IT Support Travel Agents

Travel Companies such as Travel Agents, Tour Operators or tourist centres need access to the fastest internet to scour Holiday Booking sites or access airline checkin Systems and check availability. Not being able to access a site at a certain time such as a ticket site could lose existing business so the reliability of the provider and failback options should always be looked at.

Applications

Travel Agents also need to store previous , pending and future clients details with agenda's and be able to send the clients these all in a printable PDF Format. We can setup systems to prove a client has read each email or downloaded tickets to have a audit in case of any documents have been lost.

Customisable databases with all the above details can be created to suit each client with enough security to protect from a data breach.

We have helped our Travel Clients create booking forms on their websites for their clients to send through details of Exhibitions and Stands for their events which go straight into their booking database

Phone System

Calling abroad future, overseas or existing clients can stack up expensive bills for travel companies. VoiP makes the cost of this much cheaper and also provides portibility for remote workers to have a follow me phone which means they can answer calls if people are out of the office.

Hosting

As travel is the main worktype of people who work in travel , we host can host all infrastucture in the cloud so whevere they are in the world they always have speedy uniterupted access

EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

From 25 May 2018 businesses of any size may need to comply with the GDPR if they have an establishment in the European Union (EU), if they offer goods and services in the EU, or if they monitor the behaviours of individuals in the EU.

Risk that businesses could face fines of up to 4% of global revenues or €20 million (whichever is highest)

What does it mean for me?

Do you collect names, ID numbers, IP addresses, cookie data, health data, genetic data, biometric data, racial or ethnic data, information on political opinions and sexual orientation or EU citizens ? This can be current employee's, previous employee's ,  existing customers , furture customers and previous customers.

If so the new rules means that

EU citizens have the right to access, so companies have to make sure they detail what personal data is being processed; the right to be forgotten and erased, which requires companies to delete personal data upon request; and also, the right to data portability, so the citizens are enabled to transfer personal data between companies.

The UK has launched an advisory Website for companies

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/resources-and-support/data-protection-self-assessment/

Data might not have to be erased if any of the following apply:

  • The “right of freedom and expression”
  • The need to adhere to legal compliance, e.g. a bank keeping data for 7 years.
  • Reasons of public interest in the area of public health
  • Scientific, historical research or public interest archiving purposes
  • For supporting legal claims, e.g. PPI offerings.

Out of Scope

  • Non-electronic documents which are not to be filed, e.g. a random piece of microfiche, or a paper notepad, are not classed as personal data in the GDPR and are therefore not subject to the right to erasure.
  • Some personal data sets are impossible (or infeasible) to edit to remove individual records, e.g. a server backup or a piece of microfiche.

Microsoft is letting its data heavy customers have a Free StorSimple device

How would you like to reduce your initial SAN costs and expenditure and change it to a montly ongoing cost , Microsoft if giving customers its Azure StorSimple 1200 for FREE

Feature StorSimple Virtual Array
Installation requirements Uses virtualization infrastructure (Hyper-V or VMware)
Availability Single node
Total capacity (including cloud) Up to 64 TB usable capacity per virtual array
Local capacity 390 GB to 6.4 TB usable capacity per virtual array (need to provision 500 GB to 8 TB of disk space)
Native protocols iSCSI or SMB
Recovery time objective (RTO) iSCSI: less than 2 minutes regardless of size
Recovery point objective (RPO) Daily backups and on-demand backups
Storage tiering Uses heat mapping to determine what data should be tiered in or out
Support Virtualization infrastructure supported by the supplier
Performance Varies depending on underlying infrastructure
Data mobility Can restore to the same device or do item-level recovery (file server)
Storage tiers Local hypervisor storage and cloud
Share size Tiered: up to 20 TB; locally pinned: up to 2 TB
Volume size Tiered: 500 GB to 5 TB; locally pinned: 50 GB to 500 GB
Volume size Tiered: up to 5 TB; locally pinned: up to 500 GB
Snapshots Crash consistent
Item-level recovery Yes; users can restore from shares

 

Cost

  • StorSimple Cloud Appliance 1200 monthly subscription = £94.96
  • You will also need to pay for your storage in Azure Blob

The tiering engine is now based on a heat map. Frequently accessed blocks are kept locally. Colder blocks are deduped, compressed, encrypted and sent to an Azure storage account, which can be cool blob storage (ultra cheap disk).

StorSimple is available as a virtual appliance, with up to 64 TB (hot + cold, with between 500 GB and 8 TB of that kept locally) per appliance.

