Blue Ridge Technology

Is the sound of yet another Teams notification about to drive you crazy? A new update will put a stop to that… and it’ll help you prioritize your tasks too. Our tech update has the details. Microsoft Teams does a lot for us: it’s a communication hub, video meeting tool, collaborative space for teams, an instant messenger, and a lot more. But we’d be lying to you if we called it a perfect application. There’s still plenty about Microsoft Teams that could use some refining or some polish. One of these things has been a frustrating inability to customize sound notifications — until now. No, this isn’t massively groundbreaking news. But for many Teams users, it’s still a big deal. Here’s what to know about the latest Teams update and how it can improve your workday quality of life. Notifications Now Have Multiple Sound Options If you work with headphones on, chances are you like to get into the flow of work. You might even listen to music or background sounds (we’re beach waves people!) to...

Protect your business from a data leak with Microsoft Edge Does your business use Microsoft Edge for web browsing? It isn’t nearly as popular as Chrome, but it is the second most popular browser in use today. And because it’s full of business-friendly features, many organizations use it as the default browser for workplace PCs. If you haven’t checked it out lately, this new announcement might make Edge worth a closer look. And if you’re already an Edge organization, you’ll want to know about this new tool in Edge so you can enable it and start benefiting from greater protections. So what’s the new tool? Microsoft Edge is now better at protecting your company from data leaks. Here’s how it works — and why it matters. Data Is Everywhere — And Everything To understand data leaks we need to start with a couple of foundational truths. First, data is everywhere. Your business handles sensitive information like customer data, financial details, and perhaps even trade secrets or proprietary d...

Microsoft isn’t happy just boosting individual productivity. Now it’s set its sights on helping your team work better together. Watch our latest tech update to find out how. Microsoft has a new line of PC laptops that are just now arriving. They’re called Copilot+ PCs, and small business owners have good reasons to be excited about them. But not all of the marketing hype around these new machines is worth paying attention to — at least not yet. Here’s what to know. What Are Copilot+ PCs? Copilot+ PCs are Microsoft’s second-generation AI PCs, specially built with both hardware and software designs to take advantage of Microsoft's latest AI tools. They have a neural processing unit (NPU) that runs separately from the main processor and graphics chips, and there’s a dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard that instantly launches the Copilot AI assistant (Microsoft’s integrated answer to generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini). Most importantly, Copilot+ PCs are the first Win...

If you rely on Microsoft Teams for video conferencing, whether with your internal teams or with clients (or both), you might be excited to learn about an upcoming feature on Microsoft’s roadmap for Teams. The company recently announced plans to fix notifications and pop-ups during video calls — something that could save you from distraction and embarrassment while you’re on a call. To understand how this works, let’s set the stage with a picture. Scenario: The “Honey I’m Home” Most of us have been there: we’re standing in front of a room full of people or the digital equivalent thereof. We’re presenting in some shape or fashion, which means we’re sharing our screens. You’re cranking through your presentation like the pro that you are, and you’ve got your audience right where you want them. Then, all of the sudden, a little bubble pops up in the corner. It’s very much not about your presentation or your client or your department. It’s an email or a chat message from your significant oth...

Great news: Microsoft Teams is getting even better! What may already be your favorite office productivity and collaboration tool is getting some new AI-powered features that could really make a difference in your workflows. Here’s what you need to know so you can get the maximum productivity out of this powerful tool you’re already using. Copilot Meeting Transcripts First up is a feature that you may have seen elsewhere, but now it’s built straight into Teams: AI-powered meeting transcripts. Teams users can now use Copilot to automatically transcribe the conversation that’s happening in any Teams meeting. This could be a video chat, an audio call, an all-hands meeting, or just about anything else you can do in Microsoft Teams. Admittedly, this capability has been around for a little while in other tools. There were even workarounds that would let you use other software services to do this in Teams, but what’s great here is tighter integration with Microsoft. In short, you get a better ...

