Microsoft Office 365 implementation for ABC International

Transcription

1 Office 365 Implementation Case Study by: # 924, 5 A Cross, 1st Block, HRBR Layout, Bangalore Microsoft Office 365 implementation for ABC International Client Overview ABC International is a not for profit organization, currently active in more than 25 countries. Teams from ABC engage directly and in partnership with local development agencies to impact individuals and communities. ABC also provides a deployment platform for mobilization agencies that raise funds and human resources, but do not have the capability to deploy, care for, and manage these resources on the field. Requirement Implement an appropriate solution that will enable various types of collaborative efforts between the organization and the members themselves Solution Implementation of a reliable cloud solution the Microsoft Office 365 Result Successful in fulfilling ABC International s global ambitions with smart IT resources allocation in a reliable cloud solution-office 365 Business Task: ABC International realized the increasing demand of setting up a unified presence with a common IT platform to keep up with the rapid growth of business and cater for the increasing demand from users for communication access anytime, in key locations around the world. They were using a mix of different tools to provide a minimum level of collaboration. All their members seconded from the US office have access to their financial statement through a login

2 provided on the Serenic Naavigator software managed by ABC International s US office. Serenic has provided an econnect software that ports data from the navigator system to a web page. Members seconded from other offices currently have updated access to their financial statement through separate means. With their existed set up there was a single intranet site managed by the US office and all the content changes and updates have to be sent to the US office and updated manually. But the work load was more and the US team was unable to handle and resulted in longer delays. In this difficult scenario, the client was in search of a system that can provide functions like: 1. Forms post forms with ability to download or submit online with forwarding to the specified people (e.g., Expense Reimbursement, Monthly Report, Furlough Plan, Annual Review, Team Report, Min Plan, Min Description, Project Proposal, Seconded Quarterly Report, and Seconding Agreement) 2. Financials US Office members may view their own personal support accounts; international account holders and their supervisors may view ABC International account information. 3. Database: Storing personal and team data; where people and groups may update their own profiles; people may search for contact information for other members; analysis of report information. 4. Teams ability to set up work groups for teams and task forces to share documents and resources. 5. Calendar ability to set up group calendars; set organization-wide reminders for repetitive events or tasks. 6. Communication ability for specific people to send messages to membership (various mailing groups) with a link to read full message online and post comments. 7. Conferencing ability to initiate conference calls/video conferences with people inside and outside of the organization, including hosting training webinars. 8. Documents Administrators may post documents on the Intranet and teams may upload documents onto Team Sites. The Field Handbook will be integrated into the Intranet and will be editable by Authorized Users. 9. Resources downloadable articles, papers, publications, presentations, videos, graphics, pictures, webinars created by your own people Administrators may set up individual accounts, and allow access via multiple devices. Business Solution: After considering several scenarios, ABC International and Stylus came to a conclusion that Office 365 s complete suite of solutions from to collaboration would be the best one to meet the requirements of long-term business growth, allied to robust security from a trustworthy brand. Office 365 implementation benefited ABC International in :

3 1) Integrating with Microsoft Office (offline). 2) Setting up a public website 3) Developing Group Sites, shared calendars 4) Uploading and sharing documents including documents created using MS Office 5) Videoconferencing using Microsoft Lync. 6) Mail management using Outlook and Microsoft Exchange online 7) Ability to customize using code written on Microsoft.NET 8) Special pricing availability to ABC International How Stylus helped? As the next step, Stylus implemented Intranet solution using Office 365, by setting up all the necessary requirements like 1. Forms: Implemented the below forms with their associated workflows, within the system: a. Expense-kilometers.xls b. Monthly Report.doc c. Furlough Plan.doc d. Annual Team Report.doc e. Annual Review.doc f. Min Plan.doc g. Church Planter MD.doc h. Project Proposal.doc i. Quarterly Report.doc (replacing the Second Quarterly Report.doc) j. Second Agreement Report.doc k. 360 Leader Review.doc l. Personnel Request Form.doc m. Contingency Plan.doc 2. Financials: a. Stylus modified the Intranet such that it displays an econnect link to users who have access permission to view this link. On clicking this link, the user will be automatically logged into econnect and will be taken to the econnect dashboard. Users may return to the Intranet either by closing this window, or by clicking on the link inside the econnect dashboard.