Other Benefits

  • Auto backups with 13 years of retention.

  • DR Situation you receieve a new unit and can start to use data in 2 minutes of installation

  • Requires 5 Mbps data per virtual appliance for normal usage.

Uses

  • Archive: You need to store a lot of data that is not accessed very frequently. E.g. CCTV , old customer information, financial data and huge Medical Scans.
  • File storage: You can use a StorSimple appliance as a file server, instead of a classic Windows Server. The shares are the same – the appliance runs Windows Server – and you manage share permissions the same way. This is ideal for small businesses and branch offices.
  • Backup: Veeam supports StorSimple as a backup target. You get the benefit of automatically storing backups in the cloud with lots of long term retention.
  • Virtual Appliance can be setup with ready made VHDX/VHD or VMDK Applicancies , attach the disk, configure networking, provision shares/LUNs from the Azure Portal, and just use the storage.

Office 365 - FindTime - Share your Calendar with your internal and Third Parties

FindTime is an Outlook add-in or Web Based Tools that allows you to quickly find time to meet with others Internally or Externally - something that can take weeks without FindTime! FindTime helps you pinpoint times to meet by looking at available free/busy data for your attendees as well as creating a poll where attendees can vote on the times you suggest, and even suggest new times themselves!

FAQ

Do recipients also need to have FindTime installed?

Nope! Your friends and colleagues only need an email address and Internet access in order to be a recipient. You are certainly welcome to spread the love and invite them to install FindTime, however, and become an organizer!

Can I send a test invite?

Definitely! Just add a second personal email address to the To: or Cc: line and you're in business!

Can I send invites to people who don’t use Office 365?

Yes! You can send a FindTime invite to anyone with an email address. Only organizers are required to be on Office 365.

Skype for Business Broadcast ( Free GoToMeeting Webinar service for 365 Users )

Skype for Business has a limit of 250 Users ... how do big enterprises get around to showing Webinars for a user count larger than this?

Introducing : Skype Meeting Broadcast is a feature of Skype for Business Online and Office 365 that enables you to schedule, produce, and broadcast meetings or events to online audiences up to 10,000 attendees. The Skype Meeting Broadcast portal is where you schedule a meeting of this size.

Company's can use this for free if they have an Office 365 Subscription and send event invitations to internal and external users with automatic Language translation which makes it a great worldwide feature.

A few great use cases for company's

  • For existing Employee's - Great for announcements and feedback across multi region offices and remote users

  • For Existing Customers - Great for new product launches 

  • For New Customers - Great for promoting new products 
  • For the Public - Great for publically listed companies promoted annual meetings

After the meeting, this video can be downloaded to host online in 365 Video for people who missed the event and also a CSV file can be download to list all attendee's to follow up attendee's on future events or feedback

https://www.microsoft.com/itshowcase/Article/Video/598/Overview-of-Skype-Meeting-Broadcast-and-how-to-schedule-a-Skype-Meeting-Broadcast

Guy Fawks - Burn the BT Open Reach Van effigy!

A small village in Devon have used their annual theme bonfire night to vent their frustrations about WiFi speeds – by burning a giant effigy of a BT Openreach transit van.

“Upload speeds are almost zero! There really are very few places in our village where a 2G phone signal can be reliably found, let alone 4G.

A spokesman from BT said: “Templeton is an extremely rural community which makes rolling out fibre broadband much more challenging. Templeton was not included in Openreach’s commercial roll-out of fibre broadband or the first phase of the Connecting Devon and Somerset partnership but we’re working hard to find alternative ways of bringing faster broadband to residents.

Azure Files Sync .. the new DFS-R?

Microsoft is announcing Azure File Sync a solution for customers who currently use DFS-R to share files between their multi site servers to leverage the cloud in enabling a cloud base file share and storage. Available for Supported OS for File Sync: WS2012 R2 and WS2016

Customers still use file shares due to 

  • App Compatibility 

  • Performance and training compared to Sharepoint and One Dirve for business

Why its good

 

  • Now with Azure File Sync , if a site file server fails , you just need spin a new box up and sync directly from the cloud without worrying about saturating two Internet Connections
  • Backups now done directly in the cloud instead of worrying about onsite. This means you can take snapshots during the day without effecting onpremise file access
  • Work Folders over HTTPS work per Normal
  • Permissions are still the same
  • Does not use outdated technology such as DFS-R it Microsoft Sync Framework that is around for over 5 years and is used by SQL Server
  • You can export all your company files using an offsite backup 100TB disk. Currently supports files up to 1tb each and 30 Million File count
  • Azure Backup is Azure Files Sync aware.