There’s a new, ultra-sneaky type of phishing attack on the rise. These attacks are harder than most to spot, and we’ve seen an absolutely massive spike in recent weeks, with as many as five million of these fraudulent emails reaching unsuspecting email inboxes every single day. This new attack is called SubdoMailing. In this week’s post we’ll explain what these attacks are, how they work, why they’re so hard to spot, and as always how to keep your business safe. What Is SubdoMailing? On one level SubdoMailing is simple: these attacks work in the same way as your everyday run of the mill phishing attacks. You get an email that urges you to click a button or link and take some action. The email looks like it’s from a brand you trust, like your bank or a popular business vendor (like Microsoft or DocuSign). But it’s not: it’s really from scammers who set up a lookalike site in an effort to steal your information. You click the link and attempt to log into the service, and that’s it — now ...

Are your younger employees experiencing ‘tech shame’? Most businesses have a decent mix of ages in the office, with workers spanning from their early to mid-twenties up to retirement age. This kind of age diversity can be a great asset, but it can create some complications, too. We’ve all heard the generational stereotypes, but let’s be frank: those broad-brush labels aren’t very helpful. While there may be a kernel of truth in some of them, every employee is unique, and judging with broad brushes creates more problems than it’ll ever solve. Now, if you’re like most managers and leaders, you already know this about negative stereotypes. But what about positive generational stereotypes? We see one crop up all the time, and it’s a mistake many employers make with their younger workers. Put simply: it’s a mistake to assume that all younger workers are good with technology— especially the types of systems and software common in the workplace. The De Facto Tech Guy One way this mistake show...

Three new Teams features to look forward to We love Microsoft Teams here at Blue Ridge Technology. In fact, we think it’s one of the smartest new products Microsoft has introduced in years. This powerful collaboration app offers the kind of instant, lightweight team-based communication businesses love from Slack, combined with reliable videoconferencing of Zoom or Skype. But under the hood, Teams goes far deeper than Slack or Zoom ever could. Microsoft’s app just has so much to offer — and its full integration with the rest of the Microsoft 365 office and productivity suite is a game changer for businesses already using 365. We aren’t the only ones that love Teams: the app now enjoys over 270 million users every single month. And Microsoft keeps innovating, regularly adding new features to Teams. This week, we’re sharing three upcoming features coming soon to your Teams environment so you’ll be ready to take full advantage when the updates hit. #1: Automatic SharePoint Updates The firs...

Three clever tricks to get more out of Teams Microsoft Teams is an impressively powerful productivity and collaboration app that’s included with every Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plan. We love the countless ways Teams is helping our customers work smarter and collaborate more naturally — whether their employees are on-site, remote, hybrid, or a mix of all three. Any app with a feature set as deep as Teams will have a bit of a learning curve. Users can easily get started with the basics without much guidance, but there are all sorts of hidden or less obvious tricks, shortcuts, and add-ons that can transform Teams into something even more powerful. Looking to get more out of Teams? Here are 3 great tricks you might not have heard of before. 1. Boost Your Own Messages with Mark as Important It’s great that businesses today have so many mechanisms for collaboration. But sometimes this proliferation can lead to notification overload. With chats and messages ringing in across multiple Teams...

Business Titans Connect Microsoft recently announced yet another big update coming soon to Microsoft Teams, its popular collaboration app that’s part of every Microsoft 365 and Office 365 package. This one seems a little less obvious at first — you might even wonder what the point behind it is. The new, groundbreaking integration? LinkedIn . Yes, believe it or not, Microsoft has owned the business-oriented social network since 2016. Up until now, LinkedIn has stayed pretty much independent from other Microsoft products (at least as far as end users can see). But starting soon, Microsoft is bringing some deeper integrations between the social network and at least one of its popular office apps. Here’s everything you need to know about the coming update. The Big Change: See Colleagues’ LinkedIn Profiles in Some Teams Chats So what’s the gist of the new update? Starting soon, Teams will gain the ability to pull in content from team members’ LinkedIn profiles. You’ll be able to surface tha...

