Just because your IT provider has a plethora of awards and certifications under its belt doesn't mean that you can blindly hand over your business’s future to them. Often times, there are some aspects in your business continuity plan that tend to be overlooked by your provider. We have rounded up some of these issues that could appear when you enact your business continuity plans. Over-optimistic testing The initial testing attempt is usually the most important as it’s when IT service providers can pinpoint possible weak points in the recovery plan. However, what usually happens is a full transfer of system and accompanying operations to the backup site. This makes it difficult to look at specific points of backup with too many factors flowing in all at the same time. Insufficient remote user licenses A remote user license is given by service providers to businesses so that when a disaster strikes, employees can log in to a remote desktop software. However, the number of licenses a provider has may be limited. In some cases, more employees will need to have access to the remote desktop software than a provider’s license can allow. Lost digital IDs When a disaster strikes, employees will usually need their digital IDs so they can log in to the provider’s remote system while their own system at the office is being restored. However, digital IDs are tied to an employee’s desktop and when a desktop is being backed up, they are not automatically saved. So when an employee goes back to using their ‘ready and restored’ desktop, they are unable to access the system with their previous digital ID. Absence of communications strategy IT service providers will use email to notify and communicate with business owners and their employees when a disaster happens. However, this form of communication may not always be reliable in certain cases such as the Internet being cut off or with spam intrusions. There are third-party notification systems available, but they are quite expensive and some providers sell them as a pricey add-on service. Backups that require labored validation After a system has been restored, IT technicians and business owners need to check whether the restoration is thorough and complete. This validation becomes a waste of time and effort when the log reports come in a manner that is not easy to compare. This usually happens when IT service providers utilize backup applications that do not come with their own log modules, and have to be acquired separately. These are just some of the many reasons why business continuity plans fail. It is important for business owners to be involved with any process that pertains to their IT infrastructure. Just because you believe something works doesn’t necessarily mean that it works correctly or effectively. If you have questions regarding your business continuity plan or would like a business continuity plan, Contact Multi IT business continuity experts today.

Microsoft Word is used by over one billion users worldwide, and of those how many are using it to its full potential? Over the years Word has transformed into a complex design tool that allows it to move far beyond simple text editing. Most users know how to change a font or center their text, but how many know how to track changes on a collaborative document or remove formatting from pasted text? Staying up to date on the features listed in this article will drastically increase the efficiency and productivity of your document creation processes. Here are 6 Microsoft Word Tricks you will wish you knew sooner. Writing outside the box Not all of your documents are simple line-by-line writing, and even the ones that are might require a bit of unique formatting. We’ve all wrestled with textboxes, customised margins and indents, but did you know that you can write anywhere on a Word document simply by double clicking wherever you’d like to insert your text? No more counting how many times you pressed the spacebar, no more spending 10 minutes formatting your textbox, just double click and start typing. Customise your AutoCorrect No matter how often or how much we write every day, there are still words, phrases and special characters that we can’t seem to master. Increase your typing speed by personalising AutoCorrect to fix your commonly misspelled words without prompting you. Most of these are preprogrammed into Word (pretty much any ‘i’ before ‘e’ mixup), but customising your own settings can solve issues like accented letters that are missing from your keyboard, or replacing short abbreviations with verbose technical terms. Just go to the File menu, click on Options, select the Proofing tab and click on the AutoCorrect options to explore all of your options. Apply document formatting to pasted text No matter how original your content is, there will always be reasons to copy from an outside source and paste to your own. You may need a quote, a piece of data or just an outside voice to your writing. When using the copy and paste function, you may need to remove formatting carried over from the original source. Although the icons and interface of this feature have changed throughout different versions of Word, Microsoft has been careful to always leave it as an option for users. Simply adding the Windows key to your copy shortcut (Ctrl+Windows Key+V) will integrate the copied material into your content. Default paste options can be further customised in the Options menu. Collaborate with Review tab features After the content has been written, you may want to invite others to edit your document with Microsoft’s Track Changes function. Once selected, anything altered in the content will be time-stamped, highlighted and underlined in a color that changes in accordance with each editor. This allows you to see the original text along with suggested edits from colleagues. If an edit seems too drastic or risky, users have the option to leave comments or suggestions attached to the document, like a virtual sticky note. After the collaborative process is over, changes can be accepted or rejected individually, or en masse. All of these features can be found under the Review tab along the top of the screen. Find and Replace Most users know about using the Ctrl+F shortcut to find text in their documents, but not as many are aware of the Replace function. There are several hypothetical situations when you may need to replace several uses of an incorrect word or phrase. In a technical document you may realise late in the writing phase that you’ve misused a term, or in a marketing piece you may decide to change the name of a product or service; regardless, there is a simple one-step solution. After opening the Find window, simply click on the Replace tab and type the original word or phrase into the top field and the corrected word or phrase into the bottom field. From there you can choose to automatically replace all instances, or review them one by one. In addition to using this trick to fix errors, you can also use it as a shortcut to typing difficult and complex phrases by initially writing a shortened version and replacing it with the full phrase after you’ve finished writing. Undo and Redo Almost everyone knows the shortcut for undoing nearly any action in Microsoft Office - Ctrl+Z. Far fewer people know, and actively employ, the redo shortcut. This is a quick solution for viewing and comparing different formatting and layout options, and with a tracking history of 100 actions you’re pretty safe from changing so much that you can’t return to where you started. Microsoft Word is one of the most universal document editing programs in the world. Don’t let creative, design and formatting speed bumps slow the development of your content when there are existing solutions tucked just a few menus away. An up-to-date understanding of Word and its functions can drastically alleviate the headaches of editing and formatting your files. If you’d like to know more about Word and other Microsoft Office products, contact us today. Multi IT & Telephony Solutions is a leading CSP (Cloud Solutions Provider) and can advise and supply the right O365 package for you.

OneDrive for business is Microsoft's cloud storage and sharing solution. Similar to all leading competitors such as Dropbox, OneDrive for business offers you all the standards cloud storage capabilities with the added benefit of one of the worlds most secure data centres. With version control, sharing and collaboration capabilities it is no wonder that OneDrive for business is gaining in popularity for business users. Multi IT has put together a short presentation together to enable you to get the most out of your OneDrive for Business. [slideshare id=75046942&doc=office365andonedrive-170415122610] Why OneDrive for business? OneDrive for business is already included in most O365 solutions and is made to work with the office applications you are currently utilising. This doesn't mean OneDrive for business is limited to only storing Microsoft applications as you can store any file type you want to. As the slides have explained with version control, collaboration, sharing and security there is no real downside. Microsoft may have come to the party a little later than most other cloud storage solutions with OneDrive but they certainly made a complete cloud offering to make up for it. With ample storage space (1TB for most users) it is no wonder businesses are seeing the benefit of OneDrive for business and are encouraging staff to use it over the unsecured competitors. How Multi IT can help Multi IT & Telephony solutions are CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) premium partners and as such offer all the various Microsoft cloud offerings. Most people understand this to simply be Office 365, while it is part of the offerings it is not the whole offering. There are multiple offerings that can enable your business to reach even greater heights and live up to its full potential that you may not even be aware of. We are here to help no matter what offering you wish to use, be it Microsoft dynamics or O365 we can guide you in what is right for you business. Contact Multi IT today to discus your Microsoft requirements now.