Microsoft 365
Our Technology Expertise
Networking
Microsoft Servers
QuickBooks
Professional Services You Can Depend On
We lead with a “business first” approach: start with how you want to solve a business need . We can then
advise you on not only technologies that are appropriate, but can often show you how a change in business
processes and procedures can produce even better outcomes. All with considerations of your business
In today’s IT world, it’s more important than ever to have professionals who are knowledgeable and skilled
in a wide range of business and technology skills. TechEvents will partner with you to make sure that the
technologies you choose are properly suited to your business goals and objectives and deployed in the
most appropriate ways. Whatever size your business is - from sole proprietorships to several thousand
employees, you can be assured of the highest quality of technical and business support.
Professional Services
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IT Support - Outsourced support, by incident
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Microsoft 365 - setup, migration and administration
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SharePoint - setup, migration, and deployment
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Power App and Power Automate - analyze needs, develop and deploy
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Networks - setup, firewalls, VPN
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QuickBooks - upgrades, additional custom features
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Strategy and Planning - technology selection and implementation
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Project Management - special projects and ongoing efforts
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Marketing Support - mailing lists, social media campaigns
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Other Needs - temporary or ongoing assistance
Contact TechEvents
Email: info@techevents.com
Mailing Address: 3005 124th PL SW
Everett, WA 98204
Phone: 425.818.0404
Fax: 425.818.0416
Our services are offered in various
ways to meet your specific needs. Our
engagements can be ongoing, like outsourced IT
support, or one time projects. In addition to technical
skills, we also provide expert assistance in
management and general business planning and
execution.
SharePoint in Microsoft 365 is a web-based platform that is available in Windows, Mac, and
mobile devices. SharePoint allows data and information to be shared across your company. Files
are stored in document libraries, and lists are used to store data tables. Internet or intranet
sites can be easily customized with specific pages that can contain custom or pre-defined web
parts.
Libraries in SharePoint have a familar Windows organization that contain folders, subfolders and
files. Sharing permissions can be at any of those levels, providing security and granular control.
Unlike Windows, however, SharePoint libraries support versioning, meaning when a file changes,
previous versions remain available.
List tables are defined with columns of data, and each instance of a data item for a list is a rown
in the table. Permissions allow for full control, viewing, no access and more.
SharePoint can be an importanmt asset when using the Power Products, as lists and files can be
used as data source and more.
Learn much more by clicking on the SharePoint icon.
Exchange in Microsoft 365 is the cloud-based mail server that replaces on-premise Exchange
Server. Most Microsoft 365 users have never had the on-premise server but have used the cloud
version only,
Users rarely have to interact with Exchange directly. Instead, they access emails and contacts
from a desktop or mobile client like Outlook, or via a web client like Outlook Web Access (OWA).
Still, Exchange Admistration can provide extended features for your company, and TechEvents
can both help you know about those features and administer your Exchange settings.
Shared mailboxes are a valuable feature. Like any user mailbox, they have an email address and
support similar folder structures, but unlike user mailboxes they require no additional licensing.
Instead, users are given access to them. A common use is for info, billing, jobs, etc., as the base
part of the email address. All incoming and outgoing email is available to all assigned users.
Rules allow overall flow control of emails for the organization in contrast to the single mailbox
rules in Outlook.
Learn much more by clicking on the Exchange icon.
Teams in Microsoft 3655 is a powerful messaging app for your organization—a workspace for real-
time collaboration and communication, meetings, file and app sharing. Teams is important when
you have remote workers, those who may work from home or are in remote branch offices.
Teams can facilitate internal support, training and worker collaberation and interaction.
Workers can also use Teams to collaborate and communicate with customers and vendors,
expanding the way in which customer service can be amplified with shared data and personal
interaction in either real time or on demand.
Teams has far more features and capabilities than can be displayed in this text, but here are a few:
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Messaging chat and video conferencing
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Calendars, files, and webinar sharing
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Integration with other Microsoft 365 products
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Organize by teams (people) and channels (communications)
Teams is available for Windows, Mac, tablets and smartphones
Learn much more by clicking on the Teams icon.