4 3. Stylus also scheduled a task in QuickBooks to export the International report prepared by Stylus Financial Services Team, and upload this report into Office Database a. Office 365 allows users to be imported into the Intranet using a.csv file. ABC International filled up all the user details in a specific excel template as suggested by us and send us the file. We imported this file into the Intranet and created all users. a. Fields like spouse name, focus group, affinity, designation are imported into the Intranet by a custom script developed by Stylus, using information given by ABC International b. Stylus created scripts to map supervisors and departments to individual users, using the input data from ABC International c. We also created a people directory for users to search for other users within the Intranet. The search will allow users to search based on affinity, department, location, focus group and designation 5. Documents a. Stylus uploaded the field handbook into the Intranet. Handbook appear as each webpages on the Intranet site. Each section of the handbook will have links to forms connected with it b. Stylus also set up a permissions for users or user groups specified by ABC International, to manage the content in the Field Handbook. 5. Teams a. We created team sites for departments and offices specified by ABC International. We also created user groups which have relevant permissions to access these team sites. 6. Calendar a. Stylus set up 5 Events in the ABC International-wide Event Calendar. Teams can freely set up their own SharePoint Event Calendars. Individual users can also set up their own calendars using MS Exchange online

5 6. Communication to support base: a. Office 365 helped each user to setup their own personal website within the Intranet and share it with specified individuals both inside and outside the organization. This replaced the use of Newsletters. b. Personal Websites have the option to activate RSS feeds so that interested subscribers continued to keep up with new posts on the website, without having to come to the site itself. 8. Public Site a. Stylus setup a public website site for ABC International using content given to us and given a link. For a first time user, this link will take them to the Intranet s login page, and for a returning user, it may take them directly to the main homepage in the Intranet. 9. Reports In order to measure how well the Solution addresses the Problem Statement, Stylus built the following system reports to measure the usage of the Intranet site: a. Report to measure usage of People Search. b. Report of number of documents shared in the team sites. c. Report to measure usage of forms. 10. User Help Document Stylus created user help document which will cover all functionality within the Intranet site, which users are likely to use. 11. Train the Trainer Stylus given one round of training using Microsoft Lync, to a team of Intranet site administrators/ trainers designated by ABC International. This training session was recorded as a webinar and uploaded to the Intranet site for future reference. 12. User Support Stylus sent an notifications to all users when the Intranet site is available for use and provided support for 12 weeks after launch and provided assistance to: a. Create team sites b. Create user groups c. Change or add permissions to groups

6 d. Add or change user profiles e. Edit the handbook f. Enable ABC International users by providing short training sessions on specific functionality. g. Fix any errors that might occur within the Intranet site. In addition to this, users gained access to use the help facility that come built in with Office 365 to address most usage related issues. 13. Applications built on MS Access. The then used version of Office 365 used SharePoint 2010, which does not allowed for Access applications to run within the Intranet. So Stylus uploaded the Access application to the intranet site as a document. The authorized users of the application may download (check-out) the Access application onto their desktop, run the application (assuming that they have the relevant version of Microsoft Access installed on their desktop) and check-in the application back into the Intranet while updating it. When one user has checkedout the application, the status of the application will show as Checked-Out and other authorized users will not be able to check-out the application. The users who are assigned Edit permission may download (check-out) the application and make changes to the whole application including forms, database and reports and upload the application back into the intranet site. The users who are assigned Read-Only permission can download the application and make modifications to it. But they will not be allowed to check-in the application back to the intranet site. About Stylus Stylus Systems is in the business of transforming enterprises and impacting lives through information technology based solutions and by delivering service ethically. Established in 1999, in Bangalore, India, Stylus has achieved expertise in developing and using internet based technologies and solutions to bring the advantages of the global marketplace to small and medium business enterprises worldwide, thereby helping them take their offerings to market faster, and operate better, smarter and more profitably. Our Software, Finance and Accounting Services and Solutions are specialized services that are offered with the Business Intelligence suite of Services to help us deliver recommended steps of action and take bottom-line for your results.