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Tech Tuesday for September 21, 2021

Tech Tuesday

This Week

  • Anyone can create a powerful database with this app
  • Top Things to Replace in Your Old School Office
  • Septembers’ New eBook

Email Clients

  • 46% Of Emails Are Opened On Mobile Devices
  • 7 Ways To Filter Your Email For A More Productive Inbox
  • The Most Popular Email Clients Of 2021
  • 18 Microsoft 365 Add-Ons To Supercharge Your Emails
  • Are Local Desktop Email Clients A Thing Of The Past?
  • Pros & Cons Of Using The Outlook Web Application (OWA)
  • What Using A Free Email Account Says About Your Business
  • How To Create The Perfect Out-Of-Office Message
  • Google Workspace Now Has Over 2.6 Billion Active Users
Bowes IT Niagara IT Support Sept 2021 Technology Insider

Septembers' Technology Insider

If your IT Support Company is ALWAYS Fixing Your Technology

Septembers' Technology Guide

Anyone can create a powerful database with this app

There’s a tool inside Microsoft 365 that allows you to get a lot more out of data sitting inside your business.

 It’s not Excel – it’s more powerful than that. But it’s still user-friendly. We reveal it all in our brand-new video.

This Months' Technology Insider

What repeat tasks could you automate?

Windows 11 launches in the next few months. Are your devices ready for it?

Finding information in Microsoft Teams.

Get it Now

This Months' Tech Guide

Is your IT support company always fixing your technology? These days most businesses prefer an IT partner who
proactively prevents problems from happening. Prevent your business from grinding to a halt and save a lot of money at the same time.

Get it Now

Email Hijack

What would you do if you returned from vacation to find that your business bank account had been robbed to the tune of $1200?  It’s not all that hard or uncommon for that matter. Learn the in and outs of protecting email in my new ebook, Email Hijack.

Click Here

Top Things to Replace in Your Old School Office

You may be in the “if ain’t broke why fix it” camp. Yet even if some of your outdated office tools and technology aren’t actually broken, they could be crying out for an update (if only you spoke filing cabinet, you’d know!). Here are the top things we see that businesses could upgrade to improve productivity and add security.

First, let’s start with those traditional landline phones. Sure, they’ve done their job well for decades, but switching to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has many advantages. Don’t overlook the benefits of:

  • streamlining voice and data services to save on bills and long-distance;
  • employees using VoIP communications wherever they have access to an internet connection;
  • accessing features such as call waiting, screening, recording, auto-attendant, and voicemail transcription;
  • gaining greater flexibility to scale up and down as needed so you don’t need to pay for phone lines you don’t need;
  • integrating calls with customer relationship management software for better data insights.

Saving, Sharing, and Revising Documents

Next up, those filing cabinets. For one, they may be an eyesore, plus, they’re taking up valuable real estate in your space. Today, many printers allow you to scan many pages at once and easily scan documents into content management software.

Moving to online document management also opens you up to many productivity gains. The software often supports optical character recognition (OCR), which makes scanned content searchable. Plus, the documents are available online, where and when employees need them. This is helpful in remote or hybrid work setups, but it also helps ensure you have a backup of critical documents if disaster strikes.

If you’re still filing documents in cabinets, you may have paper-based processes, too. Forms and folders get passed around for different people to sign off at various stages. This makes it easy for the workflow to bottleneck or, worse, for documentation to get lost in the physical shuffle from place to place.

In a step up from this, a business might at least move documents around via email attachments. Everyone gets a chance to see the document and make comments. Then, some poor soul takes all responses and correlates them for the next round of revisions.

Replace these old-school approaches with online business tools built to enable collaboration. Microsoft 365, for example, allows people to work on documents at the same time. There are no more worries about version control, and everyone can track the file’s progress.

Enabling Remote/Hybrid Work

Cloud-based collaboration software not only helps with document exchange. Microsoft 365 also allows users to communicate efficiently via the Teams channels. They can also start video meetings, share screens, and co-work on files and PowerPoints. Plus, integrating Outlook contacts and calendars helps efficiency and scheduling.

All this helps support employees working remotely or coming into the office only some of the time. With online documents and databases, everyone can get work done without coming on-site. Plus, VoIP business calls forward directly to phones or laptops for seamless communication.

Put Away the Post-its, Too

One last thing we’d love to see people replace in their offices. Those Post-its with handwritten passwords stuck to the bottom of computer monitors or oh-so-stealthily under the paperclip organizer in their top desk drawers.

We all have many passwords, and we understand the impulse to write them down, but a safer strategy is to use a password manager. A password manager stores generates and manages passwords in an encrypted database. A password management solution – such as Keeper, LastPass, or LogMeOnce – is more cyber secure than that sticky note.