Power BI in Microsoft 365 is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors
that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually
immersive, and interactive insights. Your data may be an Excel spreadsheet, or a
collection of cloud-based and on-premises hybrid data warehouses, the same data
sources that are available in Power Apps and Power Automate. Power BI lets you
easily connect to your data sources, visualize and discover what's important, and
share that with anyone or everyone you want.
Power BI can be used by different people in different ways. Some might primarily use
the Power BI service to view reports and dashboards; a number-crunching, business-
report-creating user might make extensive use of Power BI Desktop or Power BI
Report Builder to create reports, then publish those reports to the Power BI service,
where others view them. Another user in sales, might mainly use the Power BI phone
app to monitor progress on sales quotas, and to drill into new sales lead details.
Power BI also can interact with Power Apps and Power Automate. It is available on
Windows, Mac, tablets and smartphone platforms.
Learn much more by clicking on the Power BI icon.
Power Apps in Microsoft 365 allows you to create business applications that can use data from
hundreds of formats including SharePoint lists, Excel spreadsheets, SQL tables, emails, and
many, many more platforms. Data from the sources you choose can be presented to users in an
almost unlimited number of screen displays, any of which can be made interactive with the user.
Data can be added, changed or deleted as you choose.
Known as low- or no-code , Power Apps is availbale to business users who may have few techncal
skills but also to those with advanced ones. Power Apps creation can even be fully automatic: if
the data source is a SharePoint list, a corresponding Power Apps is one mouse-click away.
Power Apps is a perfect vehicle to support nagging buiness problems that require data that may
already exist in your other applications or can be captured as part of user’s work tasks. An app
can be created by one user and then shared with others to use.
Power Apps are accessible on Windows and Mac desktops and on tablets and smartphones.
Learn much more by clicking on the Power App icon.
Power Automate in Microsoft 365 is a tool to create automated workflows between desired
applications to synchronize files, get notifications, and collect data. This intelligent, cloud-based
solution uses triggers and actions to create chain reactions within a workflow so that repetitive,
manual, and time-consuming tasks are accomplished without human intervention.
Triggers are events that occur: a new email arriving, a file being changed, a new row added to a
data table, and many more. Workflows can start when a trigger occurs, they can start on a
schedule such as daily or monthly, or they can be started manually.
Actions workflows can make are as varied as you can imagine. A trigger in one type of data
could result in changes to a completely different type of data for example. Complex logic can be
incorporated in a workflow to determine what actions to perform based on mulitple data
occurrences. Pretty much any workflow that can be done with a pen and paper can be created
in Power Automate.
Users can create workflows for their own data sources, or they may create workflows shared
with others for common data sources.
Learn much more by clicking on the Power Automate icon.
TechEvents
is a Microsoft Partner and
skilled in many IT disciplines:
cloud-based and on-premise servers,
database platforms, and much more.
Experience with small to large
scale enterprise systems.
Our approch to solving your
problems is to understand the underlying
business drivers and help you chose the appropriate
solutions. Sometimes it a change in business processes
or collecting data and making it readily available
QuickBooks is one of the most commonly used accounting software products used by small to
medium sized businesses. QuickBooks can manage the day-to-day operations of a wide variety of
business types. The enterprise version supports extended inventory services in addition to other
unique features.
While QuickBooks support distributed features like multiple inventory (warehouse) sites,
performance across a network link like a WAN is quite slow, and many users find it unacceptable.
TechEvents has created a workable solution that permits remote QuickBooks users to run the
desktop client at local speeds. Unlike hosted services that will do this, there are no recurring or
ongoing charges.
Additionally, we have used SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power Automate to extend what and how
QuickBooks does. For example, we created a Power Apps to mimic creating a sales order on a
tablet or smartphone that gets uploaded into QuickBooks when completed. Another app allows
delivery drivers to view their driving routes, take a photo of the delivery, and get an electronic
signature on their tablets. Afterwards, an email summary is sent to the customer and an invoice
created in QuickBooks.
Learn much more by clicking on the QuickBooks icon.
