Very informative and definitely worth a look…. CLICK HERE.

First 5 minutes: Sign in and Get Started
If you’re already logged on to your organization’s network, signing in is as easy as starting Microsoft® Lync™ 2010.

1. On the Start menu, click All Programs, click Microsoft Lync, and then click Microsoft Lync 2010.
   
2. Click your presence status if you want to change it, or click Reset Statusto let Lync 2010 set your status automatically based on your activity or Microsoft® Outlook calendar.
3. Set a location to let people know where you are today.
4. Let them know what you’re up to by clicking What’s happening today? and typing a note.

What does your Presence State Mean?

Personalize your Contact Info
You can personalize your contact and presence information. For example, you can add your mobile phone number and make it available only to close contacts.

1. In the Lync main window, click the Options button, and then click Phones.

2. Click the button for the phone number, and then click OK.
  3. Select the Include in my contact card check box, and then click OK.
  4. To let certain people see your personal numbers: in your Contacts list, right-click the contact’s name, click Change Privacy Relationship, and then click Friends and Family.

Change your Photo Settings
You can decide whether you want to see your contacts’ photos. You can also change your own photo or choose not to show one.

1. Click the Options button, and then click Personal.
2. Under Display photo, to hide other people’s photos, clear the Show photos of contacts check box.

To change your photo, first upload the new photo to an unauthenticated website (such as Windows Live®). The file must be less than 30 KB in size.

1. Click the Options button, and then click My Picture.
2. Click Show a picture from a web address, type the web address including the file name, click Connect to Picture, and then click OK.

Find the Right Person
Just start typing a person’s name in the search box, and results will appear below the box. If you see who you’re looking for, double-click the person’s name to send an instant message.

If you’re not sure you’ve found the right person, the contact card gives more information and shows where the person fits into the organizational tree.

- To display the contact card, point to the person’s picture.

- For a full version, click the down arrow in the lower right corner. Then, to see his or her organization, click the Organization tab.

Build your Contacts
Add people to your Contacts list if you’ll be contacting them often or if you just want to keep track of them.

1. In the search box, type the person’s name or email address.
2. In the search results, right-click the person, and then do one of the following:

A. If you’ll be contacting them often, click Pin to Frequent Contacts.

B. Add them to a group by clicking Add to Contact List and then clicking the group name.

C.If you haven’t created groups yet, click Add to New Group, and give the group a name. You can add more contacts to this group later.

3. (Optional) To make sure you know when someone becomes available, right-click the contact’s name, and then click Tag for Status Change Alerts.

Send an Instant Message

1. In your Contacts list, double-click a contact.
2. Type a message in the message input area at the bottom of the message box, and then press Enter.

3. (Optional) To add an emoticon, click the emoticon (smile face) button.
4. (Optional) To customize the font, such as type or size, click the letter A next to the emoticon button.

Receive an Instant Message
When someone sends you an instant message, an instant message alert appears in the lower-right corner of your computer screen. Do one of the following:

- To accept the invitation, click the alert.

- To redirect the invitation, click Redirect.

- To decline the invitation, click Ignore.

To see the coverage, click here.

To see the article, go to the Business Wings website here.

As the last few years have shown, no one can predict the future and when it comes to running a business, circumstance can often lead to downfall. Economic decline, natural disaster, public uprising…. and while we can’t protect our businesses against every eventuality, we can try to reduce or eliminate the impact that certain events might have on our success.

Enter future proofing.

It’s not a new concept – far from it – but advances in technology in more recent years have meant that future proofing can now be taken to a different level. Almost all businesses use IT and for most, technology is essential. But keeping up with the ever changing world of IT can be costly with new gadgets, processors, apps and operating systems constantly begging to be purchased or upgraded. So when you make your investment, you want assurance that it will meet your needs not only now, but in the future – as your business grows and circumstances change. And you want a system that can help you to plan for the unplanned, protect you against the unpredictable and keep costs to a minimum.

Enter cloud computing.