Of course, every work environment is unique, and you might have some other outdated office technology we haven’t mentioned here. Need help bringing your business tools up to date? Our IT experts are here to help. We can review business practices and suggest the best solutions for your needs. Contact us today at 289-479-5606.

The Devil You Know: Insider Threats to Business Cybersecurity

Insider Threat Risk is on the Rise: Detect and Prevent 

The frequency of insider threat incidents is on the rise. Between 2018 and 2020, they spiked by 47%, according to the Ponemon Institute. 

Our latest ebook — The Devil You Know: Insider Threats to Business Cyber Security — shares essential information you need to detect and prevent insider threats. 

This informative guide covers:  

  • What an insider threat is
  • Who can be an insider
  • Who is at risk of insider attack
  • What are consequences of insider attacks
  • How to detect insider threats
  • How to prevent insider attacks and threats
  • You’ll also learn how work from home complicates things as far as insider risks too.

Get it Now

Email Clients

01

46% Of Emails Are Opened On Mobile Devices

If there is one thing that is certain, it’s that the future of email is mobile. The number of emails that are opened via mobile email clients continues to increase and is expected to become the majority within the next few years.

The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2021 (hubspot.com)

02

7 Ways To Filter Your Email For A More Productive Inbox

Whether it’s Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, advanced email filtering can make a stark difference in the quality and composition of one’s inbox. By reducing the “noise” users can communicate faster, and more effectively, which can aid in their overall productivity.

Organize Your Inbox with These 7 Gmail Filters (zapier.com)

03

The Most Popular Email Clients Of 2021

While you might expect names such as “Outlook” to dominate the email client market share, the data actually says otherwise. As a matter of fact, the Windows native client makes up only 8% of total use according to the latest reports.

Email client market share in 2021: Trends from January to March – Litmus

04

18 Microsoft 365 Add-Ons To Supercharge Your Emails

While email clients previously relied on native features, many now allow for the use of third-party add-ons to boost functionality. This gives users the ability to add any productivity apps they need and better customize their experience.

Best Office 365 Productivity Features and Add-Ons – businessnewsdaily.com

05

Are Local Desktop Email Clients A Thing Of The Past?

From Thunderbird to Kiwi, and Mailbird to Outlook, local email clients for the desktop have been gradually losing steam in favor of web and mobile apps. This makes one wonder, whether there is a future for these products, or if they will lose support at one point altogether? 

Best email clients of 2021: Free and paid apps and software | TechRadar

06

Pros & Cons Of Using The Outlook Web Application (OWA)

​

While OWA remains a cornerstone of Microsoft’s cloud-hosted email service, its adoption was not without resistance. Many users that were accustomed to using Outlook locally found themselves disappointed with the initial lack of features among other things.

What Is Outlook Web App? How to Use Outlook on the Web. (businessinsider.com)

07

What Using A Free Email Account Says About Your Business

In today’s times, businesses that use a free email service (such as Yahoo or Hotmail) without their own domain are often not taken seriously. In fact, this has become a common way for prospects and customers to determine what businesses are “legitimate” and which are not.

Why Using a Free Email Service Is Bad for Business – Press8 Telecom

08

How To Create The Perfect Out-Of-Office Message 

A great out-of-office message can be the difference between a peaceful time away from work and a distracting, unnecessary pileup of miscommunications. Ideally, this message should offer anyone who receives it clear instructions on who they should contact for immediate help or when they should expect a response otherwise.

15 Best Out of Office Message Examples to Inspire You + Tips (getresponse.com)

09

Google Workspace Now Has Over 2.6 Billion Active Users 

​

When it comes to cloud-hosted email. Google is the clear winner. They appear to be dominating the market for both free and paid users and their Chromebook devices continue to add fuel to the fire.

G Suite is now Google Workspace because ‘work is no longer a physical place’ | VentureBeat

Book Your Discovery Call

Would you like to see if Bowes IT Solutions is a good fit for your growing business? Book a discovery call now so we can learn more about each others’ business.

Book My Free Discovery Call
Glen Bowes, Niagara Computer Support

Niagara’s Tech Support Services

We approach IT with a simple principle – Keep IT Simple without scrimping on features. We’ve built a proven process that gets IT right every time. Like a Tim Hortons coffee or a MacDonald’s Big Mac. Give your staff the tools they need to succeed.

Enabling only the features you need on technology that grows with your business makes troubleshooting and maintenance a breeze. When you need a new feature, our technology isn’t crippled. We turn it on, document it, monitor it, and your business grows effortlessly.

Don’t leave a critical business component to chance. Talk to us today.

What’s New

Bot malware is a growing security threat

Bot malware is a growing security threat

by Glen | Mar 20, 2023 | Uncategorised

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