Infographic: Cloud Computing in 2016

Office 365 news round-up

“Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change,” according to business-management expert Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence. At Microsoft, we understand that the only way to provide the excellence our customers expect is to constantly improve our products and services.

Just within the past few weeks, we have made it simpler for admins to configure and monitor Office 365, and we launched the Office 365 for business public roadmap to help our business customers learn more about pending updates before they occur. We also made it possible to create Quick Notes in OneNote using only your voice, made OWA for Android available on select devices, and added the social collaboration capabilities of Yammer to SharePoint and OneNote with a new feature called “document conversations.” We also showed you how Microsoft Office can help you collaborate better across devices (including iPad) and on the web, and how Microsoft is driving theUniversal Communications revolution.

Those and many other improvements translate into excellence for our customers, who are using our products to do amazing things. It’s no secret that Office 365 can help many businesses increase productivity and reduce costs, whether it’s a relatively new company like beverage retailer Tastea or a well-established business like Red Wing Shoes, but Office 365 also provides outstanding benefits to government, education and non-profit customers.

By using Office 365 and other Microsoft products, for example, the American Cancer Society is saving $1.5 million annually, and funneling that money into lifesaving programs. Office 365 also enabled the City of Chicago to pull together the community to transform a former rail line into a new public space that will unite the five neighborhoods it once divided. Meanwhile, the largest school district in Texas (the Houston Independent School District) and the largest county in the United States (Los Angeles County) have chosen Office 365 to help them provide better service to students and citizens.

Below is a round-up of some key news items from the last couple of weeks. Enjoy!

Julia White on Office 365, SharePoint, and Yammer Collaboration – Listen in as Julia White, general manager for Microsoft Office, answers questions about Office 365, SharePoint and Yammer.

Microsoft Office 365 prompts more businesses to get onto the Cloud – Find out why so many leading non-profit organizations in India are adopting Office 365 and moving to the cloud.

Zottegem Municipality deploys Microsoft Office 365 – Discover how the city of Zottegem in Belgium deployed Microsoft Office 365 to manage its communications and to improve how it delivers services to its 25,000 citizens.

10 Microsoft Power BI for Office 365 Success Stories – Learn how 10 different companies are using Power BI for Office 365 to build their businesses.

Moving to the Cloud: A Microsoft Office 365 Case Study – Find out why Levick, a leading strategic communications firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City, chose Office 365 for its business

Milwaukee County selects Office 365 as its communication platform – Learn how Milwaukee County, the largest county in Wisconsin, has joined the growing list of state and local government organizations that have turned to Office 365 to help improve employee communication and increase productivity.

Microsoft: Office 365 Data Privacy Assured by ‘Lockbox’ – Find out how Microsoft protects customer data in Office 365.

Microsoft: ‘Literally nobody’ but you has access to your Office 365 cloud data – Hear directly from Microsoft security experts Vivek Sharma and Perry Clarke about the security of Office 365 and cloud services.

How multifactor authentication works in Office 365 – Discover why multifactor authentication in Office 365 is so effective and easy to use.

Office Lens: A OneNote scanner for your pocket

Today we announced three major OneNote developments, including Office Lens, a neat new app in the Windows Phone Store. The same functionality is built into the Windows 8 and iOS OneNote apps and can be accessed through the camera button in each app.

Office Lens is an app that’s like having a scanner in your pocket. You can use it to take pictures of things like business cards, restaurant menus, notes on whiteboards or blackboards — anything you want to keep on hand. But unlike loose sticky notes, business cards or sketches on lunch napkins, you won’t lose track of your ideas when you capture them with Office Lens. Even things like children’s artwork is fair game. Snap a picture of that one-of-a-kind card your child made and it’ll be at your fingertips whenever you’d like to see it.

Office Lens trims, enhances and makes pictures readable. Weird angles are straightened, shadows are cleaned up and the images are automatically synced to OneNote, so you can get to them on all your devices.

When your picture includes printed text, such as a poster or business card, OneNote on a PC can recognize the text with optical character recognition (OCR) so you can search for words in the image — and you can edit the text, or copy and paste it into apps like email and documents.

Office Lens has three modes, or settings, that help make your captures look their best:

• With Whiteboard mode, glare and shadows disappear.
• With Document mode, text is clear and easy to read.
• With Photo mode, you can take pictures of people and scenery.

