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...

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...

Have you heard about the global chip shortage? It’s a serious problem, affecting everything from cars to iPhones to the equipment you need to keep your business running smoothly. But unless you follow tech news on your own time, you may not have heard about this problem or know what the ramifications might be at work. Here’s what you need to know about the global chip shortage, how we got here, and what your business needs to do to stay equipped. The Chip Shortage: What Is It? The global chip shortage is a supply chain problem caused by a lack of sufficient supply of the silicon microchips that power today’s electronics. These chips go by a variety of names: semiconductors, semiconductor chips, computer chips, and so on. And right now, manufacturers need more of these chips than the chipmakers can make. These chips are in nearly everything with a computing component, from household appliances to cars to consumer electronics. As a rule of thumb, if it has a screen, it has one or more ch...

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...