About
Contact TechEvents
Email: info@techevents.com
Mailing Address: 3005 124th PL SW
Everett, WA 98204
Phone: 425.818.0404
Fax: 425.818.0416
For questions, requests,
estimates technical support
or assitance, please complete
the following form and click
“Seend Now” for fastest
response.
IT Support
Whether you need one-time support or on an ongoing basis, you can depend on TechEvents for
professional, highly skilled support. Ongoing, outsourced support provides you advanced
support capabilities at a cost far less than you would pay for in-house personnel.
Our clients have ranged in size from sole proprietorships to medium-sized business with
hundreds of workers. Most support tasks can be done remotely reducing time to respond and
associated costs, but when necessary, we will be on site.
Our clients have praised us for our help and guidance in everything from product selection to
break-fix tasks to best practices and policies, including staff training and knowledge. As much
as possible and when resources make it practical, we will show company workers how to take
care of issues on a day-to-day basis.
We have served a broad range of business types: manufacturing, health care, wholesale and
distribution, finance, service industry, retail, legal and many more. Our business knowledge in
these and other areas is extensive, so you get business and technical support always combined.
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Networking - Design, implementation and maintenance of your local and wide area networks.
VPN for site-to-site and remote user access. Router, switch, NAS design and setup. WiFi
access
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Desktop clients - Setup desktops, create policies and standards, install desktop applications
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On-premise and cloud servers - Hardware and software selection and installation, server
administration including domain support, group policies, single sign on, update and backup
services.
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Security - Firewall hardware and software for networks, servers, client devices
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Application Software - Selection, installation and maintenance
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Custom IT Projects
Power BI
Power BI is a tool to visualize data. Like Power App and Power Automate, data from many
platforms and formats can be use: Excel, SharePoint lists, SQL, company databases and more.
Power BI has as well a number of visual formats to display data such as bar, line, pie charts,
maps, and more. Multiple data sources can be combined for the same visualization.
A Power BI report, which may consist of a variety of visualizations, is created in Power BI
Desktop, and the result can be published to the Power BI service in the cloud, shared with
others as required. A published report is also interactive. A user can often change the display
by clicking on an element or show parts of the underlying data. For example, a pie chart
showing sales by product, when a product slice is clicked, may change a linked line chart
showing sales by month for only that product instead of for all products.
Another Power BI feature to allow the user to alter which kinds of data are used in
visualizations are called slicers. A slicer is a pre-defined filter that can be applied to the data
for a visualization. If sales data for the year were being displayed, for example, a slicer might
allow the user to select one or more months to include.
Power BI also is tightly integrated with Power Apps and Power Automate. A Power Apps can be
inserted into a Power BI report to run the app without leaving Power BI. A button can be
added to a report to run a Power Automate workflow. Thi s could, for example, get new data
from real time monitoring to update the data displayed in Power BI.
Conversely, a Power BI visualization can be placed into a Power Apps canvas.
QuickBooks
If you are reading this, you probably already use or certainly know that QuickBooks Desktop is a
widely used accounting software package. TechEvents provides three areas of QuickBooks support”
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Installation and feature use - We can provide technical help in settig up QuickBooks for a multi-user
and/or a multi-site company.
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Local hosting for remote users - Instead of paying monthly fees to host QuickBooks remote users,
we install local resources for you to host on site with no recurring fees. Provide remote users local
access speeds no matter where they are located.
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Custom add-on apps - Using Power Apps, Power Automate and a simple, inexpensive app, data can
be extracted from QuickBooks files and made available in SQL, SharePoint and other platforms to
use with custom apps and workflows. Data generated in those apps and workflows can be
converted to QuickBooks transactions and uploaded into QuickBooks as though a user created
them in the QuickBooks application. A detailed description follows later in this section.
Local Hosting for Remote Workers
The need for remote workers to run QuickBooks exists when a company has multiple locations such as
branch offices and warehouses. Additionally, it exists when some workers work remotely. While it is
theoretically possible to run QuickBooks over just an Internet connection, it is far to slow for most
users especially with larger files and more data.
The method we use is to host virtual machines on the same local network where the QuickBooks files
reside so that those machines access QuickBooks at local speeds. Remote users access the virtual
machines using remote desktop which is very fast even on moderate internet connections.
