Microsoft Viva – An Overview

Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform that is designed to improve collaboration, communication, learning, and well-being within an organization. It was launched in 2021 and Viva is integrated with Microsoft Teams. It is comprised of four main components: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics. Each of these modules addresses different elements of the employee experience, working to foster a more connected and engaged workforce.

An Overview of Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint, conversely, is a robust content management and collaboration platform that has been around for nearly two decades. It allows its users to create, store, and manage documents, collaborate on projects, and build intranet sites to share information within their organizations. Microsoft SharePoint integrates with other Microsoft products like Office 365 and can be tailored and customized to meet a significant range of business needs.

ROI Considerations for Implementing Microsoft Viva:

• • Enhanced Employee Engagement: Microsoft Viva’s focus on the employee experience translates to higher engagement and productivity, which can ultimately lead to increased revenue and reduced turnover costs.

• • Improved Knowledge Management: Viva Topics uses AI to automatically identify and organize valuable company knowledge, which reduces time spent searching for information and increasing overall efficiency.
  • Streamlined Learning: Viva Learning centralizes training resources, making it easier for employees to access and complete relevant training. This can lead to higher skills proficiency and better performance.
  • Employee Well-being: Viva Insights offers personalized recommendations for better work habits and well-being, leading to a healthier, more productive workforce in your organization.

ROI Considerations for Utilizing Microsoft SharePoint

• • Cost Savings: SharePoint is usually more cost-effective than Viva, particularly for smaller organizations with more limited budgets.
  • Customization: The flexibility of SharePoint allows for significant customization to match unique business processes, which can often result in improved workflow efficiency.
  • Document Management: SharePoint excels at document management and collaboration, with features like version control, co-authoring, and approval workflows that can save your organization time as well as reduce errors.

Conclusion – Microsoft Viva versus Microsoft SharePoint – Which to Choose?

When evaluating the ROI of investing in Microsoft Viva versus Microsoft SharePoint, it is critical to consider your organization’s specific needs and objectives. Microsoft Viva provides a comprehensive employee experience platform that is designed to improve engagement, collaboration, learning, and well-being, while Microsoft SharePoint is a powerful content management and collaboration tool that can be tailored and customized to fit various business processes.

If your organization wants to emphasize employee engagement, knowledge management, and well-being, Microsoft Viva may provide you with a higher ROI. If cost-effectiveness and customization for specific workflows are your main concerns, Microsoft SharePoint may be the better choice. Ultimately, understanding your company’s requirements and goals will allow you to make the most informed (and best) decision.

Curious about implementing Microsoft Viva or Microsoft SharePoint for your business?  Contact 6th Street Consulting today to schedule your free consultation.

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While the end-of-support date doesn’t mean the product will stop working, it does mean that Microsoft will no longer support the platform.  Using an unsupported on-prem platform also poses a risk of data loss.

What are the dangers of not upgrading?

Security risks

Without Microsoft’s routine security updates and patches, you expose yourself to security breaches from hackers and cybercriminals. Also, Microsoft will not provide support to remediate an attack.

Compliance risks

Your organization’s reputation could come under serious scrutiny, and you could incur potential hefty legal, financial, and operational penalties as well.

Data loss risks

With an unsupported on-prem platform, you risk being unable to recover data in the event your database is corrupted.

Productivity and functionality costs

Newer versions of SharePoint offer features that aren’t available in SharePoint 2013. By not migrating, you are potentially costing your organization valuable time and resources that could be supported by new platform improvements.

What Action Should a Company Take?

Migrating to SharePoint Online, which is part of a Microsoft 365 subscription, can offer benefits such as reduced maintenance and a monthly subscription model based on license type and number of users. Perficient can assist with assessments of your current SharePoint environment, migration planning, and implementation services.

With over 20 years of experience in modern work solutions and business applications, our experts can guide your organization through the migration process. Contact 6th Street Consulting to learn more.

