When working with a Microsoft application like Outlook, you’ll notice the emphasis on productivity throughout the entire application interface, not to mention a seamless connection between all the business applications you might need from Microsoft.

In fact, the ability for all your systems to work in sync was likely a huge draw to Business Central in the first place. Business Central can be easily integrated to an Outlook account, but did you know that there’s a way to open up and work within Business Central, right from your Outlook window?

As your organization’s CRM or Power Platform system administrator, you’re responsible for overseeing the permissions, settings, and functionality available to all your users, and you want to ensure that everyone has access to what they need to do their jobs efficiently day in and day out. When new employees are added to the system, or when current users need increased permissions, each request must be reviewed and approved by you – and the faster they are approved, the faster they can get logged in and start on essential tasks.

Multifactor authentication (MFA) is one way – one of the best and easiest – to protect your organization from these threats. Available in Dynamics 365 and Office 365 applications, modern authentication and, by extension, MFA are considered standard and common today. You’ve no doubt encountered MFA before, even if you don’t know it now.

If you’re invested in making the solution you use work better for yourself and others using it, we’ve got good news. Microsoft provides a few ways to submit feedback and make your voice—and those of many other users much like you—heard.

Beginning October 1, 2022, Microsoft will disable basic authentication for Exchange Online, making modern authentication the only possible authentication method for email functionality in Dynamics GP. This means that some companies might experience disruptions to their email and workflow functionalities in GP if basic authentication is still being used, which is often the case for those using older versions of GP. Enabling modern authentication opens the door to using multifactor authentication (MFA), as well, which we highly recommend (but more on that later).

Not sure if this affects you or what actions to take next? Read on, and hopefully we will be able to answer those questions.

Of top priority for sales teams is the question of how they can become more efficient, more streamlined, while also improving their ability to land more leads and opportunities. Well, as part of the same Microsoft platform, Dynamics 365 Sales and Outlook present a unique ability to make that happen. Managing customer data, creating strong and informed relationships, and optimizing your daily work all become easier when you lean into the interconnectivity of these systems.

Companies and employees are discovering that remote work is not just possible—it may even be preferable. A whopping 52% of people say they are considering shifting to hybrid or remote work this year, and remote and hybrid jobs are the most popular among applicants—they garner 2.6 times more views and 3 times more applications than on-site positions.

Clearly, hybrid work is here to stay. Anticipating this change early on, many updates to Microsoft 365, including in Teams, have been geared toward facilitating successful hybrid work. Let’s look at some of the newest and upcoming features that will make a big difference in your hybrid workplace.

Acquainting yourself with all the apps and technology required to perform your job responsibilities is a hefty task, let alone using your tech stack with peak efficiency. That’s why it’s so beneficial when applications work together to help you do your job. Enter Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 applications. Built to seamlessly and natively integrate with each other, these business and productivity apps make it easier to transition from one to the other throughout your workday—sometimes without having to actually open another screen.

New features have been added to Microsoft Teams to make everyday communication and collaboration a breeze. Enhancements have been made to core functions like meetings, calling, sharing media during calls, as well as adding new certified devices, and more. Here is a roundup of some of the best new features in Microsoft Teams.

Looking for new business software can be a daunting task, especially when it comes to something that will hopefully be an all-encompassing solution, like an ERP or CRM system. No matter what kind of system you’re in the market for, there are quite a few options out there, and for such a crucial backbone to everyday business processes, understandably no quick decisions can be made.

If you’re looking to add productivity powerhouses like Dynamics 365 Business Central or CRM applications like Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing into your toolbelt, read on for some of the benefits you can expect when you join the Microsoft business application ecosystem.

Microsoft Teams provides businesses with an excellent solution for managing file storage and collaboration. It has its own editor for Word and other Microsoft 365 app files that can be useful for some quick, small changes. However, for larger edits and authoring, it is usually much easier to open the file in the corresponding desktop application such as Word. The functionality is usually better and the formatting can be a bit difficult when editing in Teams itself. New in the preview release of Microsoft Teams is the ability to set the default opening behavior.

Integrating an email account to Business Central using an Outlook add-in can help users better keep track of which documents are sent to which contacts. Here’s how you can integrate Business Central with Outlook, plus a few of the scenarios where you’d want to use this helpful feature.

Efficiency and connectivity have been at the forefront of Microsoft’s efforts to update products lately. Teams in particular has been at center stage, so it saw the majority of updates made, but other exciting features and functionalities were added across the other Microsoft 365 products as well. Here is a recap of some of the best new features that were added to Microsoft 365 products this summer:

After a decade of investing in improvements, Microsoft has announced that pricing changes will be made for enterprise and commercial subscriptions of Microsoft 365 packages. Smaller price increases have been made over the years, but this announcement marks the first “substantive” pricing increase in the 10 years that these products have been on the market. The pricing changes will reflect the value of added features, functionalities, and elevated standards of quality—especially as so many new features and product upgrades have been made in the last year and a half alone.

The majority of ransomware attacks begin with phishing emails. Malware (malicious software) is hidden in an attachment, like an invoice or a report. As soon as the attachment is opened, the ransomware spreads through the device, locking files, systems, or networks and leaving behind a ransom note. Even the most minor attacks can set an organization back with lost time due to disrupted operations—not to mention the risk of compromised proprietary information, financial loss, and even the hit the organization’s reputation may take as a result.

Businesses and employees have needed to embrace a “new normal” workplace reality, and it’s crucial that remote, asynchronous, and hybrid work options can keep up with expectations. One thing has been clear – innovation and growth mindsets are key factors in successfully getting things done together, even while working apart.

Microsoft Teams provides an all-in-one collaboration solution for environments returning in-person, embracing remote work, and everything in between. The best features of the Microsoft Teams desktop app have been optimized into a mobile app for iOS and Android, letting users talk with anyone, anywhere — without missing out on the capabilities of the desktop version.

Accessibility should be the standard, not the exception. Fortunately, that is the direction culture is shifting. Microsoft 365 products are designed with accessible and inclusive features that work with any individual to better create, interact with, understand, and retain content. Documents, presentations, meetings, and emails can be better—more accessible, inclusive, easier to create, intuitive, interactive, successful. Here are seven accessibility and inclusivity tools and the Microsoft 365 applications they can be used within.

Today, security is not so easy as having your assets in a bank lockbox. With passwords required for almost all online accounts and most accounts being online nowadays, it’s hard to remember account usernames and passwords. It’s tempting to reuse them. But with over 300 million fraudulent sign-in attempts to just Microsoft’s cloud services each day (not to mention all other attempts), no one can afford to play fast and loose with their online security.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the standard of online security, and accounts that use MFA are 99.9% more protected from account compromise attacks than using a password alone.

As remote and hybrid workplaces become standard, so too does the technology to solve these common workplace situations. OneDrive and SharePoint are two cloud document storage and management services that greatly enable flexibility in how, when, and where employees work.

Each give users access to files from anywhere, and each have unique strengths and should be used in different situations: while OneDrive enables file organization and storage on an individual level, SharePoint aids a company’s storage and management of cloud documents at the organizational level.

After the forced pivot to remote work due to the pandemic, companies have learned an important lesson: working from home can be effective and productive. Though the quick and easy option for a “return to work” plan might be reverting to business-as-usual pre-pandemic, innovative and growth-minded companies will want to embrace those lessons brought about by remote work. This means establishing hybrid workplace policies, which 80% of managers expect to implement and 70% of employees plan to use.