2021 promises to be a year of economic recovery across Canada. This Microsoft post offers six ways that small and medium-sized businesses can speed up their recovery.

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” – Stephen Hawking

2020 provided Canadian businesses unwilling or unable to digital transform all the evidence they needed of the risk of lagging. In a year when lock-down orders forced all employers to embrace remote working, organizations who lacked modern workplace cloud-based tools and enterprise security faced disruption and closure.

If you view technology as an operational weakness, not a strength, you can rewrite that story this year with these six recovery tips.

1. Don’t block your own recovery

Some decision-makers resist remote working and demand to manage people in person, believing that their oversight keeps employees productive. Analysis such as Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Teams may help them feel better. If employees can produce comparable results, where they work simply does not matter. In fact, collaboration hubs like Microsoft Teams can work like a charm and unlock big benefits, including the costs savings and time recovered from needless commuting.

2. Get expert guidance

Small and medium-sized business decision-makers defining their digital transformation strategy may want to tune into some recent presentations from recovery experts. Microsoft’s Future Now 2020 featured a bunch of inspiring sessions now available on demand. Browse all Future Now 2020 videos on demand here.

Future Now 2020 small and medium-sized business sessions

“Helping SMBs build business resilience” with Sharon Shoenborn and Hilary Zaborski discussing why digital transformation is more urgent than ever.

“Managing change through uncertain times” with Avery Swartz and Hilary Zaborski discussing the change in work dynamics and how we support communities.

“Living your culture in crisis” with Carolyn Byer shares Microsoft’s five-year cultural journey to create a purpose-driven mission.

“Lessons from the frontlines – In conversation with Shared Services Canada” with Lisa Carroll and Sarah Paquet chronicles how governments managed this year.

3. Improve your business resilience

Organizations that succeed in times of change have one thing in common: they are resilient. Discover how Microsoft solutions can help you strengthen resilience in people, teams, and your broader organization. Download The Future of Business Resilience ebook

4. Take advantage of free workshops

Microsoft Store offers free digital versions of its popular workshops for professionals. Every small and medium-sized business can take advantage of these workshops to build their technical skills and knowledge. Learn how to get the most out of Microsoft Teams, the secure collaboration hub, and other solutions like Microsoft 365, LinkedIn, Power BI, and more. Browse Microsoft Store free digital workshops for professionals

5. Embrace digital skilling and certification

Microsoft Virtual Training Days offers free Fundamentals classes and exams for non-technical professionals and Specialty classes for IT pros, in English and French.

Encourage every employee, not just your IT team, to take a free digital skilling class and to get Microsoft-certified. Employees who get technical training benefit from improved confidence and capabilities, which benefits the entire organization.

Microsoft subscribers, get the most value out of your solutions today!

• All Dynamics 365 users can access Dynamics 365 Fundamentals
• All Power BI users can access Power Platform Fundamentals
• All Azure users can access Azure Fundamentals

Azure Fundamentals – Master the most important cloud concepts and strategies. Enable digital transformation, collaboration, innovation, and better security. Unlock the world’s most transformative technologies with Azure.

Dynamics 365 Fundamentals – Become a digital transformation expert. Discover how to design intelligent systems using advanced analytics, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and mixed reality.

Power Platform Fundamentals – Discover how to drive digital innovation and automation. Connect all your data to analyze business performance. Build custom apps and automate workflows. Learn what Power Platform can do for you.

6. Step up your cybersecurity

Last, but certainly not least, make sure you keep cybersecurity top of mind. Cybercrime represents a clear and present danger to all Canadian organizations, big or small.

Start by upgrading the PCs you use to Windows 10 to help protect your organization from phishing and viruses. Learn more about Windows 10 security features

Then learn and teach your employees how to better detect and protect your business from attacks. Microsoft published the Keep your business moving securely series to help small and medium-sized businesses learn how they can practice business self-defense.

Keep your business moving securely series

1. How to work remotely, for everyone who needs to stay productive from home
2. Eight remote working essentials to stay productive
3. Your security checklist to help protect your employees working from home
4. Empowering Canadian healthcare teams with new remote working tools
5. Secure remote working solutions for government agencies
6. Secure remote working for human resources teams

If you need support

As always, Microsoft Canada is here to help. Microsoft Canada offers customers diverse options to get support. If you don’t have an IT company already, you can also get expert assistance from Microsoft’s vast network of certified solution-providers. Over 12,000 companies in Canada participate in the Microsoft Partner Network. Find one that suits your needs and wants at Microsoft Canada’s solution provider search tool.

The post Six ways to speed up your recovery in 2021 appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

One of the things I often say to the small and medium-size businesses I work with is that their size is their strength. Large organizations are like barge ships – they’re big and have a lot of capacity, but they move slowly and are hard to turn around. Smaller organizations are like speed boats. You’re more susceptible to waves, but you can go faster and make changes to your course much easier than a large vessel.

