If you’re an Office 365 subscriber, you’re in for some souped-up enhancements. Most involve artificial intelligence (AI) making sense of your data for you, so you spend less time and effort manually processing it. Here are a few of the latest enhancements that’ll give you more time for value-added tasks (and for coffee breaks and power naps, too). Office Write and draw with digital ink Typing is easy on desktops and laptops, but when you’re on touch-enabled devices, keyboards are cumbersome to use, whether they are extra hardware or as space invaders on your screen. Now, the Draw tab is available on your favorite Office programs so you can use your finger, a stylus, or a mouse to doodle and write. You can automatically convert your handwriting to text in Word or OneNote by implementing the handwriting input function of your Windows 10 touch keyboard. Chat with colleagues right inside the app Now available exclusively to Office 365 subscribers, the chat function lets team members message one another within a Word document, PowerPoint presentation, or Excel spreadsheet as they work on it together. Word Write with your voice Ever wished you had a personal secretary who could type dictation for you? As an Office 365 subscriber, you won’t need one. Sign into your account, turn on your microphone, then go to Home > Dictate (in Outlook, go to Message > Dictate instead). Once the Dictate icon turns red, you can start writing your document just by speaking. It’s that easy! Now available in Word for Office 365, Outlook for Office 365, PowerPoint for Office 365, and OneNote for Windows 10. Edit documents with natural gestures With your handwriting and voice digitized into standard text, editing your document is easy, thanks to natural gestures. It’s like using a pen to insert or cross out words on printouts, but immediately seeing your edits afterward! Other magical things you can do include inserting spaces and paragraph breaks, stringing broken-up words together, and circling text to select it. Now available in Word for Office 365 and Word Mobile. PowerPoint Transform your scribbles Sometimes you need to draw or write by hand to get stuff down quickly. Using digital ink can be the quickest way to communicate, but turning scribbles into editable text or easy-to-manipulate shapes for a slideshow presentation later on is time-consuming. Or rather, that was the case, because now Ink to Text and Ink to Shape can convert your handwriting and hand drawings into standard text or shapes, respectively. Now available for PowerPoint for Office 365, PowerPoint for iPad, and PowerPoint for iPhone. Ink to Shape is also available exclusively to Office 365 subscribers on Excel for Office 365, Word for Office 365, Excel 2016, Word 2016, and Visio Online Plan 2. Excel “Ideas” literally let you work smarter Pie charts, bar graphs, scatter diagrams — with so many ways to visualize data, it can become troublesome to implement the right graph. Thankfully, the upcoming Ideas will let AI come up with the most apt graphs for you. Just click on a cell in a data table, click the Ideas button on the Home tab, then voila! Excel comes up with charts for you to choose from. It can even set trend lines, recognize outliers, and create summaries for you — all without having to write an unwieldy formula! Coming soon to Excel for Office 365, Excel for Office 365 for Mac, and Excel Online. A picture is worth a thousand data points Since optical character recognition software is already a couple of decades old, it’s about time we’re able to extract data tables from pictures. Soon, the Insert data from picture function will let us encode ingredients lists from recipes and digitize printed receipts by taking their photos. Coming soon to Excel for Android tablets and Excel for Android phones. One formula, many values For so long, Excel users had to enter a formula and copy it to get multiple values (known as an array) from their data tables. With dynamic arrays, however, all you have to do is write a formula once, press Enter, and you’ll instantly get values for entire columns or tables instantly, which means faster processing with fewer errors. To illustrate, you can use a dynamic array to fill up entire multiplication tables, and when you change or add more factors, the array will recalculate and resize automatically. Coming soon to Excel for Office 365 and Excel for Office 365 for Mac. Outlook Quickly create tasks Outlook now lets you create tasks and to-do lists the way you write emails. Just click Tasks > New Tasks, type the name of the task in the Subject box, and add task details in the body. You can also set its priority, start and due dates, and even a reminder for it. Additionally, you can create tasks out of emails by dragging an email to Tasks on the navigation bar. This is way faster than copy-pasting email contents onto the body of a task, though keep in mind that email attachments aren’t carried over to the newly made task. Make the most out of Office 365! If you’re already a subscriber or are currently looking into it, contact us at Multi IT on 011 435 0450 to help you configure and implement it for maximum productivity.