Roadmap

  • AD integration and ACLs
  • Larger shares (~100 TB instead of 5 TB)
  • Azure file sync GA
  • Cross region sync of storage
  • ZRS – sync writes across three availability zones

VTL - Why you shouldn't invest in new tape Drives or Tapes

Amazon provides a service called VTL , Virtual Tape Library which means your Existing Backup Programs can utilise this service per normal E.g. Veeam! This means whenever your tape drive fails you can not move to this service with a Gateway and continue on your retention per normal without a shift in Technology or process

Costs

  • Virtual tape storage - $0.024 per GB-month of data stored
  • Virtual tape storage - Archived - $0.0045 per GB-month of data stored

How To 

  1. Download the AWS Storage Gateway virtual machine (VM) from the AWS Management Console, and deploy it where your backup server is located, on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, or even in Amazon EC2.
  2. Install the gateway and provision storage (DAS, NAS or SAN) locally for the tape gateway. This storage will act as a durable “Upload Buffer" for data being uploaded to AWS, and as a cache for recently read virtual tape data. This Cache Storage space can be used to retain the latest backup for quick local recoveries.
  3. Configure the local gateway as a VTL using the AWS Management Console, associate its IP Address with your AWS Account and select an AWS Region for your gateway to store uploaded data.
  4. Mount the AWS Storage Gateway virtual tape drives and virtual media changer to your existing backup server and allow your backup software to discover the Virtual Tape Library and virtual tapes.
  5. Switch your backup jobs to the gateway, and data will be first written locally to the gateway, cached and buffered for upload into the VTL, which resides in S3. Much like tape automation systems, virtual tapes can be archived to Amazon Glacier for lower-cost retention which removes them from the online VTL.
  6. Retrieve tapes from archive in Amazon Glacier via the AWS Management Console and manage your recovery process via your backup software.
  7. You can deploy additional gateways at other sites, or in EC2 as well, both to back up data from those locations, and also for remote recoveries of your other sites.

Learn more about getting started here.

Azure

Starwind has partnered with Azure to offer a similar product however you need to purchase a VM to be able to do this

https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/starwind.starwindvtl?tab=Overview

Cost of this is : $0.01 / Month / GB in "Cool Storage" . and it's Archive Storage ( Cheaper ) is still to be priced

Uses for Azure B-Series - the cost efficient burstable VM size

Microsoft are coming around to copying all VM's and services available on Amazon's AWS e.g. Snowball ( Azure Databox ) and Glacier - ( Azure Archive ) 

One of these is the B Series ( Amazon's T2 released in 2014 ) , which are Microsofts Burstable VM range,  that can burst when needed to 100% CPU. You have a specific amount of CPU credits which you can use for these bursts during the day to make sure you are not overusing the VM. Once you run out of credits your CPU is capped ( like your home broadband if when you go over the limit ) until you build these credits up.

To get a better understanding how much credits are banked per hour per different VM size, have a look at the following table.        

VM size Credits banked / hour Max banked credits
Standard_B1s 6 144
Standard_B1ms 12 288
Standard_B2s 24 576
Standard_B2ms 36 864
Standard_B4ms 54 1296
Standard_B8ms 81 1944

How do you know when you have used all your Credits up?

The Azure service you are looking for is Azure Monitor with its metrics. The metrics are directly included in the VM blade of an Azure VM.

Here you get two different monitoring options for the credits.

  1. [Host] CPU Credits Consumed
  2. [Host] CPU Credits Remaining

Uses

Email Parser

You do not know when these will be coming in however you may need to do specific work on the email when it does throughout the working day. The same can be said for any parsing work.

A GIT Code repository

You only need high CPU for PUT and PULLs requests to a code repository.

Transcription Services

Same as your email parser you have no idea when these transcriptions will be coming in, however when they do , they need to be actioned straight away.

Relational database

such as MySQL or SQL Server – on a virtual machine. Normally, you’re performing run-of-the-mill read queries that aren’t particularly expensive, but at the end of the week, you need to run a series of huge, complex reports that really eat up processing time.

Low priority Internal tools which have relatively low traffic

To participate in this preview, request quota in the supported region that you would like. After your quota has been approved, you can use the portal or the API’s to do your deployment as you normally would.