Back in August of 2021, Microsoft quietly announced a few changes coming to the Microsoft 365 program. They gave businesses a healthy six months of notice, and that time has almost expired. Starting in March of 2022, businesses need to be prepared for their Microsoft 365 subscriptions to change in some small ways — and to cost more. Here’s what you need to know about this upcoming change. The Big Change: Higher Prices The big piece of news is that Microsoft is raising prices across its various business plans. While no one likes to pay more, the move makes sense: since launching Office 365 back in 2011, Microsoft hasn’t raised pricing even once, despite adding 24 new apps, including Publisher, Stream, Bookings, Power Automate, SharePoint, and its stellar collaboration app, Microsoft Teams. If you think back to how you interacted with Office back in 2011 and compare it to how you use Microsoft 365 today, you’ll likely see the difference. Microsoft has continued to add features, function...

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...

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...

Last week, we showed you three powerful Microsoft 365 apps that many businesses haven’t discovered yet. Bookings, Whiteboard, and Planner are already a part of your Microsoft 365 license, and they can drive incredible improvements to your workflow and processes. If you appreciated that post, we have good news: this week, we’re back with more. Check out three MORE lesser-known apps you already have access to in Microsoft 365! Power Automate Are you an efficiency freak who’s always looking for ways to speed up your work? Or have you ever noticed that your job requires you to repeat a series of tasks many times a day? If so, Power Automate (previously called Microsoft Flow) could save you some serious time and effort. Power Automate is an automation tool that you can use to create sequences of tasks or steps. It’s a take on macros, but it’s more powerful because it can integrate with multiple Microsoft 365 apps. Here’s an example: do you frequently make updates to a document, save the do...

Many businesses subscribe to Microsoft’s cloud-based office suite, Microsoft 365, because it’s the best way to keep up to date with some core Microsoft apps, like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Chances are, your company does, too. But what you may not know is that Microsoft has been steadily adding new apps to Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365, and just Office Professional before that) for going on a decade now. In fact, it’s added so many new tools so quickly, that many businesses don’t use more than half of them. To be fair, not every app is as essential or robust as Word or Outlook. Still, quite a few of the lesser-known Microsoft 365 apps are worth a closer look. Many of them can improve efficiency, collaboration, and quality of life for a wide range of businesses. Over the next three weeks, we’ll be covering 10 of these lesser-known yet still incredibly powerful apps tucked away in Microsoft 365. We’ll start today with just three: Bookings, Whiteboard, and Planner. Booking...

Microsoft 365 continues to innovate throughout its suite of products, and one of its newest tools is a big win for inclusivity. The little-known tool is called Immersive Reader, and it’s already baked into some of the most popular Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Outlook, and Teams. It’s a powerful tool in all three applications, but its uses in Teams are what takes the tool to an entirely new level. We shared a little about Immersive Reader in a recent tech tip to our email subscribers, but we wanted to take a closer look in today’s blog post. Here’s what this tool can do, plus how to enable it. Immersive Reader: What It Is Immersive Reader is a free tool built by Microsoft Education that’s designed to make content more accessible to all kinds of people. The tool was designed with students in mind, but many of its functions translate into business use cases as well. Immersive reader is already built into many Microsoft apps, including at least these: Word OneNote Outlook Teams Form...

Microsoft Teams is an impressive collaboration and workflow tool that has the potential to completely transform the way you interact with team members. It’s especially useful when you’re working with a distributed workforce, where some (or even all) members of your team aren’t in the same physical location. If you’re already using Teams, you know how powerful it can be. But did you know about these lesser-known tools from Microsoft that can further improve your productivity and workflow? Each of the tools we review below is already available to you if you have a Microsoft 365 subscription or license. And each tool integrates seamlessly with Teams, so you can keep everything running in the same ecosystem. Editor Your organization’s top-tier, public-facing content probably routes through an editor or proofreader (or someone with a better than average eye, at least). That’s because we all understand the importance of brand image: your company needs to look polished and professional at all...