Office Lens: Before and after

If you already have pictures on your phone, you can edit them in Office Lens and clean them up too. See how it works in the video below.

Office Lens is free in the Windows Phone Store. Install it and try it out today.

 

Please let us know in the comments or in the app store if you have any feedback. We would love to hear from you.

Magic tricks with OneNote and Surface Pro 3

Nicole Steinbok is a Program Manager on the OneNote team. She loves the color purple, her family, and working on the team that created the magical experiences in this post.

I’m so excited to be writing about OneNote on the new Surface Pro 3 integration. I’ve worked with brilliant people from the Windows, Surface and OneNote teams to create this instant note-taking experience that’s like taking notes on paper–but way better.

In the video below you’ll see how to take a note whenever you want, have your notes with you all the time, clip and write on whatever you see on your screen, and how to customize your note-taking experience using OneNote.

In summary:

• To take a note whenever you want, click the Surface Pen and then write your note. It doesn’t matter if your Surface Pro 3 is locked or unlocked, or if your screen is off or on. Clicking the pen will always let you take a note.
• To take a clip of whatever you see, double-click the Surface Pen, and then select the region you want to clip. The selection is placed in your Quick Notes in OneNote and is ready for you to write on. You also can search for text in the clips you take, which is great if you’re clipping articles and research.
• Your Surface Pro 3 will come with the OneNote Windows Store App. If you prefer, you can use the desktop version, OneNote 2013 – get it free at www.onenote.com. You’ll be prompted to choose if you want to use it. Or you can configure which version to use in OneNote 2013: Click File, click Options, click Advanced, and then select Default OneNote Application.
• To have all of the notes you take on your Surface Pro 3 with you all the time, get OneNote on all your devices for free. We offer Windows, Windows Phone, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. You also can access your notes in your web browser at www.onenote.com.

I’d love to hear about how you plan to use OneNote on your Surface Pro 3—tell us what you think in the comments below.  Happy clicking!

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Tip: Windows and OneNote recently released updates to add the finishing touches, including the ability to double-click the pen to take a clip. So when you get your Surface Pro 3, make sure you update Windows and OneNote. 

To update Windows: Search on your Surface for Windows Update. Launch it, click Check for updates, and then install all the updates.

To update the OneNote Windows Store App: Launch the Windows Store, and swipe right to see the Charms. Click Settings, click App Updates, click Check for updates, and then install the updates. 

To update OneNote 2013: Start OneNote, then click File, click Account, click Office Updates, and then select Update Now.

1 TB of OneDrive storage coming to an Office 365 near you

Since we introduced Office 365 for consumers nearly a year and a half ago, customers have told us that one of their favorite benefits of the subscription service is the additional OneDrive storage–for accessing and sharing files on their favorite devices and getting things done from home, school, work and everywhere in between. These are precisely the reasons we included additional OneDrive storage with every Office 365 consumer subscription–and we’re happy that people are realizing the value.

Today, OneDrive and Office are announcing a BIG change to that benefit for consumers, to the tune of 1 TB per user. That’s right–we’re increasing the OneDrive storage allotment included with Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal, and Office 365 University from 20 GB to 1 TB. That’s a whopping 50 times, or 5,000 percent increase in storage–and it’s going to be here before classes are in session!

As previously announced in April, all Office 365 business customers will also get 1 TB of OneDrive for Business storage per user as part of their Office 365 subscription, which will begin to roll out in July.

What’s a terabyte? Here’s some perspective:

• 1 TB is equivalent to approximately 50,000 trees made into paper and printed
• 1 TB can store about 1,000 copies of the full edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica
• 1 TB can hold around 2,000 hours of audio recorded at CD quality
• 1 TB can remember roughly 8,000 times more data than the average human

While other cloud storage providers charge more than $100 a year for the same amount of online storage, we’re bringing in a full productivity suite too–with Office 365–starting at just $6.99 per month:

Office 365 consumer subscription options

Application availability varies by platform. Skype world minutes available in select countries. Seewww.office.com/information for details.

If you’re an Office 365 Home, Personal, University or Business subscriber, you’re good to go. Your TB of OneDrive storage is on its way and will be added to your existing account beginning in July. You should not be concerned about current files that are stored in OneDrive as they will not be affected by this change.

Things are about to get a lot more spacious, and we hope you enjoy the added legroom.