Launching the preview with the following regions, but expect more later this year:

  • US – West 2
  • US – East
  • Europe – West
  • Asia Pacific – Southeast

These are offered in Preview Currently which means they shouldn't be used in a production environment due to lack of warranty ( https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/preview-supplemental-terms/

Sim Card Hi-jacking

What is it?

With the extra method of securit of enabling a second factor for authentication other than a password, attackers are looking at seeing how easy it is to social engineer this. Sometimes the factor is recieving a text message or call to a mobile phone. If the attacker can call up your cell provider and pretend to be you , they can move your number to their simcard and get your password reset!

Look at the video below to show you how easy this is when the attacker has no or the incorrect imformation!

How can I protect from it?

1) If  you can try and use an App insteaf of a text message for your second factor. As long as your phone is properly secured and encrypted and also the backup is , it will be near impossible for an attacker to exploit this.

2) If you have to enable a txt message or a phonecall as your second factor , make sure your provider has undergone strict processes nessesary before moving the number to a new sim card.

Office 365 Roadmap

One of the benefits of an Office 365 Subscription is your monthly costs going towards free monthly improvements

These can all be found here : https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-roadmap#abc

Some ones we are excited about : 

Exchange Online Protection phishing protection

Admins will be able to add phishing levels similar to how they set up their spam levels

Outlook for iOS: Draft sync

Sync drafts between different versions of Outlook, so you can start a message in one place and finish and send in another.

Office 365 Secure Score - Active Seat Average Score

Secure Score will add the ability for you to see the average score of organizations that have a similar number of Office 365 active seats.

And easily 50+ Team Updates

 

What’s new in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

3D, 3D ... 3D!

With Mixed Reality Viewer, you can see 3D objects – either from the Remix3D.com community or your own creation from Paint 3D – mixed into your actual surroundings through your PC’s camera for powerful ways to bring your story to life. 

With Windows Mixed Reality, you can escape to the most immersive experiences – touring top travel destinations, getting inside the most exciting games, attending the most popular events, even travelling across time and space – right in your own home, with you at the center of everything.

Windows and Office together are the best duo for doing. 3D, now in Office, helps you increase visual and creative impact with 3D objects in your PowerPoint presentations, Word, and Excel documents. View, resize, and rotate a 3D object with the 360-rotation handle, pull content from the Remix 3D community or locally from your PC, plus even use a brand-new transition type, Morph, with 3D models in PowerPoint to create cinematic transitions between slides.

The reimagined Photos app now gives you the ability to add filters, text, 3D effects – and soon full 3D objects – and even digital ink to your photos and video clips for great storytelling complete with soundtracks, themes, and transitions.

Ransomware protections

To better protect against ransomware attacks, we’re introducing Windows Defender Exploit Guard that helps protect files from unauthorized changes by nefarious applications and your applications from unknown exploits. Additionally, Windows Defender Antivirus now has specific safeguards in place, along with default enhanced coverage that is delivered instantly via the cloud protection service. These and other security technologies protect against persistent ransomware campaigns like Cerber, Locky, and Spora, as well as global outbreaks like WannaCry, and Petya.

OneDrive Files On-Demand

When you save your files in OneDrive, now you can access them just like any other file on your PC without filling up your disk space. Easily tell which files are available online only or offline. Online-only files download on demand with a double-click, and you can make them online only again to free up space. Or you can select files to always be available offline. Click here to learn more about OneDrive Files On-Demand and how to enable it.

 

How to prevent your business from getting hacked ..

1) Use two-factor Authentication for Authentication to all your web and application services

Your password now is a single point of failure for your email or service getting hacked by unauthorized users. The chances are the account would be exploited in the first day against some social engineering trying to get money from your finance department. Your bank and financial institutions have been using 2fa for years now and it's the recommended solution now to add to the rest of your cloud and local services. 

2) Use SSL Certificates whether possible

This is usually added to company's Web Application such as a Document Management Solution or Content Management Solution which use certificates to encrypt traffic between your web browser and the app to make sure no prying eyes will see any confidential data.

SMTP emails should be set to use TLS for mail flow by default over normal port 25.

3) Have a fully up-to-date antivirus program that also Alerts

Windows 7 and Windows 10 now-a-days come with Free Antivirus checkers ( Windows Defencer and Security Essentials)  however these are only licensed for Home use. It's best to get a fully managed AV like Webroot where Virus detections are alerted on straight away.

