Blue Ridge Technology

We’re back this week with another great tool from Microsoft that teams can use to improve efficiency, collaboration and even morale, all through better insights into patterns of work throughout the week. The tool is MyAnalytics, and it’s a part of Microsoft 365. If your business is already using Microsoft 365 for access to other apps (including the Microsoft Office suite), you already have access to MyAnalytics at no additional charge. Here’s what to know about this powerful tool. MyAnalytics for Employees and Teams First, let’s look at how MyAnalytics helps individuals and teams. MyAnalytics uses the power of automation to intelligently analyze how users are spending their time at work. If that sounds overly invasive, don’t worry: MyAnalytics data remains anonymous and routes only to end users, according to Microsoft’s explainer . How does this work, exactly? MyAnalytics looks at how users interact with email, chats and calls throughout the workday. It also analyzes meetings set up in...

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a security and authentication protocol that has grown significantly in popularity in the last few years. You’ve probably seen the term somewhere by now, and you may even have used it in your personal life. Now, it’s time to understand what this technology is and the basics of how it works. Because MFA has gone from “probably a good idea” to mission-critical: your business needs to switch to this more secure technology. Here’s why. Multi-Factor Authentication Defined Multi-factor authentication (MFA) s a method of establishing identity that requires more than one type, or factor, of identification. We know, this definition isn’t the most illuminating, so here’s an example or two. MFA is the technology in play when you log in to your bank or other secure site, and the website requires you to input a code that it texts or emails to you. Your login info is the first factor of identification or authentication, and the temporary code is the second. Or, wh...

All this past month, we’ve been covering a number of powerful apps hiding within Microsoft 365. These are apps that you’re already paying for if your company has a Microsoft 365 license, and they can unlock powerful functionality for you. But many businesses don’t even know these apps are there, let alone that they can already use them for free (as a part of their Microsoft 365 site license.) If you’ve missed our previous two posts, this is what we’ve covered so far. In the first post , we covered these three apps: Bookings Whiteboard Planner And in the second post , we showed you what these three apps can do: Power Automate Power Apps SharePoint If you haven’t caught those blog posts yet, check them out now. When you’re ready, it’s time for one last set of three for today’s post: Yammer Stream To Do Yammer First up is Yammer, a business social networking app designed for internal use at medium to large companies. It’s like an internal Facebook alternative for your company, designed fo...