It requires some wide area network infrastructure to permit users to access the virtual machines and
at the same time provide security from malicious attacks. Exact requirements between branch
office/warehouse access and individual worker access.
We are here to help you construct an appropriate solution for your company.
QuickBooks - Page 2
To help you understand how QuickBooks data can be accessed and updated, this overview
shows you how data is synced with a SQL database and in turn, with SharePoint lists and
libraries. Although other data platforms might be used, SharePoint is readily availble to
Microsoft 365 users and to Power Apps and Power Automate.
A small and inexpensive utility is responsible for retrieving
data from QuickBooks and placing it in SQL tables and
getting updates to the SQL tables uploaded to QuickBooks.
In the sync utility, tasks are creating defining which data
elements are referenced and whether it’s for retrieval only
or for updating. The SQL data base can be on the same or
a remote commuter, but it’s easier to access with Power
Apps and Automate as an Azure SQL instance. Note that
data flows in both directions, to and from the different
platforms.
If you are asking why data gets copied from SQL to SharePoint lists, there are two reasons
why. First, some tables need more columns than are in the QuickBooks/SQL tables, and
second, extra licensing is required per user for Power Apps and Automate to access SQL
directly. Instead, just one license is required for the Power Automate flows to copy data
between SQL and SharePoint.
A more detailed explanation of some of the additional, external to QuickBooks processes we
created follow below:
Sales Orders Picked for Delivery - QuickBooks has a pick capability but it is somewhat
limited. The extended function TechEvents created supports partial picks - not just the entire
sales order’s items - and it also tracks dates for partial, full and completed picks and for
similar dates for delivery of the sales order items. Moreover, if another item is substituted for
the item on the sales order, picking the substitution modifies the sales order to reflect the
different item.
Typically this Power App is used by warehouse
workers. They pick orders for the next delivery day
and have them ready for driver pickup. Each sales
order shows delivery information and status and can
show all line item information and status as well.
QuickBooks - Page 3
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Delivery App - There are several apps used in delivery control. The first app is used to
pick items on sales orders for delivery and is commonly run by warehouse workers. The
second app is used to assign drivers to picked sales orders and then to sequence the
delivery order (one option is to use a map to visualize where the deliveries take place and
as they are sequenced, to show the route on the map). The next app is used by the
delivery drivers to view the delivery sequence, verify what was picked matches the items
loaded for delivery, and then to capture a photo of the delivery site and get an electronic
signature. The app also creates an email with a list of the delivered items, the photo and
electronic signature and sends to the customer. The app also generates an invoice that
can be approved by accounting to upload into QuickBooks.
In addition to the Power Apps, some Power Automate flows are also used. When the
sync utility creates a new sales order in SQL from QuickBooks, a flow runs to create a
correspondng sales order item in SharePoint. The SharePoint list has many extra
columns corresponding to picked items and deliver objects. When the delivery is
completed, SharePoint lists store the photo , the signature, and the created invoice.
When the invoice is approved, a new item is created in a SharePoint list which in turn
triggers a flow to update QB and run the sync utility to load it into QuickBooks.
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Set Bar Codes - A QuickBooks user wanted to start using bar codes for several thousand
items in their warehouses. Many of these items are very large, and they found it
impracticable to use a laptop with a bar code scanner in a large warehouse space. An
app was created so that a tablet or smartphone could be used to scan bar codes and
asign them to inventory items.
From these few examples, you can probably envsion tasks where using existing QuickBooks
data or creating data you want to add to QuickBooks can improve productivity, reduce
errors, provide reliable communication to your customers and vendors. You might also
want to build dashboards and reports in Power BI that are beyond what QuickBooks offers.
Unlike traditional program development, though, using the low- and no-code Power tools
means you have control over what and how activities will be done, can make adjustments as
your business conditions change, all at a cost far, far less in both time and money.
TechEvents can be your partner in getting started and learning how it’s done.
