Winrox role helping companies reinforce their competitive advantage takes us to the largest enterprises in the world. Perhaps one of the best examples of what Office 365 can do for organizations is embodied in our smallest client. This client embodies how complexity can be handled in such a manner as to bring simplicity with the right investments in the right tools.

Space2Work and FastTalker.com are two businesses run by Shelley Buleziuk and her family. Her husband Mark whose skills drive the business and Shelley masterfully runs the organization which supports their work and that of their 6 other employees who manage hundreds of auctioneers and several properties.

“What is interesting about these companies is the work across borders, have a light and agile distributed workforce and leverage collaboration tools extensively to keep themselves and their assets highly utilized.” Said Jeff Loucks of Winrox. Space2work is a rental office space company with offices in Manitoba, Iowa and Missouri. FastTalker provides auctioneers to real-estate auctions across North America although predominantly in the USA. The main office is in Winnipeg and Chloe Shaw provides logistical support to a workforce of several hundred auctioneers.

“I was originally interested in making my Microsoft tools more flexible and Office 365 being in the cloud naturally supported our remote workers.” Said Buleziuk. “We don’t have an IT department and we have a mixture of Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and other technologies supporting our staff. Our Partner Winrox knew exactly how to support each of these environments and walked us through the process of setting it up for us. I can do it myself now and the other day I configured Mark’s iPad to receive his email in seconds. The tools like Outlook and Lync help us keep in sync.”

“What was interesting with Space2work and FastTalker was the need to keep 2 separate email accounts working from one mailbox. People in the company wear several hats and although what they do is complex, the solutions that support them need to be effortless. We developed a technique for managing all of their different corporate domains emails from one Office365 account per user greatly simplifying the overhead each user faced. Each device they use has the integrated mail box and those mailboxes are the same across devices. They can work how they want where ever they are and wear the hats that needs to be worn to resolve the issue at hand without any additional complexity.” Said Loucks.
“Being able to send FastTalker email when I am doing Fasttalker business and Space2work email when I am doing Space2work business all from one place simplifies the complexity I deal with every day.”, says Chloe Shaw. “We travel back and forth between Canada and the United States, the Microsoft Lync program allows us to be able to work together by sharing our screens and programs even though we are miles apart.”
The Customer is King for any small business and these tools really help keep Space2work and Fasttalker responsive in exceeding customer expectations.

Which package do they use?

Office 365 Enterprise E3 which includes:

Office Applications

Note: Jeff Loucks blog covers the techniques used to have multiple domains in one mailbox and the send from Alias technique. Both Articles can be found on this blog.

Through out science fiction’s history the concept of creating an artificial intelligence which eventually achieves the ability to take over the world has been a dominant theme. The central character is often a robot who wires together the world computer networks and holds humanity at threat of nuclear war or some other catastrophe.

Here is what I see as we increasingly depend on the incredible insights of technology assisted decision making. Maybe what will happen is that technology will bring so much value to our decision making processes we will be unable to question it in the long run. This certainly isn’t an anti-technology rant since day to day I live and breath how to powerfully assist companies use technology for strategic advantage in delivering value.

In the long run, are search engines changing the way we make decisions and in fact making decisions for us? For instance search engines bring up thousands of results and yet we only look at maybe the top 6 results. Generally people decide from the information presented. They reference those top listed and highly relevant sources of information might lay hidden in the depths of search results, tragically not optimized to pop to the top.

The search engine optimization profession is all about making a company’s information float to the top regardless of the value to those who read the results. So here we have a system where people make choices based on those having an interest in influencing those choices rather than receiving information which best suits their needs.

The question is are we making better decisions or are we making those decisions which have been influenced by those with the most to gain from the choices we make, regardless of the value they bring us. We confuse the search results with being relevant to our needs or alternatively we redefine our needs based on our search results. What we find is a pattern where people are increasingly unwilling to invest the time to think through their needs without the first being highly influenced by that information which is easy to find.

So the question is, as this trend continues and the volume of information presented to us expands how are we reinforcing our decision making powers to ensure we are not being lead down the garden path? In the end, are we being programed to make the decisions other people want us to or are we informing ourselves to make decisions which best reflect our needs?