The first piece of advice I have for SMB owners in challenging times, like the ones we’re in now due to the coronavirus pandemic, is to use your nimbleness to your advantage. Keep your focus on the big view, but also be responsive and amenable to changing things up on the fly. Don’t be afraid to throw your plans out the window and make new plans. You can likely do so faster than your larger competitors and respond to a changing marketplace more quickly than they can.

One thing I see all business owners struggle with (even in the time before the coronavirus pandemic) is collecting enough data, and properly analyzing it, to make business decisions. When times are good, it can be easy to take your eye off metrics. Things are working, and sales are coming in, so there’s no urgent need to take a deep look at your systems and strategies.

But when times aren’t so good, you need to be ruthlessly efficient, and weed out what’s not working. Any effort that’s costing you time and money, and not returning on that investment, needs to be slashed. But before you can make those cuts, you need good intel, and that can’t be based on guesses.

We all make assumptions about our businesses, and many business owners suffer from consensus bias – the assumption that other people (such as potential customers and clients) think the same way they do. What I love about data is that it’s great at challenging assumptions. If you’re collecting clean data that you can properly analyze, it can tell you some hard truths about what is and what isn’t working.

The trick is in making sure you’re looking at the right metrics for your situation – that’s the “key” in that business phrase “key performance indicator This leads me to my second piece of advice for SMB owners: focus on the one or two metrics that clearly show you’re on the right path to efficiently achieving your business goals.

Finally, seek support, because it is there for you. I’ve seen companies like Microsoft (and my own company, Camp Tech) provide amazing offers to help small and medium size businesses. They’ve created resource centres, provided free digital training for SMBs, and offered versions of their software for free. Also, check with your local Small Business Resource Centre, BIA, Chamber of Commerce, or your city or town’s Economic Development Centre. They’ll point you in the direction of programs and offers that can help.

As part of Microsoft’s Future Now event on October 27  and 28, I will be joining Hilary Zaborski, SMB Customer Segment Lead for Microsoft Canada to discuss how the global pandemic has changed our work dynamics and the ways in which we can support our communities while managing business though this crisis. I encourage you to register now and join the conversation!

It’s a hard time to be in business, but challenging times are often when you truly discover what you’re made of. You got this, and I believe in you.

The post Future Now Preview: Advice for SMBs in challenging times appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

The second in our Keep your business moving securely series, this post offers eight remote working essentials to help you stay focused, productive, and secure from home. You can try out these tips at your business and/or share this post with anyone who may be procrastinating!

The legendary humorist Mark Twain once quipped, “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.” It seems Mr. Twain understood the procrastination problem, which can strike anyone, especially when they find themselves working from home.

Why do some of us tend to procrastinate? The answer may not be that complicated. With so many distractions on offer at home (kids, pets, Netflix, Xbox, phone calls, neighbours, podcasts, errands, appointments, exercising, meals, naps, laundry, and the list goes on) is it any wonder self-directed efforts fall by the wayside?

“Self-directed” says it all. Grouping into teams gives employees working remotely more structure, motivation, and support to succeed.

Instead of criticizing yourself or anyone else for procrastinating, take a moment to consider what’s missing: structure. Workplaces like offices and schools act as social networks, complete with expectations, rules, processes, hours of operation, meetings, whiteboards, and all the other mechanisms to keep people stay focused and productive.

When working from home for long periods of time, many people lose their sense of structure and, by extension, the benefits it yields. The goal then is to mimic part of that structure using technology and practices that give us the necessary human interaction and motivate us to deliver results.

Eight remote working essentials

1.      Get set up properly

2.      Schedule every day

3.      Share your screens

4.      Co-author with colleagues

5.      Keep records

6.      Encourage etiquette

7.     Automate your processes

8.     Practice business self-defense

1. Get set up properly

In our last post, we covered some of the remote working fundamentals including how to set up a productive, ergonomic workspace. Plunking a laptop on a coffee table or counter somewhere may seem convenient, but in the long run, a dedicated, quiet, ergonomic workspace provides the most comfort and productivity. If you can’t find a quiet spot, try noise-cancelling audio headsets or buds.

2. Schedule every day

Build structure into your day with healthy start and end times. Schedule daily status calls with colleagues. Use Microsoft Teams, the teamwork hub, to stay connected. Follow up via routine phone and video calls with your clients/customers and vendors. Set up formal and informal meetings to collaborate. And make sure to share and calendar with colleagues! Microsoft offers a step-by-step guide with a video on how to share your calendar in Outlook.