•
Delivery App - There are several apps used in delivery control. The first app is used to
pick items on sales orders for delivery and is commonly run by warehouse workers. The
second app is used to assign drivers to picked sales orders and then to sequence the
delivery order (one option is to use a map to visualize where the deliveries take place and
as they are sequenced, to show the route on the map). The next app is used by the
delivery drivers to view the delivery sequence, verify what was picked matches the items
loaded for delivery, and then to capture a photo of the delivery site and get an electronic
signature. The app also creates an email with a list of the delivered items, the photo and
electronic signature and sends to the customer. The app also generates an invoice that
can be approved by accounting to upload into QuickBooks.
In addition to the Power Apps, some Power Automate flows are also used. When the
sync utility creates a new sales order in SQL from QuickBooks, a flow runs to create a
correspondng sales order item in SharePoint. The SharePoint list has many extra
columns corresponding to picked items and deliver objects. When the delivery is
completed, SharePoint lists store the photo , the signature, and the created invoice.
When the invoice is approved, a new item is created in a SharePoint list which in turn
triggers a flow to update QB and run the sync utility to load it into QuickBooks.
•
Set Bar Codes - A QuickBooks user wanted to start using bar codes for several thousand
items in their warehouses. Many of these items are very large, and they found it
impracticable to use a laptop with a bar code scanner in a large warehouse space. An
app was created so that a tablet or smartphone could be used to scan bar codes and
asign them to inventory items.
From these few examples, you can probably envsion tasks where using existing QuickBooks
data or creating data you want to add to QuickBooks can improve productivity, reduce
errors, provide reliable communication to your customers and vendors. You might also
want to build dashboards and reports in Power BI that are beyond what QuickBooks offers.
Unlike traditional program development, though, using the low- and no-code Power tools
means you have control over what and how activities will be done, can make adjustments as
your business conditions change, all at a cost far, far less in both time and money.
TechEvents can be your partner in getting started and learning how it’s done.
•
Delivery App - There are several apps used in delivery control. The first app is used to
pick items on sales orders for delivery and is commonly run by warehouse workers. The
second app is used to assign drivers to picked sales orders and then to sequence the
delivery order (one option is to use a map to visualize where the deliveries take place and
as they are sequenced, to show the route on the map). The next app is used by the
delivery drivers to view the delivery sequence, verify what was picked matches the items
loaded for delivery, and then to capture a photo of the delivery site and get an electronic
signature. The app also creates an email with a list of the delivered items, the photo and
electronic signature and sends to the customer. The app also generates an invoice that
can be approved by accounting to upload into QuickBooks.
In addition to the Power Apps, some Power Automate flows are also used. When the
sync utility creates a new sales order in SQL from QuickBooks, a flow runs to create a
correspondng sales order item in SharePoint. The SharePoint list has many extra
columns corresponding to picked items and deliver objects. When the delivery is
completed, SharePoint lists store the photo , the signature, and the created invoice.
When the invoice is approved, a new item is created in a SharePoint list which in turn
triggers a flow to update QB and run the sync utility to load it into QuickBooks.
•
Set Bar Codes - A QuickBooks user wanted to start using bar codes for several thousand
items in their warehouses. Many of these items are very large, and they found it
impracticable to use a laptop with a bar code scanner in a large warehouse space. An
app was created so that a tablet or smartphone could be used to scan bar codes and
asign them to inventory items.
From these few examples, you can probably envsion tasks where using existing QuickBooks
data or creating data you want to add to QuickBooks can improve productivity, reduce
errors, provide reliable communication to your customers and vendors. You might also
want to build dashboards and reports in Power BI that are beyond what QuickBooks offers.
Unlike traditional program development, though, using the low- and no-code Power tools
means you have control over what and how activities will be done, can make adjustments as
your business conditions change, all at a cost far, far less in both time and money.
TechEvents can be your partner in getting started and learning how it’s done.
Power Automate
Power Automate is used to create workflows. Workflows can be triggered based on events, based on a
recurring schedule, or started manually. Events can be when data is added or changed. Data sources can
be Excel spreadsheets, SharePoint lists and libraries, SQL tables, emails and many, many more.
Power Automate can contain actions, like updating data, start approval processes, and perform data
analysis including AI functions. Conditions are also supported and can change workflow processes
depending on the value or values of data, including complex logical functions.