Cloud computing, Software as a Service (SaaS), hosted solutions, virtualization…..without going into techy geek mode, they amount more or less to the same idea – your data, software, apps and programmes are hosted in “the cloud” – off site on your service provider’s servers, giving you instant and secure access to your IT without the need for capital investment, upgrade or maintenance fees.

What’s that got to do with future proofing? Well, it can help you plan for the unexpected in a number of ways…

First, there’s disaster recovery. If a future event renders your business premises unusable – let’s say fire, flood or theft – then cloud computing enables you to simply pick up, change location, and continue with business as usual. All you need is an internet connection and you can connect to all of your company data, emails, apps etc. in the same way as you would in your office. Think the chances of fire, flood or theft are fairly slim? Well yes, let’s certainly hope so. But that’s the very essence of future proofing – preparing for unforeseen events.

So as you can see, cloud offers a flexible approach to computing, and this flexibility can prove invaluable not only in escaping the pitfalls of disastrous events, but in providing the perfect IT platform upon which to grow your business. Microsoft’s cloud solution, Office 365, is based on a per user per month cost model. So as your business grows and you take on more staff, you can simply add more seats to your account (at a cost from as little as £6.50 per user per month).

Which leads me nicely onto cost. If you don’t know what the future holds, you don’t want to be spending money that you don’t have to. Particularly in unstable economic times. Cloud can help you to keep hold of your cash for that unplanned rainy day by enabling increased cost control. If you take a hosted approach to your IT, then there’s no need to worry about storage space, updating software, licencing, server maintenance…. Essentially you pay on a monthly basis to rent your IT as a service, rather than purchasing and looking after expensive kit. So, the capital cost is greatly reduced, it becomes easier to budget and when you expand, or (heaven forbid) downsize, then it’s a far simpler task. You have the flexibility to do so without the risk of investing in expensive hardware.

And finally, although many people fear the safety of their data under a cloud solution, it is actually a far more secure approach to computing than the traditional on-premise set up. Data centres are seriously secure. Ours, for example, boasts 24/7 security staff, state of the art CCTV, motion detection and key fob access – so a multi-layered line of defence. It also has full air conditioning, a VESDA smoke and fire protection system and is supplied by two national grid feeds with two 2MW generators providing enough energy to sustain a seven day power outage. So the chances of your data being lost of destroyed, are really very slim! Can you say the same of your own offices?

So there we have it – an IT solution to future proof your business against (almost) all eventualities. While neither future proofing nor cloud computing can be responsible for protecting you against every event that might be thrown your way, it can certainly help to keep your business running if circumstances change. And in this day and age, can you really afford to leave anything to chance?

To read the full details, click here.

How to access Office 365
You will need to log on to the Office 365 portal to gain access to the Team Site. Either by clicking the Office 365 logo (if installed on your computer) or by navigating to the https://portal.microsoftonline.com.

Logging on to Office 365
To log on to Office 365 enter your username for Office 365 (example@example.onmicrosoft.com) and your Office 365 password.

The Office 365 Home Page
Once you are logged on you will be presented with the office 365 home page. From this page click on Team Site.

 
Sites
A site is a collection of related Web pages where your organisation can work on projects, conduct meetings, and share information. A Site may contain sub-sites, and those sites may contain further sub-sites. Your team site may be part of a larger organizational portal site where departments, such as Technical, write and publish information and resources for the rest of the organisation.

Sites have navigation, themes/branding, custom permissions, workflows, and have the ability to be configured or customised in a number of ways. In order to achieve a greater degree of maintainability, sites typically inherit site-level settings from their parent sites.

List
A List is a web site component where your organisation can store, share, and manage information – all of which have the same properties. For instance, you can create a task list to track work assignments or track team events on a calendar.

Library
A Library is a special type of list that stores files as well as information about files.

Microsoft SharePoint comes with some pre-defined list and library definitions. These include: Announcement Lists, Blogs, Contacts, Discussion Boards, Document libraries, External Content (BCS) lists, Pages, Surveys and Tasks.

Some of these pre-defined lists have addition integration, for example, lists based on the contact content-type can be synced directly with Microsoft Outlook.