3. Share your screens

Go beyond your calendars. Get feedback in real time by sharing files and documents during calls. Microsoft Teams makes presenting files easy. To capture visual feedback, like comments on a website design, for example, you can use the Whiteboard app. With Whiteboard, you can insert a file, like a photo or design mockup, into your whiteboard and/or use different pens and highlighters to markup documents.

Break the language barrier with employees. Make your meetings more accessible. Use Presentation Translator to automatically display subtitles directly on your PowerPoint, in any of the 60 supported text languages.

4. Co-author with colleagues

Instead of circulating document versions by email, try co-authoring. Let’s say your company has a proposal you need to put together. Instead of tasking one person with drafting that proposal, build the file as a team in real-time in your productivity cloud together. With the modern version of Office, you can co-author documents and see who’s working on what. Welcome transparency and say goodbye to versioning issues.

5. Keep records

Speaking of transparency, did you know you can search people, meetings, chats, files, and apps from a single Teams workspace? Persistent chat threads capture and record your chats, including any links you share, so you do not have to search through emails to find shared information. With a single click, you can also record your meetings in Teams for future reference or get up to speed in case you were not able to attend.

When Office subscribers record calls in Microsoft Teams the recording automatically appears in the subscriber’s Stream, the video organization service in Microsoft 365. Stream allows users to view, label, tag, and share all their videos from one place. Stream can also auto-generate closed captioning transcripts to improve the accessibility of the recordings. In fact, subscribers can even access and edit those transcripts. You can visit this Microsoft support page for instructions.

6. Encourage etiquette

Like any professional meeting, online meetings require its participants to follow etiquette. Can your meetings benefit from applying these tips?

• Make sure to click mute. Staying on mute, except when talking, eliminates background noise and takes care of any potentially embarrassing sounds.
• Never put the call on hold. If you absolutely must step away to deal with an emergency, simply put the call on mute.
• Do not talk over others. Wait for an opening, and then identify yourself as you begin. Try to direct all questions or comments toward a person by name. Or you can use TEAMS’ newest feature and “raise your hand” to be given an opportunity to speak in a meeting room with multiple participants.
• Call in early and do not announce late arrivals. Eliminate the interruption and the embarrassment of people calling in late, including yourself.
• Send out an agenda and meeting materials ahead of time. If you use Outlook, you can add both an agenda and preliminary meeting notes via OneNote and attach files to your calendar item.

7. Automate your processes

Office subscribers can take advantage of powerful automation technologies and smart services to convenience their clients/customers. For instance, Microsoft Bookings gives small businesses (like salons, dental offices, law firms, etc.), who provide services to customers/clients on an appointment basis, the ability to streamline the process. This type of service can save business operators buckets of time fielding reschedule calls!

More technically ambitious organizations with Office subscribers should experiment with Power Automate. This clever automation service enables teams to turn repetitive tasks info multistep workflows. Organizations can use the templates in Power Automate to accomplish tasks requiring multiple applications, like:

• Save Office 365 email attachments to OneDrive for Business
• Send yourself a reminder in 10 minutes
• Get today’s weather forecast for your current location
• Get a push notification when you receive an email from your boss
• Send a customized email when a new SharePoint list item is added
• Record form responses in SharePoint

8. Practice business self-defense

Do not compromise your security just to get the job done. Instead, make sure you rely on technologies and practices you can trust. Adopt a layered security strategy. Use multiple layers of security together to better protect your business. Do things like:

• Keep your data and applications in a secure cloud, like Azure
• Use professional software and hardware with built-in security features
• Keep your applications, devices, and systems up to date
• Train every employee to spot and avoid phishing and malware
• Make sure you run antivirus software, like Windows Defender
• Use multi-factor authentication to control/restrict network access

Keep your business moving securely series

1. How to work remotely, for everyone who needs to stay productive from home
2. Eight remote working essentials to stay productive
3. Your security checklist to help protect your employees working from home
4. Empowering Canadian healthcare teams with new remote working tools
5. Secure remote working solutions for government agencies
6. Secure remote working for human resources teams

The post Eight remote working essentials to stay productive appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

The fifth in our Keep your business moving securely series, this blog post features secure remote working solutions from Microsoft, designed to empower Canadian government agencies facing unprecedented challenges.

2020 has proved to be an unusually difficult year for everyone, including Canadian civil servants and the agencies for whom they work. Governments (municipal, provincial, and federal) suddenly face dispersed, and often reduced workforces inundated with inquiries, requests, and demands for information and services.

Pushed to their limits, governments across Canada need to double-down on their efforts to digitally transform their practices and culture.

Fortunately, Microsoft has several secure cloud-based solutions to help respond to the current challenges as well as to allow Canadian agencies to modernize their operations in powerful ways. Agencies can create more transparency, improve their security and resiliency, and deliver a better experience for both constituents and civil servants.

