SharePoint Archives - FMT

Yes, you read that right, the President of the United States signed an Executive Order stating that the Federal government has to review and improve its Cyber Security – it’s a security journey if you will.   While that may seem like a huge undertaking for the likes of the United States, there are key takeaways that every business should apply - and you do not have to have the budget of the government to do so! Let’s look at a subset of this rather long, but truly important order: “To keep pace with today’s dynamic and increasingly sophisticated cyber threat environment, the Federal Government must take decisive steps to modernize its approach to cybersecurity, including by increasing the Federal Government’s visibility into threats, while protecting privacy and civil liberties.  The Federal Government must adopt security best practices; advance toward Zero Trust Architecture; accelerate movement to secure cloud services, including Software […]

Today, we must be able to collaborate with coworkers, partners, and customers no matter where we are — and the data we access through various services and devices should be properly protected. Sensitivity labels are one way to do so: they protect and classify information as private, public, or sensitive to keep your data secure. A sensitivity label in its simplest form is a level of security applied to your content and containers such as: SharePoint sites Microsoft 365 groups Microsoft Teams sites Note: Sensitivity labels for containers can be enabled through PowerShell. PowerShell will need to be run as an administrator and have a global admin account. Check out How to enable sensitivity labels for containers and synchronize labels in Microsoft documentation for further information. To create a sensitivity label, visit your tenant’s Office 365 Security & Compliance Center from the Microsoft 365 admin center. Locate the Sensitivity Label […]

The SharePoint Records Center solution addresses many diverse requirements for organizations with identified content retention and compliance policies. The Records Center's purpose is to serve as a central repository where you can store and manage confidential documents. It supports the entire records management process, from records collection through records management to records disposition through a solution, combining rules and workflows with archive records repositories. Today, we will go over the key features of the SharePoint Records Center and learn how to get it started.   Features of the Record Center • Record Routing: The Records Center includes a Content Organizer that can automatically route incoming records (whether submitted automatically or manually) to their proper location, based on their record type. Content Organizer is enabled as a site feature which helps in automatically routing the incoming records to their destination. • Auditing: This feature logs events and operations that are performed […]

Modern Team Site is brand-new user experience. It's more than just a fresh look, it's designed from the ground up to work on mobile devices, and it addresses dozens of nagging usability issues. Modern Team sites are available to use in Office 365 and work seamlessly with Mobile apps also. In this article, we will discuss some of the key features of Modern Team Sites.   What Are Modern Team Sites? Before we start, let's talk about what Modern Team Sites are. Released in 2016, Modern Team Sites is composed of pages, lists, libraries, and team news, thanks to integration with Office 365 Groups, allowing users to collaborate and communicate with others. According to Microsoft, "when you create a modern team site in SharePoint Online, it automatically creates the O365 group, group email address, and ability to identify whether this site will contain sensitive data (privacy) and more new features. […]

Once upon a time, document storage seemed logical and simple… Especially, when you create your own methods by which you store and archive your files—not really. Everything made perfect sense because you operated in your own world—so untrue. You knew exactly where you put things every time, on the dime—when did this ever happen? Well, times have changed. Culturally, we have migrated to a more collaborative work environment that invokes teamwork, accountability, and transparency. Consequently, as we moved into the collaborative space, our technology had to evolve with us; thus, SharePoint was born. The name became a beacon, a focal “point” where we can “share” files, collectively draft documents, set document-level permissions and document versioning, archive, and store, automate business functions, assign metadata for easy searchability, and ultimately—most importantly—streamline our business processes. It all sounds good and there’s a growing consensus in the board meetings, “let’s launch our business into […]

I was recently posed with a challenge to create a custom Microsoft Project Online field to calculate the difference between a custom numeric value and Actual Work, specifically the rollup of number of work hours completed on project tasks. Simple enough right? I knew it could be done but the execution of meeting this customer requirement wasn’t straight forward. The client utilized the work column to forecast their efforts like most MS Project users but they also wanted track committed hours which was the effort their sales team proposed to their clients. They wished to do this because at times work could be adjusted for ramp up, setup time, and other tasks non-billable tasks. What they wanted to capture was the true effort their resources were doing above the sales proposed estimate so they could consider past data to more accurately quote customers in future engagements. With some simple configuration […]