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Microsoft SharePoint Syntex is a powerful tool that businesses can use to improve workplace efficiency and streamline their operations. As a SharePoint Syntex consultant, I have seen firsthand the benefits that this tool can provide to organizations of all sizes.

Here are five of the top benefits of using SharePoint Syntex in your business:

1. Improved collaboration and communication: SharePoint Syntex allows teams to easily share and access documents, making it easier for employees to collaborate on projects and work together effectively.
2. Enhanced organization and management: SharePoint Syntex allows businesses to organize their files and documents in a central location, making it easier to find and manage important information.
3. Increased productivity: With SharePoint Syntex, employees can access the information and resources they need quickly and easily, which can help boost productivity and efficiency.
4. Enhanced security: SharePoint Syntex offers robust security features that protect sensitive information and ensure that only authorized users have access to important files and documents.
5. Scalability and flexibility: SharePoint Syntex is a highly scalable and flexible platform that can be customized to meet the specific needs of your business.

In addition to these benefits, SharePoint Syntex also offers a range of powerful features that can help businesses improve their operations. For example, the tool allows users to create custom workflows, automate processes, and integrate with other business applications.

The post The Top 5 Benefits of Why Businesses Should Be Using SharePoint Syntex appeared first on 6th Street Consulting.

What is SharePoint Syntex?

What Are Some of the Benefits of Using SharePoint Syntex?

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What’s the Difference Between the Two?

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive security solution that helps organizations protect against a wide range of threats, including malware, viruses, and phishing attacks. It also includes features like device management and data loss prevention.

Office 365 E5, on the other hand, is primarily a productivity suite. It includes features like email, calendar, and contacts. However, it also includes some security features, like advanced threat protection and information rights management.

So which one should you recommend to your clients? It really depends on their needs. If they’re primarily concerned with productivity, then Office 365 E5 is the way to go. However, if security is their main concern, then Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the better option.

What Comes With Each?

Office 365 is a cloud-based productivity suite that includes a variety of tools for businesses, such as Exchange Online for email, SharePoint Online for collaboration, and Azure Active Directory for identity and access management.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive security solution that helps protect your business against a wide range of threats, including malware, viruses, and phishing attacks. Defender for Endpoint includes advanced features like next-gen protection, detection, and response capabilities.

Key Differences to Note

One key difference between the two is that Office 365 does not include any endpoint security features, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is specifically designed to help protect your business against endpoint threats.
Another difference is that Office 365 is primarily a productivity suite, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is primarily a security solution. This means that the two products are designed to meet different needs for businesses.

Choosing Between the Two

As a business consultant, it’s important to be able to recommend the right Microsoft product for your client’s needs. In this blog post, we’ve taken a look at two of the most popular options: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Office 365 E5. We’ve compared and contrasted their features so that you can make an informed decision about which one is right for your client.

So, what’s the bottom line? If you’re looking for a comprehensive security solution that includes endpoint protection, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the way to go. If you’re looking for a productivity suite that includes email, collaboration, and identity management tools, Office 365 is the product you need. Trying to decide which one is right for your business? Contact our team of experts today and we’ll be happy to help you make the best decision for your business’s needs.

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The New Commerce Experience will change how partners purchase Microsoft online services including Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and Windows 365. Microsoft defines the change as follows

The new commerce experience in CSP is a multi-stage, multi-year transformational journey to deliver a simplified engagement experience that benefits both Microsoft partners and customers.

Essentially, Microsoft seeks to change the way you purchase licenses, with the aim of reducing complexity and offering up cost-saving incentives for longer-term commitments. The new system essentially reduces the pre-existing array of options available and adds additional features to the CSP.

Key Changes to Microsoft NCE

One of the key changes will be moving to subscription-based service which can be over three different durations: monthly, annually, or tri-annually. Here is a breakdown of the different subscription options available to you.