And so here it is we, are through the convenience of information reducing our independence by letting those who want to position themselves with the highest influence on the decisions we make. Perhaps, its is not that we will program a technology which eventually takes over the world but rather that we will be programmed by technology in to a decision chain which fails to consider our own best interests as represented by the alternatives.

The SMB 150 is a recognition program for global SMB technology leaders. My blog is read by a large number of people who are and service the SMB marketplace. Please if you find my advice helpful I would be humbled to have you take a moment follow the link and vote in appreciation.

http://www.smb150.com/story.php?title=jeff-loucks 

Cheers,

Jeff Loucks

Physical Memory Limits: Windows 8

The following table specifies the limits on physical memory for Windows 8.

Version	Limit on X86	Limit on X64
Windows 8 Enterprise	4 GB	512 GB
Windows 8 Professional	4 GB	512 GB
Windows 8	4 GB	128 GB

Physical Memory Limits: Windows Server 2012

The following table specifies the limits on physical memory for Windows Server 2012. Windows Server 2012 is available only in X64 editions.

Version	Limit on X64
Windows Server 2012 Datacenter	4 TB
Windows Server 2012 Standard	4 TB
Windows Server 2012 Essentials	64 GB
Windows Server 2012 Foundation	32 GB
Windows Storage Server 2012 Workgroup	32 GB
Windows Storage Server 2012 Standard	4 TB
Hyper-V Server 2012	4 TB

 

Source: MSDN

Jeff Loucks
Chief Strategy Officer | Winrox | 425-577-7377

Example 1: How to find and to replace numbers

To replace wildcard characters (*) in a numeric value in a worksheet cell, follow these steps:

1. Type 494** in cell A1.
2. Select cell A1.
3. On the Edit menu, click Replace.
   Note In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, click Find & Select in the Editing group on the Home tab, and then click Replace.
4. In the Find what box, type ~*. To do this, press TILDE, and then press ASTERISK.
5. In the Replace with box, type 2.
6. Click Replace.

Cell A1 now reads 49422.
Notes

• When you click Replace All, Excel makes the change throughout the worksheet. When you click Replace, Excel changes only the currently active cell and leave the Replace dialog box open.
• When you type an asterisk without a tilde in the Find what box, Excel replaces all entries with a 2. Excel treats the asterisk as a wildcard character. Therefore, 494** becomes 2.

Example 2: How to find and to replace a tilde

To replace a tilde in an Excel worksheet cell, follow these steps:

1. Type Micros~1.xls in cell A1.
2. Select cell A1.
3. On the Edit menu, click Replace.
   Note In Excel 2007, click Find & Select in the Editing group on the Home tab, and then click Replace.
4. In the Find what box, type ~~.
5. In the Replace with box, type oft.
6. Click Replace All.

Cell A1 now reads Microsoft1.xls.

Message Headers are a key way to look at the technical information about email that is sent to you. It helps IT people determine the back ground on the message such as its origin and the route it took to get to your mail server.

Since the 2007 version of outlook, it has become increasingly more hidden. Here is how to find it.

To see the Internet headers for an email message

1. Open the message in its own window (not the reading pane) in Outlook 2010.

2. Click File, and then click Properties.

3. Look for the section Internet headers at the bottom of the Properties dialog box.

Outlook uses some header information, such as the information in the From, To, and Sent fields in an Outlook message. For more information about common Internet headers, see View e-mail message headers.

Jeff Loucks
Chief Strategy Officer | Winrox | 425-577-7377

Scenario: Your company uses a sign in domain however some users need to be able to send from a different email as their primary email address.

Example:

• You sign in with 
• Your outgoing email address

The Office 365 graphical user interface does not currently give you the ability to change this setting.

So you need to be able to get dirty with PowerShell and here are the steps.

