the endless back and forth emails to find the best meeting time or to reschedule double-booked meetings.

Outlook scheduling assistant can be a great start and help you save time finding a mutually convenient time slot with co-workers.

However, not all meetings are internal, and in most cases, you do need to meet with people outside of your organisation.

This is where tools like FindTime, Doodle or Calendy come into play. By synchronising your available or desired meeting times, you can quickly get to a mutually convenient slot.

We love using FindTime in conjunction with our solution, as it’s the free native Office 365 tool from Microsoft.

Booking Additional Services

What happens when you need to book meeting rooms and other resources and services like catering, AV equipment, or even parking? This can result in even more phone calls and emails to catering and reception staff.

Resource Management solutions enable you to book meeting rooms and other resources all in one place. On top of that, integration with Outlook Calendar provides greater end-user experience.

Making Sure Everyone is On Time

When people are late to meetings, this can result in unnecessary delays. There is the need to recap and to extend meetings to cover the agenda. Over-runs start interfering with other meetings, causing disarray not only to you but to colleagues.

Calendar apps notify individuals through email and push notifications, helping staff to be on time.

Yet, that covers only the meeting participants. What about all the other elements that come into play to get your meeting off to a fast start.

It would not be the first time a teleconferencing camera or microphone failed to work.

Similarly, visitors and co-workers from other offices can get held up in reception as they attempt to locate where they need to go.

Resource Management tools make sure that any service providers, such as technicians, reception staff and the all-important catering staff get timely notifications on exactly what meetings are taking place and what their role is in making them go like clock-work.

Maps and wayfinding displays can also help visitors navigate to the right meeting room.

Aside from helping get everyone to the meeting on time, these types of services make great first impressions, especially on visitors!

Stopping meeting no-shows

Nonetheless, getting people on time to meetings is not even your biggest challenge. Meetings that fail to take place are!

A study carried out by collaboration experts Atlassian found that 96% of the people they surveyed had at some point missed a meeting and this is money down the drain when real-estate costs are at an all-time high.

When our customer, Airbus, went through an estates rationalisation, they decreased the number of meeting rooms by 20%, but still had to facilitate the same number of meetings.

Through our utilisation reporting, they came to realise that people had a habit of booking recurring meetings and forgetting to cancel them.

That meant empty rooms that could have been used for other meetings.

Using meeting room display technology, Airbus is now automatically releasing meeting rooms when organisers don’t check in on time. This enabled them to release a staggering 3,300 hours of meeting room capacity each month.

Other companies are going more hard-core in an attempt to break the no-show habit. For example, with our solution, it’s possible to stop repeat offenders booking any more meetings for a while.

Apart from tracking actual room utilisation and check-ins, room screens enable a at-a-glance visibility of meeting room availability and create a great impression.

Remove the bricks and mortar constraints from your meetings

You should always test whether you actually need a meeting. Once you have established that, then you can decide the time and place.

Importantly, the place doesn’t necessarily need to be a meeting room. It can be a nearby café or, even better, online.

Leveraging tools like Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, Zoom and many other online meeting tools can reduce the costs associated with physical meetings.

Resource Management solutions make it extremely easy to schedule virtual meetings and conferences. With the click of a button, you can turn your meeting into a Skype for Business meeting or conference call.

Keeping your meetings on track!

Meeting agendas, as we saw, was high on the list for running effective meetings.

There are lots of great tips to on how to create an effective meeting agenda.

However, having an agenda in place and making people stick to it are two different matters. And sometimes, removing technology can be a good thing.

To make your meetings stickier, as pointed above, you can eliminate laptops and mobiles from meetings.

Laptops and mobiles can become counterproductive, especially in meetings. by allowing people to hop on to other tasks (73% of us tend to do other work).

Our tip is to only allow laptops for the designated note takers and for presentations, thus gaining more control over your meeting.

Subsequently, to be even more productive with your meeting action plans, you can use several tools for minutes and note taking.

As cloud empowers collaboration, you can share note-taking and no other tool is more straight-forward or familiar than Word; and in this case Word Online.

And, if you are running a task management tool like Planner, Asana or Trello, you can easily attach a shared Word link to the appropriate task.

Final Thoughts

Recent advancements in Cloud computing and apps have enabled us to increase our efficiency. There are lots of tools that we can use to be more productive, and meetings are no exception.

It is important to choose the right tools, get the most out of them and make sure they tie in with what you currently use for your day-to-day calendaring and collaboration.

Add technology to your meetings, like the tools we mentioned above, and watch your meeting effectiveness skyrocket and your workspace optimisation improve.

Let us know in the comments if you know other ways that technology promotes effective meetings.

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