Views

You can use views to see the items in a list or library that are most important to you or best fit a purpose. For example you might create a list that applies to a specific department, or to highlight particular documents in a library.

You can create multiple views of a list or library that people can select from. You can also use a Web Part to display a view of a list or library on a separate page of your site.

Web Parts
A Web part is a modular unit of information that forms a basic building block of most pages on a site.  These parts are user interfaces whose typical uses are:
- Displaying content defined in the web-parts settings.
- Displaying items from Lists/Libraries.
- Providing Access to Features in the SharePoint Platform.

Search
SharePoint search will search the entire site or sites including documents stored within libraries for any key words or sentences depending on the search criteria.

Security Settings
Depending upon the security settings that you have been granted controls what options are available to you on your site. If you have full access to the site then you have the full range of options to manage the site. If you are assigned to the Contribute or Read permission level then your options and access to the site content are more limited.

Adding content to a site
You can add items to lists and files to libraries by using your web browser. The buttons you use to perform the most common actions are on the ribbon, which is near the top of the page on most pages of a site.

Buttons on the ribbon may be greyed out for any of the following reasons:
- The action is not applicable or it depends on some other action.
- You do not have permission to complete the task
- The feature is not enabled for the site.

You can also save files to a document library from some client programs that are compatible with Office 365.

In addition to adding content to existing lists and libraries, you may also have permission to create new lists and libraries. The list and library templates give you a head start. Depending on your permission level, you can also create and customise new pages and sites.

Lists
Although there are different types of lists, the procedure for adding items to them is similar, so you don’t need to learn several new techniques to work with different types of lists.

Add an item to a list

1. In the list where you want to add the item, click the Items tab on the ribbon.
2. Click New Item.

3.  Complete the required fields and any others that you want to complete.

 
Details when creating a new item in a task list

4. Click Save.

Edit or delete an item in a list
1. Point to an item and then select the check box that appears next to the item. Note that you can select multiple items when deleting by selecting additional check boxes.

2. On the Items tab on the ribbon, click either Edit Item or Delete Item as appropriate.

 Create a List
1. To create a list, click on Site Actions menu and then click More options. Note if you do not see the site actions menu or the option to create does not appear you may not have permission to create a list.

2. On the Create page, click the type of list you want to create.

3. Type a Name for the list and complete any other fields.

4. Click Create.

Libraries
A library is a location on a site where you can create, collect, update and manage files with team members. Each library displays a list of files and key information about the files, which helps people to use the files to work together.

You can add a file to a library by uploading it from your Web browser. After you add the file to the library, other people with the appropriate permissions can see the file. If you are already viewing the library when a file is added, you may need to refresh your browser to see the new file.

If you are using a program that is compatible with Office 365, you can create a new file based on a template while you are working in the library.

Add a file to a library

1. In the library where you want to add the file, click the Documents tab on the ribbon.

2. Click Upload Document. Note to upload multiple documents select Upload Multiple Documents from the list. Notice for Macintosh computers due to the way the operating system works you are unable to upload multiple documents without purchasing the SharePlus application.

3. Browse to the document and then click OK.

Edit or Delete a file in a library
1. Point to a file and then select the check box that appears next to the file.

2. On the Documents tab on the ribbon, click either Edit Document or Delete Document as appropriate.

Create a Document library

1. To create a document library, click the Site Actions menu and then click New Document Library. Note if you do not see the site actions menu or the option to create does not appear you may not have permission to create a list.

2. Type a Name for the library and complete any other fields.

3. Click Create.

Sites and Pages
A site can serve a general purpose such as storing schedules, guidelines, files and other information that your team refers to frequently. A site may serve a more specific purpose, such as keeping track of a meeting, or hosting a blog, where a member of your organisation frequently posts news and ideas.

Your organisation can use pages, sub-sites and top level sites to divide site content into distinct, separately manageable sites. For example each department in your organisation may have its own team site that is part of a larger portal site.