A password policy designed for federal agencies must be secure, right? Surprisingly, that hasn’t been the case, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The NIST created many of the password best practices you probably loathe — the combination of letters, numbers, and special characters — but it now says those guidelines were misguided and has changed its stance on the matter. Find out why and how it involves you. The problem The issue isn’t necessarily that the NIST advised people to create passwords that are easy to crack, but it steered people into creating lazy passwords, using capitalization, special characters, and numbers that are easy to predict, like “P@ssW0rd1.” This may seem secure, but in reality, these strings of characters and numbers could easily be compromised by hackers using common algorithms. To make matters worse, NIST also recommended that people change their passwords regularly, but did not define what it actually means to “change” them. Since people thought their passwords were already secure with special characters, most only added one number or symbol. NIST essentially forced everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember but easy for computers to guess. Recently, the institution admitted that this scheme can cause more problems than solutions. It has reversed its stance on organizational password management requirements, and is now recommending banishing forced periodic password changes and getting rid of complexity requirements. The solution Security consultant Frank Abagnale and Chief hacking officer for KnowBe4 Kevin Mitnick both see a future without passwords. Both security experts advise enterprises to utilize multifactor authentication (MFA) in login policies. This requires users to present two valid credentials to gain access to their data. For instance, a code texted to an employee’s smartphone can serve as an added security measure to thwart hackers. Moreover, Mitnick recommended implementing long passphrases of 25 characters or more, such as “correcthorsebatterystaple” or “iknewweretroublewhenwalkedin5623”. These are much more difficult to guess and less prone to hacking. As for the frequency of changing passphrases, it will depend on a company’s risk tolerance. Simply put, passwords should be longer and include nonsensical phrases and English words that make it almost impossible for an automated system to make sense of. Even better, you should enforce the following security solutions within your company: Single sign-on – allows users to securely access multiple accounts with one set of credentials Account monitoring tools – recognizes suspicious activity and locks out hackers When it comes to security, ignorance is the biggest threat. If you’d like to learn about what else you can do, just give Multi IT a call on 011 435 0450.

Almost every business relies on software to operate, but most SMBs find lifetime licenses painfully expensive. What can you do to harness the power of software without breaking the bank? One good alternative is software as a service or SaaS. Read on to learn more. What is SaaS and what makes it appealing? SaaS is a software delivery model that allows the user to access software from any device via the internet. This gives you more flexibility since you don’t have to come to the office to use the software. You can work from anywhere as long as you can go online. As opposed to a traditional on-premises setup where software is stored locally, SaaS is hosted in the cloud. By transferring software hosting to a third party, you’re outsourcing all the responsibilities that come with maintenance, such as upgrades and troubleshooting. In a way, getting SaaS is like renting a car: Somebody else owns the vehicle, but you get to drive it. Shifting software ownership away from your business also changes how much you pay for it. With on-premises software, you purchase a license and pay yearly support fees, which can amount to 22 percent of the price of license fees (ouch!). With SaaS, you pay a monthly or annual subscription fee that covers licenses, support, and other fees. This is better since it allows you to spread out costs on a monthly basis, instead of purchasing expensive licenses outright and ending up with a huge maintenance bill every year. Will my data be safe? One of the issues that make companies reluctant to switch to SaaS is data security. Who will own my data? Will my data be safe? What if the vendor goes out of business? For your peace of mind and safety, when you’re outsourcing your software to a SaaS vendor, you have to sign a service level agreement (SLA). This should specify that you own the data and that the vendor is obliged to provide access to your data even if it goes bankrupt. Data hosted by your SaaS vendor will be more secure than when it’s stored on your average SMB’s network. That’s because SaaS vendors have to undergo strict security audits, forcing them to invest more in security, backup technology, and maintenance than a typical SMB. Should I switch to SaaS or stick to on-premises? SaaS is an ideal solution for small and medium-sized businesses that are looking for a way to reduce upfront costs. But if your business is large or has complex processes, a traditional on-premises solution might be better since it offers more functionality and allows for full customization. Still unsure about whether SaaS is the right answer for your organization? Want to know more about SaaS before making the transition? Call Multi IT on 011 435 0450 today! Our experts are ready to answer any questions you may have about SaaS.