Technology Solutions & IT News Blog | FMT Consultants

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. […]

On July 30, 2019, Microsoft announced July 31, 2021 will mark the official retirement of Skype for Business Online at which time access to and support for the service will end.   This news reflects Microsoft’s focused investment in Microsoft Teams, expanding on capabilities in Skype for Business Online by bringing together calling, chat, meetings, and Office 365 and third-party productivity apps in a single, intelligent hub. The richer functionality of Microsoft Teams enables organizations to move faster and collaborate more efficiently and replaces Skype for Business Online as the core communications client for Office 365.   With the focus of helping customers transition from Skype for Business Online to Teams, as of September 1, 2019, no new tenants will be on-boarded to Skype for Business Online. Customers actively using Skype for Business Online will still be able to add new users to their tenant. While many organizations across the […]

Still debating whether to migrate to Microsoft Teams? Here are 10 questions that have repeatedly surfaced during Microsoft's Ignite tour along and answers to those questions. Learn more about how Teams can optimize your communication and collaboration for your organization. Manageability & Deployment 1) Can you restrict access to a specific channel in a team? You will be able to later this year – with secure private channels, you will be able to customize which members of the team can see conversations and files associated with a channel. You can restrict channel participation and exposure when needed without having to create separate teams to limit visibility. This is one of Microsoft's top requested features and they are actively testing this internally and with select customers. 2) What are best practices for governance, specifically around team naming and retention? To assure the best experience for end-users, Microsoft Teams provides IT organizations […]

Business Central is a business management solution for small and mid-sized organizations that automates and streamlines business processes and helps you manage your business. Signing up is easy, and you can migrate existing business data from your legacy system. To help you with your subscription, contact FMT Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Partner for your Business Central. When you sign up for the Business Central preview you get access to a demonstration company. The demonstration company contains sample data, but you can create your own sales documents, for example, or set up a bank account. Get to know Business Central In Business Central, some things will be familiar to you, and other things might be unfamiliar. In the demonstration company, visual guides explain core functionality and help you try out daily tasks like creating a sales invoice and viewing a report. If you leave a guide, for example, to explore Business […]

The release plan (formerly release notes) for the 2019 release wave 2 describes all new features releasing from October 2019 through March 2020 for Dynamics 365. You can either browse the release notes online or download the document as a PDF file. New for wave 2: The Power Platform (PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and Power BI) features coming in the 2019 release wave 2 have been summarized in a separate release plan. 2019 release wave 2 overview The 2019 release wave 2 for Dynamics 365 brings new innovations that provide you with significant capabilities to transform your business. The enhancements to Dynamics 365 applications include hundreds of new capabilities across the business process applications: Sales Marketing Customer Service Field Service Project Service Automation Finance and Operations Talent Retail Business Central The 2019 release wave 2 enhances artificial intelligence capabilities to help organizations accelerate their transformation of customer service, sales, and marketing […]

FMT Consultants has been named to the Bob Scott’s Top 100 VARs for 2019. The Top 100 resellers are chosen from organizations specializing in the sale and implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and accounting software. “We want to congratulate this year's class of Bob Scott's Top 100 VARs,” said Bob Scott, executive editor of ERP Global Insights (formerly known as Bob Scott’s Insights). “This selection represents recognition of leaders in this important field.” The selection is based on annual revenue generated by each reseller. A special report that includes names of the organizations selected for this year’s Top 100 list, ranked by revenue, is downloadable at http://www.erpglobalinsights.com. This report is made possible by the continued support and cooperation of our readers and by our sponsors: Acumatica, Avalara and Sage.   About Bob Scott Bob Scott has been informing and entertaining the mid-market financial software community via his email newsletters […]

The sales funnel metaphor is somewhat misleading; in real life, the process never goes as smoothly as liquid down a funnel. In the last decade, digital marketing, artificial intelligence (AI), and CRM have drastically changed the process of converting new leads into customers. Given this, it’s increasingly important that business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing teams are aligned in their views on a sales funnel strategy and lead generation as a whole. This article answers some common questions, including: How is the sales funnel defined? Why is the sales funnel still relevant? How do you align sales and marketing in sales funnel stages? How is the sales funnel changing? How do you manage and optimize the sales funnel? How do you balance human skills with data insights throughout the sales funnel? A simple definition of a traditional sales funnel A sales funnel represents the ideal path companies hope buyers take to […]

In our day-to-day business lives, I think we could all enjoy the ability to make decisions more quickly! To do that, you need to eliminate organizational roadblocks such as analysis paralysis and disjointed workspace and create a modern and digital workspace that supports and fosters discussion and collaboration. Read more to learn how FMT Consultants is utilizing technology to align with Microsoft’s digital transformation both internally and for our clients in order to achieve faster decision making and growth from our very own Director of Consulting Services Zach Saltzman.

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 […]

So you want to take your business to the cloud. Dynamics GP has been great. It’s comfortable, it’s widely used and supported across North America, but let’s face it…it could use some updates to take advantage of newer technologies offered by other systems. Moving to a more modern platform can provide many advantages to an organization. However, migrating from an on-premise to cloud deployment can be a large undertaking and the advantages offered may also come with a cost - Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC) is no exception. Throughout this article, we aim to highlight topics that should be considered when contemplating a migration from Dynamics GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central. Start by taking a look at the advantages of migrating. Advantages • Improved Platform/User Experience – Dynamics 365 Business Central offers a more modern look and feel which allows users to take advantage of enhanced dashboards and other […]

Today’s B2B marketer has a plethora of marketing tools to leverage, and nowhere is data and technology more prevalent than in B2B marketing. Let’s go through four B2B marketing trends poised to have the greatest impact through the remainder of the year and on.   An Omnichannel Experience We’ve heard multi-channel marketing thrown around for the past couple of years. Organizations transitioning from the multi-channel framework to an omnichannel strategy is a trend worth mentioning. With an omnichannel marketing approach look to see established marketing teams have success across digital environments extended reach regardless of channel or device. The days of siloed digital engagement and activities are gone, and companies are understanding the importance of creating a unified and consistent brand image no matter which channel they are using to engage their audience. Below we created a quick snapshot of what we’re talking about which includes only a handle of […]