Microsoft Office 365 Helps Communication Company Connect Employees

Microsoft Office 365 Helps Communication Company Connect Employees

INDUSTRY Media IT PRO Nick McKinney, IT Manager COMPANY Raycom Media EMPLOYEES 4,000+ Employee-owned Raycom Media owns or provides services for 53 television stations in 37 markets and 18 states, covering 13.1% of U.S. television households. Every couple of years, the company s IT managers meet to discuss how they can improve services. In 2014, this discussion centered on how Google Chat was no longer available and Google Hangouts, which replaced it, simply didn t meet employee needs for virtual conversations. We re a communications business, and you d hope that you can communicate, says Nick McKinney, IT manager for KLTV in Tyler, Texas and KTRE in Lufkin, about 95 miles away. The company had been using Google Apps for years, but these often left the production department with workflow issues since they re browser-based and that department doesn t have computers dedicated to individual users. The IT managers felt they really needed something that wasn t so attached to the browser. They decided to try three different productivity software suites to see which would better connect employees, letting them virtually chat, more easily share documents, and upload documents from more locations. One team continued to use Google Apps; another used Open Office; and a third team used Microsoft Office 365, a cloud-based subscription service that provides office productivity tools, business communication solutions and administrative controls and a cornerstone product within Microsoft Cloud. McKinney was in the group that tried Office 365 and Microsoft Cloud. It just synced quicker with what we were already doing, he says. With Office suite, it s easier to use One Drive and a couple other features that we have with our SharePoint site, and all of that integrated really quickly with what we had. The workflow was just better. It really was, so we went with that, McKinney says. We re a communications business, and you d hope that you can communicate Nick McKinney, IT manager 2

THE BUMPY ROAD TO DEPLOYMENT For two months after the decision was made to switch, the company prepared for the implementation. The IT managers had to install Office 2013 on all the machines, migrate the Microsoft Exchange servers to the cloud, and then get a working list of employees to Microsoft for mass account creation. Once the account was created, they were able to reconfigure where Outlook was pointed. While the implementation mostly went smoothly, even for this highly experienced group there were bumps in the road. In fact, potholes appeared during the trial, when the team discovered the 64-bit version didn t authenticate properly on the company s 64-bit systems. After some research and consulting with Microsoft, the team realized it needed to move to the 32-bit version. McKinney also discovered Office 365 wouldn t accept their current domain credentials. The corporate office in Montgomery, Ala., set up the usernames with the @raycommedia.com convention rather than their more commonly used station email conventions. Now, employees have two login credentials one for general use, and one for Office products, McKinney says. It confused a lot of our users at first. Having to educate the end users was a little trickier than we expected. After the migration was complete in January 2015, it took just two to three weeks for users to get comfortable using Office 365 and Microsoft Cloud, McKinney says. A lot of users had large PST files, and McKinney and the users had to physically move each of the emails or folders to the cloud. Learning that process took a lot of trial and error and cost the stations a few lost folders, McKinney says. It didn t go very well. It took a lot of time and a lot of bandwidth. Some of these people had well above the Microsoft recommended size for PST files, so we had a lot of fun with that. The automatic updates install perfectly except on one computer, McKinney says. Every time that computer ran an update, the Office suite would break and McKinney would have to manually fix it in safe mode. Eventually, he discovered third-party software was causing the problem. Once he uninstalled it, the updates began installing flawlessly. 3

COLLABORATION MADE SIMPLE With Office 365, personnel can now chat virtually through Skype for Business, which they also use for video chatting and creating meetings between departments and stations. This emphasizes one of the biggest benefits of using Office 365. It makes it a lot easier to collaborate with several people at one time, McKinney says. Going to one structure across the board has been way better than having it fragmented and trying to figure out where you re going to go from that point. Switching to Office 365 also allowed the stations to remove the in-house Exchange servers because now the Exchange servers are in the Microsoft Cloud. McKinney created a One Drive for Business on a server that points back to the SharePoint cloud folder. He also has a physical folder on the server, so the end user can either be in-house and on the shared drive, or out of the office and accessing the SharePoint drive using the cloud version of software via the web. The hybrid shared drive has saved a lot of time since people don t have to figure out what file s where. And if I lose the server tomorrow, the data is still there. That s a huge time saver for me, McKinney says. INSTALL IT AND FORGET IT When the stations were using Google Apps, the IT staff had to manually update every time Google changed its chat program or the station updated its version of Outlook. Once we installed the Office 365 suite, we haven t even had to touch it since. It s been nine months of users getting the updates themselves, of IT not having to come and update it, or do anything else with it, for that matter, McKinney says. The hybrid shared drive has saved a lot of time since people don t have to figure out what file s where. 4

THE PATH TO AN EASIER MIGRATION Raycom Media s migration to better-connected workflow productivity hit a few potholes but mostly went smoothly because of an experienced staff that dedicated significant time and resources to making it work. Not all companies can dedicate a large amount of resources but fortunately, they don t need to. Working with an expert technology partner like PCM can make the process smooth and easy for businesses. PCM makes sure the important decisions are made and the right resources are in place before the transition to Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Cloud begins. It considers business needs and budget requirements, ensuring the right technology infrastructure is in place, and then helps IT departments deploy, migrate and upgrade to get the most out of their Microsoft solutions. A full-service technology provider with extensive capabilities in software licensing, cloud technologies, consulting, solutions architecture and product procurement, PCM is a Microsoft Gold Partner. For eight consecutive years we have won Microsoft s Operational Excellence Award. Our partnership with Microsoft allows us to offer top-tier procurement and logistics to meet our customers most complex technology needs. Contact PCM at 800-700-1000 to learn more about Microsoft Cloud. [Office 365] makes it a lot easier to collaborate with several people at one time. Going to one structure across the board has been way better than having it fragmented and trying to figure out where you re going to go from that point. Nick McKinney, IT manager 5