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Teams adoption is off the charts with an incredible 115 million daily active users, up from 75 million users in April, and only 13 million users back in mid-2019. This meteoric rise means only one thing… During the current COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are investing heavily in tools that enable their workforce to communicate remotely in real-time. And with good reason considering the spate of company announcements extending ‘work from home’ (WFH) directives well into 2021 and beyond, as reported recently in the New York Times. As organizations hunker down for the long term, at-home workers increasingly need to be self-sufficient and independent. Without the ability to peek over the cubicle divider or poke their heads into a neighboring office to ask a colleague for advice, at-home workers need suitable WFH tools to be productive. Another challenge for at-home workers is finding the latest version of emails and documents needed to complete important business tasks. Despite the massive investment in Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 tools, at-home workers still struggle to be productive. That’s why you need to attend next week’s webinar, Working from Home using Outlook, SharePoint & Teams, hosted by harmon.ie founder and CEO, Yaacov Cohen. During the webinar, Cohen will spotlight critical productivity challenges associated with working from home, and then show how to combine Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint into a single collaboration platform, thereby making it easy for at-home workers to reach out to colleagues for help and to find important content quickly.   The free webinar will take place on Wednesday, November 11 at the following times: EMEA – 11:00 GMT North America – 11:00 ET

From Risk Mitigation to Value Enhancement: A New Governance Imperative harmon.ie is proud to be presenting at this week’s AIIM virtual event, From Risk Mitigation to Value Enhancement: A New Governance Imperative. During the full-day event, David Lavenda, harmon.ie Chief Product Officer, will present a session entitled Working from Home: New Challenges (and Opportunities) for Information Governance. About the Session The unforeseen COVID-19 crisis blindsided knowledge workers and information managers who are now grappling with today’s new ‘work from home’ reality. Knowledge workers struggle to find critical business content, while information and security professionals scramble to define updated information governance strategies. The harmon.ie session will address these new challenges, including the unique characteristics of information governance inherent in ‘work from home’ scenarios.  The session will also explore the role SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and harmon.ie play in implementing a pragmatic work from home information governance program.  Finally the talk will provide practical recommendations for knowledge workers and information managers. Following the event, attendees will be able to: Identify unique information governance challenges associated with working from home.  Understand how the explosive use of Teams has changed the landscape for information governance. Discover how organizations overcome ‘work from home’ information governance challenges with SharePoint and Teams. About the AIIM Event Organizations have long made the connection between the plethora of information flowing into their enterprises and the compliance and legal risk this carries. Ask any governance professional about regulations, records, and e-discovery; her insight will likely be well-studied and well-founded. However, the increasing customer demand for value, availability, and quality when it comes to products and services is causing a shift in the perceived role of information governance within certain organizations. For digital transformation leaders, something bigger is indeed in play now – an increasing connection between information governance and business strategy, particularly in the current economic climate. To address these needs, this week’s virtual event includes an exciting lineup of presenters who will share their winning approaches with the audience. Speakers will share lessons learned to help you identify steps you can take now to be guided by current market demands without sacrificing control. About AIIM (from the AIIM website) “Everything we do is to help you and your organization solve your information-driven business challenges. We want to help you improve your performance by transforming the way you manage your information. From our articles, webinars, and educational resources to our training courses and live events, we want to help make your intelligent information management vision a reality no matter where you're starting." See you there!