Prerequisites:

Download and install Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell

• Download the 32-bit module
• Download the 64-bit module

Stage 1 – Setting Up PowerShell to receive the commands

1. Run the PowerShell module as administrator.
2. Type:
Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted
and press Enter
3. Type:
$LiveCred = Get-Credential
and press Enter
4. You will be prompted to log in. Use your Office365 administrative account.
5. Type:
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection
and press Enter.
6. Type:
Import-PSSession $Session
and press Enter.

Stage 2 – Getting the email addresses and changing the primary

1. Type:
$Mailbox = Get-Mailbox –Identity Jeff
and press Enter. Where Jeff is the part of the login email address in front of the @ sign (ie. )

2. Type:
ForEach ($i in $Mailbox.EmailAddresses) {Write-Host $i -NoNewline "`b, "}
and press enter.

   Note: You now have all of the information required to change the primary email address. You need to use the output of the previous command to build you next command. We will start by adding something to the front of the output and then remove a comma from the end. Finally we will change capitalization of SMTP within the output to specify which email address is the primary.
I suggest you copy the output to notepad, make the edits and then copy the final command back.

3. Add to the front of the output from line 2 type:
   Set-Mailbox Jeff –EmailAddresses

   Note: Jeff is the login name before the @ sign in the email address. This will change based on your account information. Ensure there is a space between the text you just added and the start of the output from step 2.

4. Now go to the end of the output from step 2 and remove the trailing comma.

5. Now find the email address you want to make the primary email address within the output from step 2 and capitalize SMTP just before it. You will also need to change the old primary SMTP to miniscule letters smtp.

6. The command in notepad should look like this:


7. Copy the command back into PowerShell and press Enter.

   Note: if you need to change more than one email address just repeat the steps in Stage 2.

8. Once you have finished modifying the primary email addresses you shall issue the following command:
Remove-PSSession $Session
and press Enter

Stage 3 – Testing the email addresses

Ensure the users test the email addresses by sending them to a non-office365 email address that you can verify such as Hotmail.

Jeff Loucks
Chief Strategy Officer | Winrox | 425-577-7377

Ok you have got multiple email addresses and you want to be able to send from the same Office 365 account. If you have been administering Exchange for any time you know the work around is to use a POP3 account. The question is how do you get the workaround to work with Office 365?

For those of you reading and asking the question how do I receive email from multiple addresses, please note that this post does not cover this topic. More Info on Receiving Email from Alias.

Prerequisites:

• You need a computer with Outlook Installed.
• You need to be able to sign in to Office 365 with at least one of the users accounts.
• You need to have previously set up the ability to have other email addresses/aliases as linked to above.

Steps to complete task:

1) Sign into to https://portal.microsoftonline.com/ and select Outlook

2) Click the Options link then select See All Options

3) On the My Account tab and click the link for Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access…

4) Copy the server server names for POP and SMTP. They will probably be the same, but make sure.

5) On the computer with outlook installed, click File > Account Settings > then Account Settings again.

6) On the email tab click new

7) On the Add New Account window, click Manually configure… and then click next.

8) Select Internet Email

9) Fill in the information and then click More Settings

10) On the Internet E-mail Settings window in the Outgoing Server tab, click to enable My Outgoing Server (SMTP) requires authentication.

11) Select the Advanced tab. Check require (SSL). Change Outgoing Server (SMTP) to 587. Select TLS from the Use the following type of encryption dropdown. Click OK to close the dialogue.

12) Click Next, test the account settings, and then click through to Finish

13) Click File> Options> Advanced

14) Scroll down to Send and receive and click the Send/Receive button

15) In the Group Name area, select All Accounts, and then click Edit

16) Deselect the ‘Include the selected account in this group.’

17) Click OK > click Close > click OK

18) Test it by creating a new email message

19) Click the Options tab > find the Show Fields group > click to show the ‘From: field.’

Jeff Loucks
Chief Strategy Officer | Winrox | 425-577-7377

If you need to call Office 365 support from the US or Canada this number is helpful.

Here are the option numbers:

4 – Technical Support

1 – For Office365

 

 

Jeff Loucks
Chief Strategy Officer | Winrox | 425-577-7377

Here is a link to the Download:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29692

Jeff Loucks
Chief Strategy Officer | Winrox | 425-577-7377