harmon.ie SmartAssistant™

Welcome back! Shake off the hangover, grab some coffee, and get to work. The holidays are over faster than expected and 2020 is already upon us. It’s only the first work week of January and we at harmon.ie are already getting a jump on what we expect to be a productive and successful year.   Free AND Easy Office 365 is catching on like wildfire. Microsoft recently announced that there are 200 million monthly Office 365 active users. To keep pace with the mass migration to Office 365, harmon.ie is making an exciting change to our free product offering. From today, when you download the harmon.ie Free Edition from the harmon.ie web site, you will get access to the harmon.ie for Outlook app, which installs in your Outlook Web App on the desktop, browser, Mac, or mobile device, directly from the Microsoft App Source. Here is a description of this free offering:  harmon.ie® add-in for Outlook® provides access to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business directly from your Windows & Mac Outlook App, Mobile and in the Outlook Web App. You can save email attachments to SharePoint, OneDrive for Business and Teams directly from the email client. Specify metadata and required properties to accurately classify a document, so you can find it easily later. Click through to edit documents or reply with document links.   Note the following important points: The new harmon.ie for Outlook free app offering replaces the previously-free harmon.ie for Outlook plugin, which until now was available from the harmon.ie website…, so …If you want to download the harmon.ie for Outlook desktop plugin, go to the Pricing page, where you can purchase the harmon.ie Enterprise Edition. The minimum number of licenses for the plugin is 15 users. Previous downloads of the free Outlook plugin will continue to work, but this product will no longer be available as a download from the harmon.ie website. The Enterprise Edition of the harmon.ie for Outlook (web) app enables you to upload and classify emails, in addition to document attachments. There IS Something New Under the Sun Later this quarter, harmon.ie will be announcing new versions of all our products; harmon.ie for Outlook, harmon.ie Outlook App, and harmon.ie Mobile. Look forward to exciting new customer success stories and of course, we will continue to provide informative and educational webinars. Subscribe to our blog to be the first to learn of new developments. Enjoy the Ride While you are still getting settled in after the holidays, enjoy this video of harmon.ie highlights from the recent European SharePoint Conference, held in Prague during December 2019. Happy New Year!

The European SharePoint, Office 365, and Azure Conference (ESPC) is underway in Prague and harmon.ie is proud to be a Platinum sponsor of this annual event!  If you are at the event, come check out the harmon.ie stand to see what’s new with the harmon.ie SmartAssistant™ - the innovative integration of Outlook with Microsoft Teams. This year's harmon.ie “Lunch & Learn” sessions featured guest speakers Daniel Stuch, Senior Project Leader Application Development and Rollout at Bosch, and Cassy Freeman, Digital Workplace Lead at Babcock Intl. Stay tuned for the videos where they shared their SharePoint journeys and harmon.ie experiences with the audience. And if you missed our Chief Product Officer David Lavenda’s session on “The Real State of Teams Adoption…And What it Means to You,” you can download the session slides here. While at the event, don’t miss your chance to win an Apple 5 watch. Stop by the stand and register to win!

Artificial Intelligence has been one of the most hyped technologies of the decade, with millions of articles, reports, blogs and conferences discussing the topic from every possible angle. But what’s the state of artificial intelligence applications right now – especially when it comes to ‘real world’ uses?  While fully intelligent general AI remains a long way off, we have seen some impressive uses of machine learning, chatbots and even image recognition technology being released in the last couple of years. Much of the cutting-edge research is still at the academic level, but we have started to see artificial intelligence applications being launched by and used in narrower application in businesses. Let’s look at some examples of how AI is being used in the ‘real world’. Focused Artificial Intelligence applications are gaining ground in the business world  While AI often feels like it’s something ‘just around the corner’, it has, in fact, already been used by thousands of businesses in one way or another. Indeed, 61% of businesses responding to one recent survey said they have used AI in at least some form – with natural language processing, machine learning and predictive analytics the most widely used technologies. Whether your company has deployed a chatbot on your website or asked analysts to churn your data through an advanced analytics tool, there’s a good chance you’ve already used AI in some manner. But, when we talk about AI, most people are thinking of bigger artificial intelligence applications – things which profoundly change how businesses work. And, this is starting to happen – let’s see how. 3 examples of ‘real world’ Artificial Intelligence applications Artificial intelligence applications can have a significant, positive impact on society and how individuals spend their days at work. Deployed correctly, AI can help improve almost any industry, and could add serious value to the global economy. Here are just three examples of how AI tools are being used in the ‘real world’.   Loblaw: Canadian firm personalizes customer offerings Today’s consumers have come to expect personalization. Whether it’s entertainment brands like Netflix or ecommerce sites like Amazon, people want offers targeted intelligently to them and their tastes. However, catching up with the giants of ecommerce is a real challenge, but it’s becoming easier as AI becomes more accessible. One such business is Loblaw – Canada’s leading food and pharmacy provider: The firm connected its existing loyalty program with Microsoft’s AI tools. Azure was used to store and process data. Using an AI algorithm, Loblaw could reorganize siloed information, anonymize, aggregate and then customize offers at scale. This let the firm start providing personalized customer offers in a way they never could before – and catch up with the market leaders in one leap. Milan graduate school of business (MIP): personalized learning with AI Imagine attending a college course which was completely tailored to your personal needs. No more attending classes about topics you already know well, no more re-learning skills you already have. Instead, you’d only focus on what you need for your future career. That’s the idea behind FLEXA, an artificial intelligence application being trialed by Italy’s Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business (MIP): Students sign into FLEXA when they choose to take one of the school’s MBA programs, where they partake in a range of cognitive and skills tests, answer surveys about their current and future career plans, and other factors. Microsoft’s AI services then create personalized learning pathways to help the student develop their skills and knowledge in the areas they most need – proposing anything from short one day courses to 6-month training programs. Each student is given access to a dashboard where they can review their strengths and gaps, and see how they are improving. Schneider Electric: increasing safety and reducing maintenance costs with AI Organizations working in the industrial sector must maintain enormous catalogs of mission-critical equipment out in the field. In the past, this required regular manual checks and tests – and if anything was missed, could result in risks to staff and the environment. Schneider Electric, a France-based industrial automation firm began using Microsoft’s AI solutions to target this issue: They monitored an IoT enabled pump control using a predictive analytics solution. Oil and gas providers could use the solution to pinpoint equipment which needs repair. This saves substantial sums of money on maintenance, repair, worker and environmental safety and boosts profit. Nothing artificial about that While there’s been a fair amount of hype about AI in recent years, the above three examples show how machine learning, IoT and similar artificial intelligence applications are having a real impact in business, education, and energy extraction, to mention just three industries. At harmon.ie, we see incredible potential for AI to help knowledge workers.  In the near future, harmon.ie will be providing new ways of bringing office-based staff the most relevant, meaningful and contextual information possible, using AI. The impacts of AI in the ‘real world’ are starting to be felt – and there’s nothing artificial about that.