If you need to create new sites you can choose from several types of site templates to give you a head start. Whether you can create sites and sub-sites depends on how your organisation has set up its sites and its permissions to create them.

Create a site

1. To create a site, click the Site Actions menu and then click New Site. Note if you do not see the site actions menu or the option to create does not appear you may not have permission to create a site.

2. Type a Title and URL mane for the site.
3. Under Template Selection select a site template.

4. Choose any other options you want and then click Create.

Create a page
The steps for creating a page my vary depending on the type of site you are on, whether publishing features are enable, and whether approval is required to publish pages.

1. To create a page, click the Site Actions menu and then click More options. Note if you do not see the site actions menu or the option to create does not appear you may not have permission to create a page.

2. On the Create page, click the type of page you want to create.
3. On the new page you created, do one or more of the following:
a. To add text, type or copy text into the text box.
b.To format your text, click the Format Text tab on the ribbon and select a button.
c. To insert a Web Part or an existing list, click the Insert tab, click the appropriate button, select the Web Part or list you want and then click Add.
d. To insert a new list, click the Insert tab, type a title for your list, click a list type to select it and then click OK.

4.When you are finished editing the page click Save.

Edit a page

1. To edit a page, click the Edit button on the ribbon. Note if you do not see the edit button you may not have permission to edit the page.
2. Do one or more of the following:
   1. To add text, type or copy the text into the text box.
   2. To format your text click the Format Text tab on the ribbon and select a button.
   3. To insert a Web Part or an existing list, click the Insert tab, click the appropriate button, select the Web Part or list you want and then click Add.
   4. To insert a new list, click the Insert tab, type a title for your list, click a list type to select it and then click OK.
3. When you are finished editing the page click Save.

Managing and working with site content
To help your team be more productive, there are several ways that you can manage and extend content in lists, libraries and sites. Some features help your team to find and work more efficiently with information. Other features help you manage the access to the information.

Navigating to Content
Navigation elements help people to browse through the content that they need. Two navigation items that you can customise are the top link bar and the Quick Launch.

By using the settings pages for each list or library you can choose which lists and libraries appear on the Quick Launch. You can also change the order of links, add or delete links and add or delete the sections into which the links are organised.

The top link bar provides a way for users of your site to get to other sites in the site collection by displaying a row of tabs at the top of every page in the site. When you create a new site you can choose whether to include the site on the top link bar of the parent site and whether to use the top link bar from the parent site.

Managing access to content
A site owner or administrator can grant permission levels to users and to Team Site groups which contain users. The permissions can be applied to a site, the lists and libraries on a site and the items in the lists and libraries.

You can assign different permission levels for different objects, such as a specific site, list, library, folder within a list or library, list item or document.

Organising Lists and Libraries
How you organise your lists and libraries depends on the needs of your group and on how you prefer to store and search for your information. Some planning can help you to set up the structure that works best for your organisation.

Information in lists and libraries are stored in columns, such as Title, Last Name or Company. You can use columns to sort and filter items as you would in a spree sheet by clicking column headings in a list or library.  You can also use views to see the items in a list or library that are important to you.

Change the view of a list or library

1. In the list or library where you want to change the view, click the List or Library tab on the ribbon.
2. In the Manage Views group under Current View click the arrow next to the views list, and then select a view.

If you need to store additional information about list items or files in a library, you can add columns to help you sort, group and create multiple views of your lists.

Create a Column

1. In the list or library where you want to add the file, click the List or Library tab on the ribbon.
2. Click Create Column.

3.Type a name for the column and select a column type.

4. Select any additional settings and then click OK.

Tracking Versions
Your list or library may be set up to use tracking versions. This enables you to restore a previous version of the content if you make a mistake or need to view the content for tracking changes.  Versioning is especially helpful when several people work together on projects or when information goes through several stages of development and review.

Co-Authoring Documents
Two or more users can edit a word document or PowerPoint presentation at the same time. This new feature enables you to read and write portions of a file stored in SharePoint. For example, you can work on one paragraph in a Word document while a colleague works on another paragraph in the same document and at the same time.