4) Use a third party for Spam Filtering

Even with cloud providers such as Google's Google Apps for Email or Microsoft's Email Hosting 365 , they need that added layer of protection against Spoofing, Phishing and Virus.

Services such as Mimecast and Postini can help protect all the above and provide real time protection to new threats

5) Regularly change your password

Per Bullet point 1) the first form of defense if your password! Make sure this is changed once a month and sign up to https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to make sure this hasn't been compromised elsewhere

6) Keep your Equipment Up-To-Date

Make sure all the firmware on your Wireless Devices , Servers and Routers are kept up-to-date to make sure you install security updates as well as feature updates

7 ) User training

Make sure users are told regularly about current well-known attacks such as phishing , Spear Phishing or Cryptolocker so they can understand what to look out for and ask before clicking!

 

KRACK - What is it and what does it mean for your Business?

https://www.krackattacks.com

We discovered serious weaknesses in WPA2, a protocol that secures all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. An attacker within range of a victim can exploit these weaknesses using key reinstallation attacks (KRACKs). Concretely, attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted. This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on. The attack works against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible to inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites.

 

What does it mean for your Business

If you use wireless in your organisation you are probably using WPA2 , which means this exploit effects you. Intruders can use this attack to listen to passwords and sensitive company information. Your Wireless Manufacturer being Draytek, Netgear, Meraki or Ubiqiuiti are currently realizing updates which will need to be applied to your device to protect against this.

Microsoft will release a fix for Windows 10 on October 17th, along with several extra features.

iOS devices are already patched for this problem. Android phone manufactures will be releasing updates as well as Linux Distro's.

Windows 10 Mobile - Is no more

Per this recent BBC article ,it looks like Microsoft has put the nail in the coffin of it's mobile Operating Windows 10

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41551546

The company's Windows 10 chief has tweeted that developing new features and hardware for the Mobile version of the OS was no longer a "focus".

With it's main competition being Android run by Google who gives it away for free and makes money using advertisting , and the iPhone the flagship product from Apple , it's hard for another company to come along and take some market share to make any money out of it! 

Windows Server Datacenter\Standard with Software Assurance? Save 40%!

Use your on-premises Windows Standard and Datacenter Server licenses with Software Assurance to save big on Azure. With this benefit, we will cover the cost of the OS (on up to two virtual machines) for each license, while you only pay for base compute costs.

Enable your hybrid cloud model, or modernize in the cloud

  • Maximize value from your current investments
  • Save up to 82 percent when combined with Reserved VM Instances
  • More savings coming soon for SQL Server and Reserved Instances

 

For every 2-processor Windows Server license or Windows Server license with 16-cores covered with Software Assurance, you can run either of the following at the base compute rate:

  • Up to two machines with up to 8 cores or
  • One virtual machine with up to 16 cores.

Savings Calculator

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/pricing/hybrid-benefit/#ahub-calculator

How does your business continue without Email?

Most of our customers have been migrated to Office 365 , however, we still have some customers who want on-premise Exchange due to a few reasons such as below

1) Bad Internet Availability - Due to location their internet speed would not cope with cloud hosting

2) Regulatory compliance and obligation - Government agencies proving their data is on UK Soil and equipment ) 

3) Their CMS app can only use Exchange Online mode - Mainly Law companies

As their email is host locally the issue is what happens when a server or internet connection goes down? Unlike a cloud service such as 365 , your email is only hosted in a single location. Email is usually is stored with your Spam filter provider until the server or internet comes back , but how can your organization still work in the event of this ? 

Introducing the Mimecast Personal Portal

https://community.mimecast.com/community/knowledge-base/mimecast-personal-portal-v3

Users not in the event of a internet or server failure can now get to another internet connection E.g. Phone Hot Spot or home internet and send and recieve email from a Webmail type interface until the problem is resolved.

  • Instant failover and failback  reduces RPO & RTO for email to near zero.
  • Uninterrupted access to all live and historic email and calendarinformation from everyday applications and devices to keep business moving
  • 100% service availability SLA delivered from the highly secure Mimecast cloud
  • Access to email through Outlook for Windows, a native app for Mac users and a full suite of mobile apps means employees can carry on receiving and sending email as if the primary email system was performing normally.

What is Minecraft: Education Edition and how could it benefit your School?

N.B. : Rember Windows 10 is a requirement, with the new Microsoft Education Licenses schools will get this now with their 365 Plan , however, will need to plan the Upgrade path !

How is it different from normal Minecraft?

