Blue Ridge Technology

Connecting Shouldn’t be a Guessing Game... Does your business rely on scheduling appointments with customers? Most do, and this process of booking customer meetings or appointments can be an intensely manual one. You, your sales agents, or a scheduling assistant spend precious time (and, therefore, money) figuring out your own schedule, asking customers or clients about their availability, and trying to align the two to find the ideal appointment time. Scale this up across dozens if not hundreds of bookings in a given month, and you’re looking at a significant resource investment. Microsoft Bookings is a powerful app within Microsoft 365 that can greatly improve the process of booking customer and client appointments. Find out what this tool can do for you in today’s blog post. Microsoft Bookings: Overview Microsoft Bookings is more than just a calendar or scheduling tool. It’s, well, a booking tool. It helps you and your customers and clients book appointments, just like you might do ...

We’ve covered phishing before on the blog, but have you heard about whaling? Put away your lifejackets: we’re talking about a specific type of targeted digital attack; no seafaring vessels in sight. (If you’ve ended up here expecting a blog post about whale-spotting or whale-hunting, you’re going to be disappointed!) This week, we’re covering whaling attacks. This type of digital attack can feel even more personal than some others—and it can be just as dangerous. Here’s what you need to know about this unique attack vector. Whaling Attacks Explained A whaling attack is one where someone (typically outside the company) imitates a high-ranking company official, usually in an attempt to steal money from the company by tricking an employee into paying a fake bill. Whaling attacks can also be engineered to steal data or credentials. We recognize that this definition is a little murky, so here’s an example. Set aside your actual role at your company for a minute. Instead, imagine you’re a br...

Begin work quicker...if that’s your thing. If your work PC seems like it’s getting too slow, your mind might immediately jump to dollar signs or danger: maybe it’s time to upgrade, which is always an expensive proposition. Or, worse, maybe you’re in danger. Maybe your PC is being slowed down by malware or some other digital threat. Those are both possibilities, of course. But there’s another much less serious or costly consideration: Windows startup. If the biggest source of slowdowns seems to be when you restart your computer, it may not be the computer. It could be all the programs that are launching at startup. And that’s something you can control. Why A Startup Inventory Matters When your computer first launches Windows, it does a number of things. One is to check the list of startup apps and then initialize each one. The more programs and apps are on this list, the longer it will take for your computer to get to its normal level of responsiveness. The thing is, over time, your sta...

Don’t pull the trigger just yet! In June 2021, Microsoft announced that a brand-new version of Windows was coming later in the year. While the tech press was expecting some sort of update, a full-fledged new major release of Windows was a surprise. But as we’ve all learned more about Windows 11, we’re growing more and more excited about the release. Your business will likely benefit from moving to Windows 11, but, in true Microsoft fashion, the rollout is going to be a bit complicated. Here’s what you need to know about the coming Windows 11 update — plus what you might need to do to get ready. When Is Windows 11 Releasing? Technically, it’s already here (as of October 5, 2021). Just not for everyone, all at once. Microsoft is taking a phased approach to the Windows 11 rollout, which makes a lot of sense in some technical ways, even if it’s going to frustrate some customers and users. In a nutshell, here’s what’s happening. Very recently purchased computers will get an automatic update...

SharePoint is one of the many apps included in Microsoft 365, and it’s one of the most powerful and complex apps in the suite. But many organizations don’t use it to its fullest. In fact, many individual users don’t even know what it is, or if they do, they don’t have a solid understanding of what it can do. We think it’s time to change that! Find out what this powerful app can do for your business in this quick explainer. What Is SharePoint, Anyway? Depending on where you look, Microsoft defines SharePoint in a few different ways. In one , it calls SharePoint “a cloud-based service that helps organizations share and manage content, knowledge and applications.” In another , Microsoft gets more to the point: “Organizations use Microsoft SharePoint to create websites.” In short, Microsoft SharePoint is an app designed to create internal intranet pages for your business. These pages can be just about as simple or as complex as you desire, as barebones or as graphically rich as you have re...