Check–in and Check-out
Check-in and Check-out are common terms in many document management systems, including Team Sites. Their purpose is to prevent conflicts in an environment where multiple people might want to edit the same content in a list or library.

The term Check-out
describes the process of getting a version of a document or item in a list or library. By checking-out an item or document the user can prevent others from editing the item or document.

The term Check-in describes the process of adding a new or modified item or document to a list or library to replace the previous version.

While the item or document is checked out users can only see the last modified version of the item or document.

To check out

1. Navigate to the list or library on which you want to check an item or document out from.
2. Select the item or document and then click Check Out.
   

3. When an item or document is checked out the check-out symbol appears on the item or document.

To check in

1. Navigate to the list or library on which you want to check an item or document in to.
2. Select the item or document that has been Checked Out and then select Check in.

3. Select if you wish to keep the check-out status or not.  Enter any comments and click OK.

Staying updated on changes with alerts
Alerts are emails that are sent to you via email notifying you of changes to documents, list items, document libraries, lists, surveys or search results helping you to be more effective by easily staying up to date with relevant information.

To set up an alert

1. Navigate to the list or library on which you want to be alerted to changes.
2. Select Library Tools and then Library.
3. Next click Alert Me then click Set alert on this library.

4. Select the required options and then click OK.

Recycle Bin
The Recycle bin provides a safety net when deleting documents, list items, lists, folders and files. When you or site visitors delete any of these items from a Web site, the items are placed in the Recycle Bin.  The items are kept in the recycle bin for a period of 30 days after which the items are permanently deleted.

To restore items form Recycle Bin

1. Click on the Recycle bin icon from the left hand navigation window. If the recycle bin is not available from the left hand navigation window do the following:
   1. Click the Site Actions menu then click Site Settings, then click Recycle Bin from the left hand navigation window.

2. This will display the items that have been deleted in the list.  Select the item(s) that you wish to restore and click the Restore Selection.

Email a Link
When you work with library files, lists, and list items, you might want to use the link (or URL) for the file, list or item. When communicating through email, a link to a file is much more efficient to use than an email attachment. Not only does it help you ensure that the latest copy of the file is being accessed, but it also helps reduce network traffic and email storage.

NOTE: People external of your organisation are not able to access your Team Site as default but can be set up and configured.

Email the link of a list or library

1. Navigate to the site containing the list or library for which you want to email the link.
2. Do one of the following:

a. For a library file:

i.    Select the library file

ii.    In the library ribbon click the Documents tab and then in the Share & Track group, click Email a link.

b. For a list:

i.    In the list ribbon click the List tab and then in the Share & Track group, click Email a link.

Have you seen it? It’s pretty mind-blowing.

Basically, it’s a sort of virtual reality system that lets users share and handle objects on the same table top, but from different locations.

Remember that episode of Red Dwarf with the total immersion video game? It reminds me a bit of that.

The technology used by the Mirage Table is basically Kinect. Two Kinect sensors – one at each end of the table (not literally, because the tables can be in totally different locations) are used to capture an image of each participant, track their gaze and also capture the appearance of objects places onto the surface of the curved plastic table. The computers are linked through a network connection and the users wear special shutter glasses so the images appear in 3D.

If that’s all a bit too techy for you, check out the video on You Tube to see it in action – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaCjTog0u40. Even for technophobes, this is impressive looking stuff.

It’s so nerdy, that it’s cool.

The Mirage Table is still in its early stages and Microsoft admits it needs work, but the possibilities of this kind of technology are fascinating. It could change the world of online gaming for a start. Maybe Rob Grant and Doug Naylor weren’t too far away from reality with his total immersion video games? The only thing Microsoft haven’t yet worked out how to do, is the reading your mind bit (that we know of). And with technology like this, could holograms be a reality? Arnold Rimmer eat your heart out. Or what about Star Trek’s holodeck? Fiction, or soon to be reality?

Ok, maybe I’m getting carried away, but the inner geek in me loves this, and I for one can’t wait to see how the concept develops.

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