After the release of Microsoft PowerApps, many Office365 subscribers are thinking that Microsoft PowerApps is designated as replacement of InfoPath. Microsoft PowerApps provides many features that are available in InfoPath and enables enterprise users to create, collaborate, communicate and manage mobile apps without having developer skills. PowerApps can also be easily integrated with any other services of the Office365 ecosystem. From this perspective, Microsoft PowerApps can be hyped as the successor of InfoPath. However, Microsoft PowerApps has some limitations that make it unsuitable to replace InfoPath. Even, Microsoft doesn’t support to replace InfoPath Forms with PowerApps. Power Apps supports creating an app from the data stored in the lists. PowerApps is considered as a successor for custom forms and it is based on an open source version of the software called Apache Cordova powered by resources from Azure app Service. PowerApps allows to easily create and share apps from the […]

In this article, we will go over understanding, pros and cons as well as flow fundamentals of Microsoft Flow. Microsoft announced the release of Flow - a new productivity app specific to SharePoint Online - that allows users to create cross application workflows. Since Microsoft introduced the Workflow Manager in SharePoint 2013, there has not been any additional enhancements to their workflow engine. It would make sense to assume that Flow is the replacement for SharePoint Workflows. Specifically, for approval process, we have to use Flow for simple approvals, or approvals that involve multiple sites or external services. Use SPD for more complicated processes and customization options for approvals that involve a single site. To understand if Microsoft Flow could be a replacement to SharePoint Designer, we will look into the pros and cons of Microsoft Flow and how it stacks up as compared to SharePoint Designer. 1. Why should […]

Today, many businesses are becoming more comfortable considering cloud services to host critical business applications as opposed to the traditional on-premise implementations which were quickly proven to come with an increased cost. Microsoft SharePoint Online, a component of Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud business solution, offers best of breed features for any organization looking to improve team collaboration and secure information sharing. Microsoft has invested many resources to continually improve its cloud services delivery around the SharePoint platform allowing Office 365 to become the most mature and popular cloud service on the market. Let’s assume you have just made the decision on SharePoint Cloud Migration. Congratulations!  The initial step of exploring and familiarizing yourself with the newest features of SharePoint Online should have been the first step for you.  By doing this upfront research, your business can position itself to take full advantage of newer or unfamiliar SharePoint functionality when working […]

I recently worked with a hotel and restaurant client that was considering using tools to improve efficiency, collaboration, and centralized communication such as Microsoft StaffHub. Having their workforce always on the go, and rarely at a computer to view the most up to date information. They needed a central way for employees to view their assignments, communicate as a team, and access and prioritize information. This would allow them to provide world-class service for high-end clientele. So what is Microsoft StaffHub and why was it a good fit for this client? Microsoft’s Mobile First strategy focuses on “Devices not Desktops” viewing smartphones and tablets as mobile computers allowing users to access tailored business information quickly anywhere via intelligent mobile apps.  Microsoft StaffHub was recently announced as a new application for Office 365 designed to help staff workers manage their workday—with schedule management, information sharing and the ability to connect to […]

  If you are spending more time updating deadlines and task assignments than working on deliverables, it’s time to upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint and Project Online. In this session... Experience Project Online’s solutions for scheduling, time and task management, and resource assignments See how Project integrates with your existing Microsoft Office tools Learn best practices for when to use SharePoint vs. Project Online Explore reporting and dashboard functionalities and get creative with various views and chart options As your local Microsoft Partner, FMT Consultants can help you set up your project environment and train your team to ensure you are getting the most out of your Office 365 solution. To learn more about how Project Online and SharePoint can save you time on project planning and optimize project outcomes, please contact us by filling out the form below.

Are your customer documents (quotes, contracts, etc.) associated with the correct customer and easily accessible from within their account record in CRM? If it takes your sales team more than a few clicks to find accurate customer information, you can streamline your process and improve sales performance with the powerful combination of Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM) and SharePoint. In this video… Discover how you can store and manage documents in SharePoint—providing external users access to collaborate on the documents  View documents within the context of a record in Microsoft Dynamics 365  Explore rich features such as enterprise search, custom folder hierarchy, and auto site provisioning. As your local Microsoft Partner, FMT Consultants can help you combine the customer management capabilities in CRM and the information management capacity of SharePoint. You’ll gain a complete view of your customers and their business documents, without having to jump between systems.