• Monthly. This subscription sees a 20% price increase on current subscriptions and allows for upgrades for mid-level products. Downgrades however will not be permitted. This subscription will be billed at the start of each month.
• Annual. This subscription has no price increase, and payments can be made annually or monthly. Again, upgrades are available, but downgrades remain prohibited.
• Tri-annually. Again, there is no price change, upgrades are available not downgrades are not. Billing can take place monthly, annually, or upfront. The incentive behind the three-year subscription is to protect partners from potential price rises as this rate will be locked in.

Further to the above change, Microsoft will also be increasing the average price of applications and bundles by around 15%. This essentially means that regardless of your subscription method partners will be paying more for Microsoft services and this has naturally found discontentment amongst partners.
Microsoft has sought to justify the application and bundle price rise on the basis that the new value reflects the innovation and improvements to applications, most of which have been immune from substantial price rises. Until now.

The important dates

Here are the key dates that you will need to be aware of;

• January 10th, 2022. The New Commerce Experience launches, and promotional incentives are released.
• March 1st, 2022. All new and renewing subscriptions must now be purchased through the US. Legacy CSP customers will be able to finish their existing subscriptions.
• June 1st, 2022. Legacy CSP customers must now renew the NCE plan to continue their subscription.
• October 1st, 2022. The NCE must now make all purchases and all partner incentives and rebates are removed.

Additional benefits and features of NCE

These additional features will be available from March 2022.

• Home Use Program (HUP) allows employees of organizations who use Microsoft online services to receive a 30% discount on the purchase of certain Microsoft 365 offers.
• Multi-Geo allows organizations to store data in the various geo locations that they have chosen.
• Hybrid Use Benefits (HUB) allows organizations to further capitalize on their Microsoft investment.

Pros and cons of the New NCE

As mentioned, not all of Microsoft’s partners have welcomed the change, arguing that they have not had sufficient time to meet the new qualifications and do not consider it to have been well explained. There also appears to be an underlying thought process that the change benefits Microsoft considerably more than it does its partners or customers. To help you decide on what the change means for you here are some of the pros and cons of the US.

Pros

• The monthly plan remains incredibly flexible and ideal for companies with high staff turnover or seasonal workers and requirements.
• You can upgrade subscriptions during the month.
• You can lock in an annual or tri-annual rate, meaning you will not be affected by price rises. This can also help with company budgeting. 20% cost saving on annual and tri-annual subscriptions.
• NCE makes it easier to try new products, and utilize free trials and add-ons.

Cons

• The monthly subscriptions incur a 20% price rise.
• You cannot decrease or downgrade subscriptions mid-term.
• Owing to the rising cost of applications, you will inevitably be paying more for Microsoft.

Cancellation period

Finally, it is worth touching on the cancellation period, For any new seat-based subscription orders there will be a 72-hour cancellation and adjustment period. This provides partners with sufficient time to make post-purchase changes or corrections to orders.

We will continue to share updates as more information becomes available from Microsoft regarding MCE.

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In this post, we explore how this Microsoft offering can help your business thrive as we enter the hybrid working era. We discuss some of the pandemic-related working arrangement problems that it solves and how it is enabling businesses to thrive in this new environment.

How Viva Insights Works

Viva Insights offers two broad categories of services:

1. Insights that employees can use personally to let them know how they are progressing with their workflows
2. Manager insights that provide leaders with overviews of their teams.

Personal-level employee insights create recommendations that allow employees to find more balance at work. The software produces a weekly digest, showing users how they spent their time with recommendations for how they can better use it in the future. It also collects feedback on how the worker is feeling, allowing them to correlate their emotions with work, conditions, and hours. Microsoft is even considering adding guided meditation options to help prepare workers’ minds in the morning for the challenges that lie ahead.

After collecting information, Viva Insights generates “actionable recommendations.” These are things that employees can do to improve both their work and wellbeing. Suggestions come from research for trusted sources on best practices.

Manager insights are for managers and leaders. The goal is to provide a dashboard of metrics that they can use to make better managerial and business decisions. The service collects information on things like employee engagement and organizational resilience and, again, provides actionable insights.