Classroom Mode is a companion app for Minecraft: Education Edition that enables educators to manage world settings, communicate with students, give items and teleport students in the Minecraft world. For videos and extensive documentation on Classroom Mode, head to our full set of training materials.

Education?

Code Connection is an extension (released on May 22, 2017) that allows educators and students to explore, create, and play in an immersive Minecraft world – all by writing code. Head here to a training that answers all your questions, and get in touch with support if you need further assistance.

Begin your Minecraft journey with these easy steps.

https://education.minecraft.net/

New Microsoft 365 Plans ( Education, Not for Profits and Firstline Workers )

Education

https://educationblog.microsoft.com/2017/09/microsoft-365-education-affordable-solution/

Available from 1st October 2017

Office 365 Education will be renamed to A1 Plan is still Free! 

2 New Plans : A3 and A5

Discover the Microsoft 365 Education that’s right for you

Office 365 A1Microsoft 365 A3Microsoft 365 A5
Collaboration & LearningOffice Online: web-based document editing
Office client applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook
Email and calendar, instant messenger (IM), persistent chat, Yammer
Files and content management: file storage, sharing, information discovery, Groups, Planner
Minecraft: Education Edition with Code Builder
Classroom ToolsMicrosoft Teams with classroom experiences, professional learning communities (PLC), and staff teams
OneNote Class Notebook, Sway
More inclusive classroomsLearning Tools, Accessibility Checker, Office Lens
Voice, video & meetingsSkype for Business
PSTN (public switched telephone network) Conferencing, Cloud PBX (private branch exchange)
ComplianceLegal Hold, eDiscovery search and export
Advanced eDiscovery, Customer Lockbox, Advanced Data Governance
AnalyticsDelve
Power BI Pro, MyAnalytics
Management & SecuritySchool Data Sync, Data Loss Prevention, Office 365 Rights Management
Office 365 A3: Advanced Security Management, Skype Meeting Broadcast
Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) A3: Intune for Education, Azure Active Directory P1, Azure Information Protection P1, Advanced Threat Analytics
Windows 10 Education A3: Windows Defender Antivirus, Device Guard
Advanced SecurityOffice 365 A5: Advanced Threat Prevention, Threat Intelligence
Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) A5: Azure Active Directory P2, Azure Information Protection P2, Cloud App Security
Windows 10 Education A5: Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection
Server & CAL BenefitsProductivity Server Licenses and Client Access Licenses (CALs) for Exchange, SharePoint, Skype for Business, etc.
Windows Server Client Access Licenses (CALs
System Center Configuration Manager CML
System Center Endpoint Protection

Not for Profits

Not much to say here per the link : 

https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2017/09/25/learn-nonprofit-can-leverage-technology-greater-impact/

First Line Workers

First Line workers in the eyes of Microsoft are Employees that "serve as the first point of contact between an organization and its customers or products".

Mainly the industries are Retail, Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Government, however, are not enforced to just these

Features are Below and Cost is around 3 GBP per Month 

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-f1

Why all companies should use Signature deployment software

Whether you're using a cloud-based email solution such as 365 or On-Premise exchange you should utilise an email deployment tool for Signatures.

 

Job Titles can be and should be set by HR
A signature is a sign-off from an employee of your company to and internal or external party. This job title of a signature If needed or not is like a business card where the receiving party can see the seniority and Role of the sender. Sometimes employees have changed their own job titles for various reasons and this is not picked up until it is too late. Signature software can integrate into Active Directory and grab this each time to standardise the signature per user. You can also create templates so specific users display or don't display their mobile phone numbers for privacy reasons.

Consistent Branding for Logo's and marketing updates
Whether you have changed your logo, or have some new exciting news to share with your new and existing customers a Signature is a great place to show this. Centralising your signature store means you can change the Signature in real time with business updates getting you new leads.

Consistent legal notes and disclaimers
Laws change all the time, and disclaimers are there to protect the company and person sending each email. The company should deploy these when necessary and keep them up to date with the click of a button to protect itself.

Make your signatures Mobile and Device Friendly
If you have created your signature in Word with your company logos sometimes the width of this will make the email UNREADABLE on mobile devices. With 20% of the internet traffic being mobile nowadays you want to make sure you have this covered

Make sure your emails do not get marked as Spam
We recently had a customer whos employee has created a LinkedIn Logo pointing to the companies linkedIn site to be more socially aware. Unfortunately the colleague sourced the image from an unreliable spam site and the companies email was being blocked at receiving mailservers due to this.