Power Automate creates cloud-based workflows, but local workflows can be created with Power Automate
Desktop. Desktop flows, in contrast to cloud-based ones, can also interact with the desktop operating
system, creating tasks, monitoring task status, printing, maintaining directories, and more. Power
Automate Desktop also allows you to record manual actions you take, including interacting with the
operating system and programs, and then automate those manual steps into a saved desktop workflow.
A desktop workflow can also be triggered from a cloud Power Automate workflow. While a cloud workflow
cannot directly interact with a desktop, it can via a trigger to start a desktop workflow. Parameters can be
passed between both types of workflows as needed.
An example of how powerful this capability is that a user running a Power Apps app might cause a new row
to be created in a data source. That in turn can trigger a cloud-based Power Automate flow, which in turn
can trigger a desktop flow to change data on a local desktop. Perhaps the desktop has a line of business
application that can perform a specific function when the data changes in the Power Apps occur but the
business application cannot have its data accessed directly.
Desktop flows are also valuable for workers who need to perform repetitive tasks, like weekly or monthly
reports or any of a number of similar activities.
Power Apps
With Power Apps, personal and business applications can be created and shared with others to use.
These apps can access an ever growing list of data sources to use, create and change data values.
The unit of an app is a screen, and an app can have multiple screens that can be traversed based on
user interactions. The primary element of data is a gallery which can be displayed on a screen. Think
of a gallery as a form of a spreadsheet with columns of data repeated for each row or occurrence of
that data. The columns may be actual columns in the data source, or they may be created from
inferred values or objects. For example. “month name” in a column could be a word transformation
from the month number in a date column.
Images, action items like buttons, and a variety of objects can be placed on a screen. How those
objects look and function can be static or dependent of data values. They can be made to appear or
disappear spending on conditions that are defined as part of the business rules for the app. A button
to add a new data row could be disabled or not visible if the user did not have permission to create
new items is such an example.
Creating Power Apps is a web-based, as is their execution. When an app is created, it can be shared
with individual or groups of users. They in turn execute the app though web based access. The app
can execute on Windows, Mac, tablet and smartphone platforms without specific modification,
although adaptive behavior such as screen scaling can be added to an app.
Power Apps can interact with both Power Automate and Power BI, and specific apps can be designated
to show and be executable in Teams.
Teams
Microsoft Teams is cloud-based collaboration platform that is part of Microsoft 365. The core
capabilities in Microsoft Teams include business messaging, calling, video meetings and file sharing.
Businesses of all sizes can use Teams. Teams can be accessed via device applications or via a web client.
Teams competes with similar products, such as Slack, Cisco Webex and Google Workspace. As a business
communications app, Teams enables local and remote workers to collaborate on content in real time
and near-real time across different devices, including laptops and mobile devices. Microsoft Teams
integrates with other Microsoft business applications, including Exchange, PowerPoint and SharePoint.
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Calling. Teams provides cloud-based telephony for voice calling. With the Teams app, users can make
voice over IP (VoIP) calls between Teams clients. Microsoft Phone System and Calling Plan users can
make, receive and transfer calls to and from landlines and mobile phones on the public switched
telephone network (PSTN). Microsoft also has Direct Routing, which lets customers connect an
existing private branch exchange (PBX) or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk to Teams. Other
Teams calling features include audio conferencing, Enhanced 911 (E911) support, voicemail and
several other enterprise-grade calling capabilities.
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Video meetings. In addition to audio-only calls, users can conduct virtual meetings. Amid the COVID-
19 pandemic and work-from-home (WFH) directives, video conferencing adoption soared as people
collaborated remotely. Teams offers some key video conferencing features, such as customized
virtual backgrounds, meeting recording, transcription, whiteboarding and breakout rooms.
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Microsoft Teams whiteboarding can help users collaborate on visual elements.
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Screen sharing. This older but critical capability is a common feature among team collaboration
tools. As the name implies, screen sharing enables users to share their desktop screens, including
files, in real time during Teams calls or video meetings.