How Viva Insights Is Helping Businesses to Thrive In The Hybrid Working Era

Viva Insights is helping organizations adapt to the hybrid working era in multiple ways.

• Oversight over issues that employees face: Viva Insights allows managers to collect data concerning the unique problems thrown up by hybrid working. It also gives managers better visibility of how employees are using their time.
• Improved employee wellbeing: Recent surveys suggest that 90 percent of employees believe that home-working has had a negative impact on their performance, with 34 percent reporting feeling burned out. Viva Insights gives managers a better sense of employee wellbeing and actionable strategies they can use to improve it.
• Enhance understanding of hybrid working productivity: As we enter the hybrid era and jobs become more knowledge-based, it is becoming increasingly difficult to quantify productivity. Viva Insights provides helpful metrics and suggestions that make measurement easier, both while workers are at home and in the office.
• Improving the return-to-work: Viva Insights can provide employers with data that will assist them as people return to the office several days per week. Helpful information could include new employee expectations and tools to compare at-home and in-office productivity levels.
• Better cultural cohesiveness: During the pandemic, companies became less cohesive because of physical separation. Viva Insights offers both data and guidance on how companies can improve relations, even when workers are not commuting to the office.

In summary, Viva Insights is a powerful tool for the new hybrid working environment. Being cloud-based, it is easy to deploy. Considering a move to Microsoft Viva? Contact 6^th Street Consulting today to learn more about how we can help your business thrive in the hybrid work era.

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Microsoft Cloud PC is set to become available in June/July 2021, offering users the chance to access computing power on a subscription basis rather than having to buy their own machines. But what exactly is Cloud PC and how does it work?

What Is Microsoft Cloud PC?

Microsoft Cloud PC is a service that is designed to give users access to a Windows 10 Desktop from anywhere in the world. Acting almost like a virtual machine, you will log in to your Cloud PC from a smartphone, laptop, or another computer, gaining access to far more power than you would usually have access to.

With Medium, Heavy, and Advanced workloads being catered to, this sort of service can enable you to save a huge amount of money while also benefiting from the regular Cloud services that Microsoft offers. This system is Azure-based, but it does not follow the same pricing structure and Microsoft’s existing Azure services.

The Benefits of Microsoft Cloud PC

A service like Cloud PC can come with many benefits for both business and private users. We have covered some of these below to give you an idea of how powerful this new service will be, though you may get even more from it depending on your needs.

• Access Anywhere: Like Microsoft’s other cloud services, Cloud PC will offer access to your personal desktop wherever you are, making it possible to save a huge amount of time.
• Backups & Data Security: Microsoft is one of the leading data security companies in the world. This means that they provide excellent backups, while also protecting your data as if it were their own.
• Affordability & Demand: Paying for a subscription is often more affordable than buying machines to cater to your team, while also enabling you to adjust the level of service you receive based on what you need at any given time.
• Achieving the Unachievable: Each tier of Cloud PC will offer different specifications, enabling you to access machines that are far more powerful than you could justify buying for yourself.

Getting Ahead of The Game

While it is not available for another couple of months, many businesses are already working hard to make sure that they are ready for the release of Microsoft Cloud PC. 6th Street Consulting can help you to prepare yourself to take full advantage of this new service, putting you ahead of the pack and making it possible to enjoy excellent computing services.

Cloud PC is likely to change the way that many companies operate, creating a hardware environment that is much easier to navigate than it used to be. In some cases, you may be able to get away with buying the cheapest machine you can find to handle Cloud PC, without ever having to deal with slowness or incompatibility.

If you’re interested in learning more about Microsoft Cloud PC and how it can be utilized for your business to streamline access and project management, contact 6^th Street Consulting today.