The responsibility of feeding the people of Canada rests squarely on the shoulders of the Canadian Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food (AAFC). That is why the policies for governing the production, processing and marketing of all Canadian farm, food, and agri-products are so important. And that is why AAFC relies upon Microsoft SharePoint for managing policy documents and for collaborating with portfolio partners. Several years ago, SharePoint was tapped to replace an OpenText document management system. The move to SharePoint was part of a larger shift towards a Microsoft infrastructure and ultimately a migration to the Microsoft 365 cloud.  SharePoint is Great, But…. The move to SharePoint was promising, but AAFC still faced the following challenges. Document versioning chaos – too many versions of documents floating around created confusion about what was the latest/authoritative document. Saving emails to SharePoint – there was no easy way to upload important emails to SharePoint. Since many emails are really business documents that need to be retained, this was a big problem. Limited email inbox storage – with only several gigabytes of email storage, workers had to find a centralized location outside of Outlook to store important emails. Accurately tagging content in SharePoint – workers were often not compliant with tagging documents in SharePoint metadata because it was seen as unnecessary overhead. Bulk uploading of content to SharePoint – with many documents to upload, the overhead of tagging each document one by one was unacceptable to the worker community. harmon.ie to the Rescue AAFC selected harmon.ie to simplify employees’ interaction with SharePoint. harmon.ie solves AAFC’s SharePoint challenges by making it easy for knowledge workers to use SharePoint. Workers simply drag and drop emails and documents to a SharePoint sidebar in their Outlook window, and they are prompted for required metadata. Important emails are stored in a centralized location and tagged so they are available to colleagues. There is always one version of the latest document, and mailboxes are not overflowing. The Results The results were spectacular. “We ran a pilot and it was very well received. And then more and more people wanted to get licenses and we just decided to buy harmon.ie for everyone”, says Mario Gaulin, Director of Enterprise Information Solutions at AAFC. Today, harmon.ie is used extensively by a diverse group of AAFC employees across many departments, to capture and classify documents and emails from Outlook and from Windows Explorer into SharePoint. Links are now routinely sent instead of attachments. By making it easy to accurately classify content, harmon.ie helps fulfill AAFC’s business objectives; namely, coordinating policy and collaborating internally, with local, provincial, and federal agencies, as well as with partners. Gaulin sums up AAFC’s harmon.ie experience: “People are not going to change. If you want them to use SharePoint, you have to make it easy for them to capture, classify, and find emails and documents. harmon.ie is the key.” Mario Gaulin, Director of Enterprise Information Solutions The Future AAFC is rolling out harmon.ie to its entire user community as it migrates to Microsoft 365. This move will further external collaboration with constituents in the Canadian ecosystem. AAFC is particularly keen to explore the ability to auto-tag content using the newly-announced SharePoint Syntex. harmon.ie will be there every step of the way to help AAFC complete its critical mission.

The Microsoft Content Services Partner Program harmon.ie is proud to be selected as a Charter Partner in the Microsoft 365 Content Services Partner Program. Earlier this year, harmon.ie was admitted to the program as an Associate Member, so we are thrilled to advance to the prestigious charter partnership level so quickly. This year is a particularly auspicious year to become a Charter Member. With millions of people working from home during the current COVID-19 crisis, remote workers need to be independent and self-sufficient with technology like never before. While Microsoft Teams has become an important tool in IT’s arsenal to keep employees connected with colleagues, suppliers, customers, and partners via virtual meetings and chat, workers continue to struggle to make the most of their Microsoft tools. For example, sharing content using Teams and SharePoint remains a challenge for most knowledge workers. Likewise, with people working remotely, it has become impractical to securely store documents on shared network drives. In response, many organizations have instituted a “mandatory SharePoint” program, requiring employees to upload important emails and documents to a centralized and secure SharePoint location. Helping workers capture and classify emails and documents in SharePoint and Teams is precisely where harmon.ie makes it easy for knowledge workers to do the right thing. Workers can simply drag and drop emails and documents from Outlook directly to SharePoint (and Microsoft Teams channels). “We are delighted to be selected as Charter Members of the Content Services Partner Program,” said David Lavenda, Chief Product Officer at harmon.ie. “With the advent of SharePoint Syntex, capturing and classifying content in SharePoint has never been more important. With our advanced Search capabilities, harmon.ie is uniquely positioned to help knowledge workers easily find content using metadata. As such, we look forward to leveraging the partner program’s access to Microsoft sales, marketing, and product resources, to help organizations realize their business objectives while maximizing their investment in Microsoft 365.” About the Microsoft 365 Content Services Partner Program Microsoft launched the Microsoft 365 Content Services Partner Program to help accelerate customer success with Microsoft 365 Content Services, powered by Microsoft 365, Project Cortex, SharePoint, and SharePoint Syntex. The program is geared to support partners delivering solutions that make the transformation of content management practical and attainable. The Microsoft Content Services program recognizes and supports Microsoft’s strategic partners throughout the expansion of their content services platforms. Partners in the program span the globe, and offer a broad range of software, consulting, training, and adoption solutions. Each strategic partner has been recognized for proven customer success in envisioning and delivering customer content solutions in Microsoft 365.