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Calendar. Teams, like Microsoft Outlook email, features extensive calendaring so users can keep
track of their workweek, meetings and other daily appointments. The Outlook and Teams calendars
are tightly integrated.
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File sharing. In this document management feature, remote teams can store, share and edit files
within Teams. Users can collaborate on the same document in real time within Teams.
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Webinars. Microsoft Teams supports interactive meetings and webinars for up to 1,000 attendees.
Features include live reactions and host moderation controls to disable attendees' chat, audio and
video. Teams webinars can accommodate 10,000 people in a view-only broadcast. Larger broadcasts
of 20,000 people are available through the end of 2021 to accommodate the higher number of remote
workers during the pandemic. In 2022, that number will drop to 10,000. Also, attendee reports show
who attended the webinar and for how long.
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External collaboration. The guest access feature in Microsoft Teams enables users to invite people
outside their organizations to join internal channels for messaging, meetings and file sharing. This
capability helps to facilitate business-to-business (B2B) project management. Teams Connect,
expected to be generally available in 2021, is another external collaboration feature, enabling
different companies to chat, meet and edit documents in a shared workspace in Teams.
Teams has other powerful features for communications like channels and its tight integration with
other Microsoft 365 products. Teams can evolve into a very specific configuration for your organization
and replace email, remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, web-casting products.
Exchange
Exchange is a cloud based mail server service that hosts email accounts for your domains. In
Microsoft 365, each user account is automatically assigned a mailbox in Exchange.
Exchange also supports shared mailboxes. A shared mailbox is not strictly associated with a user but
instead groups of users are granted access to it. An additional Exchange license is not required for a
shared mailbox, but only other licensed users may be given permission to access it.
In all aspects except licensing and a dedicated user, shared mailboxes are just like a user mailbox. A
standard set of folders such as inbox, deleted items, sent items and junk mail, users can create
additional folders and apply rules. Shared mailboxes also have an email address and can have alias
addresses as well.
Shared mailboxes are a great way to have mailboxes that might be monitored by a group of workers.
For example, you might want to set up a shared mailbox for job applicants with an email address of
“careers@…” This mailbox could be shared with HR workers who all can see not only the incoming
emails, but all of the replies and conversation threads. This is in sharp contrast to having a single
worker use her mailbox to send and receive emails but copy others; how often have we all failed to
remember to “reply to all?” Or we just don’t want to expose all of the other recipients.
In the Exchange Admin Center, you can control and monitor most aspects of your organization’s
email structure. You can manage contacts for external user email addresses, trace message flow,
and set policies and rules for the organization.
SharePoint
SharePoint is a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information from any device. Within
SharePoint, websites, or sites, are containers for document libraries and lists. A document library has
a structure similar to the Windows file system with folders, sub-folders, and files. A list might be
thought of as a spreadsheet with columns that define data elements and rows that are an occurrence
of that data. Additionally, sites can contain web parts such as news feeds, calendars, specific web
pages and more.
One feature of SharePoint that is not in Windows file structures is versioning. As a file or document is
changed, the changed version becomes the current version and file before the change becomes the
prior versions. Both versioning itself and the number of versions to keep is user defined.
SharePoint also houses OneDrive as a special document library with permission set to a specific user.
While all SharePoint data is stored on the server, document libraries may also be synced to local
devices which allows a user to access library items by simply browsing on the device. When changes
are made locally, those changes are echoed to the server. Conversely, when data on the server
changes, it is synced back to the local device. If multiple devices are synced to the same library,
changes sync across all platforms.
Power Apps and Power Automate workflows can be created from a SharePoint list with a single mouse
click, but they can also be part of apps and workflows created from scratch. Document library files can
also serve as Power Automate triggers when content changes.
SharePoint is tightly coupled with Teams. Add the SharePoint tab in Teams to quickly paste any
published page, news post, or list from a SharePoint site. In Microsoft Teams, you can add published
SharePoint pages, lists, and document libraries as individual tabs in a Teams channel. Team members
can view pages, edit lists, work with their shared files, and add comments in the Teams tabs. You can
also add Power Apps as a tab.
There is far more to SharePoint, and we wat to help you experience it all.