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We are no stranger to the regulatory issues that can crop up when setting up an employee, or your whole workforce, to work remotely. We have helped many of our clients navigate similar waters. With that in mind, we have compiled our top three tips for healthcare companies trying to maintain HIPAA compliance with a remote workforce:

Encourage employees to set up workspaces apart from other family members whenever possible.

The number one goal of HIPAA is to protect patients’ PHI (Protected Health Information) and ePHI. In the workplace, you as an employer are able to maintain a certain level of control over who accesses what PHI. Now that employees are working from home along with all of their family members and/or roommates, it is harder to maintain control over who is seeing what. Now is a great time to send a reminder to employees that stresses the importance of maintaining a workspace where they are able to protect patients’ PHI and ensure they are the only ones able to see it.

Make online HIPAA refresher courses available to employees.

There is no better time like the present to give employees access to continuing education courses that reinforce HIPAA knowledge and best practices. Microsoft SharePoint is a great platform for making training videos available to employees working remotely, as well as any other HIPAA training materials you would like them to have access to, as a refresher.

Ensure you have a BAA (Business Associate Agreement) signed with any software vendors whose product you are using to communicate PHI.

There are a variety of software solutions available that can help you and your employees maintain connectivity right now, including Microsoft Teams. It is important, however, to note that any vendor that has access to PHI is considered a business associate and you must have a signed business associate agreement (BAA) with them for communication through that software to be considered HIPAA-compliant.

It is important to note that not all software solutions for healthcare communication are equal. Microsoft Teams is listed in Microsoft’s Tier D compliance category, meaning that all of the innovative security controls are automatically activated and it meets the standards required by HIPAA. We can show you all the ways that Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office 365 can help your employees maintain HIPPA compliance while working remotely.

If you or your company need assistance with managing regulatory compliance while working remotely contact our team of experts to get a plan in place to manage your business responsibly.

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Azure’s home page

Microsoft just simplified it to make it more focused on user experience – your user experience. Recent programs now auto-populate at you use the product, so there’s no set list of features decided by Microsoft – it’s all based on what you use the most often. It gets better and more customized the more you use it, and you don’t even have to be proactive about organizing it, it’s all done for you. And at the same time, there’s a static set of resources on the bottom part of the home page, for consistency.

Service information cards

These are the boxes that show up when you hover your cursor over something. For example, when you hover over someone’s name in Outlook – without clicking – it shows you their name/email/position/your latest correspondence with them. Think that same idea, but with your resources in Azure, giving you quick access to common tasks and relevant in-context information.

Global portal search

Azure’s search function is now streamlined, so you can be sure you never lose progress in a task. It allows you to search across all your lists of services, all the instances of your services, offers in the marketplace, documentation and research groups. And no matter where you are in Azure, the global search bar is always right there at the top.

Easy navigation between multiple accounts

All with just one click. Many Azure users have multiple accounts, whether it be a work account and a personal account – or more if you’re contracted. But you can now instantly switch between the two, while the two stay tailored to what you do in each separate account.

Utilizing patterns

Azure can do. A. Lot. But to keep things from getting overwhelming, if you just learn a few basic rules, you can apply them across all of Azure.

Streamlined browsing

It’s now faster and “way more functional,” according to Leon Welicki, Partner Group PM Manager, who delivered this presentation on Azure at Ignite. All your instances are in one place, and now, you can customize what that looks like by easily adding instances right to your list and adjusting the columns as you see fit. You can also quickly export anything you see on your screen. When it comes to filtering and sorting – there are no catches. You know how sometimes you’re in a piece of software and you KNOW what you’re looking for is there but can’t find it? The new browsing system uses more than just basic keywords to help you easily pinpoint the resources you’re looking for

Resource graph explorer

A more advanced tool, this gives you full control of all your Azure data, your subscriptions, resources, etc. Azure offers a fully integrated user experience to let you access the graph explorer right inside the portal. When you find relevant data, you can export it, share it, or pin it for future use.

Create your own dashboards

You can create private dashboards that you can either use for your own functionality or share with others. And you can make/use multiple at one time.

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