Security, privacy, and residency

Agencies can protect the stakeholder data they collect and manage in the Microsoft Canadian Cloud. Since the company invests and maintains datacenters in multiple provinces, agencies can ensure the data they generate and collect stays in Canada throughout its life.

A powerful precedent

These qualities have compelled numerous government agencies, like Invest in Canada, to leverage the Microsoft cloud. This new government agency wanted a modern infrastructure from the ground up. They needed a highly secure environment that would support collaboration across the government and with outside entities.

Go beyond response efforts! Put a modern government workplace infrastructure with enterprise grade security in place.

Microsoft 365

Invest in Canada found what they needed in Microsoft 365 Enterprise, the integrated cloud platform delivering leading productivity apps—like Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—along with intelligent cloud services and world-class security.

The Invest in Canada team got the system up and running quickly with minimal technical and personnel overhead, providing 99.9 percent uptime and an ideal foundation for collaboration between potential investors and local authorities across Canada.

Dynamics 365

Designed to replace legacy CRM and ERP systems, Dynamics 365 gives you a suite of secure, cloud-based management applications powered by data and intelligence. Ministries, municipalities, districts, and similar groups can use it to unify data and technology to manage even the most complex cases and requirements.

Need to ensure compliance? Get Canadian compliance resources, including reports on Office 365 and Dynamics 365, in French and English.

Response management

Microsoft Power Platform, the platform to streamline app development, features a Crisis Communications Power Platform Template governments can use to manage the influx of queries, enable information sharing, and handle communications related to evolving conditions.

Using this template, employees can report their work status and make requests, as well as gain up-to-date information from both their agency and reputable external sources, such as World Health Organization or a local authority.

With organizations working in this high-pressure environment, the speed in which you turn extraordinary volumes of data into actionable insights is vital. Microsoft’s customer and citizen engagement solutions apply AI-driven insights that identify and automate emerging and time-consuming issues and monitor the impact of the strategies you deploy on your operations in real time.

Chatbots

Chatbots are ideal for stakeholders with lots of questions that require quick response. Using Power Virtual Agents governments can quickly create and maintain an intelligent Crisis Management Chatbot to help address predictable questions.

Solutions such as Customer Service Insights, Power Virtual Agents, and Portals can be deployed within hours with little or no coding required.

Process automation

From simple tasks to complex enterprise-wide processes, Power Automate enables everyone through low-code tools to build secure, intelligent, automated workflows to effectively manage highly repetitive, manual tasks supporting employees to focus on critical challenges and opportunities during times of crisis.

Cognitive services

Even the largest government agencies can rely on Azure for availability and scale. You can bring all your organization’s data sources together to drive actionable insights, including predicting demand. Through AI, Machine Learning, and Cognitive Services, Microsoft Azure has capabilities to support organizations.

Azure resiliency

With Azure Resiliency for Crisis Management, you can rely on high availability, disaster recovery, and backup to protect mission critical applications and data. Azure has ISO-22301 Certification, the first international standard to demonstrate the ability to prevent, mitigate, respond, and recover from disruptive incidents.

Get started!

Get resources and ideas to help you advance your digital transformation today. Visit the Microsoft Canada Government page to learn more about how governments can innovate to meet their mission and serve citizens better. Start your assessment now.

For the whole Invest in Canada story, visit: ”New Canadian government agency delivers modern workplace environment with Microsoft 365 Enterprise”

Keep your business moving securely series

1. How to work remotely, for everyone who needs to stay productive from home
2. Eight remote working essentials to stay productive
3. Your security checklist to help protect your employees working from home
4. Empowering Canadian healthcare teams with new remote working tools
5. Secure remote working solutions for government agencies
6. Secure remote working for human resources teams

The post Secure remote working solutions for government agencies appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

Human resources (HR) teams have a major challenge on their hands this year. Transitioning quickly to a remote working model has been difficult for most. Without the structure of a physical workplace, employees can feel isolated and those feelings can build over time, creating a sense of alienation. Fortunately, the remote working technologies we discuss in this blog post help HR professionals empower their teams to connect, communicate, and collaborate securely.

The last in the Keep your business moving forward securely series, this post shares secure remote solutions and best practices for HR teams.

HR departments now, more than ever, need to protect the physical and mental wellbeing of employees. Employees need to feel connected to their leadership and each other. Clear and consistent communication will help, but it takes more than the occasional email or phone call to truly keep employees motivated.

Demonstrate you care about employees with clear, consistent communication, practical advice, and modern tools that inspire trust.

Security first!

Before we jump into the technologies, let’s start with a reminder to rely on cloud services and devices from a brand you can trust. With cybercrimes on the rise in Canada, every individual and organization should take steps to protect themselves from crimes like phishing. In addition to the practices we list in our previous post, make sure to look for Surface or Windows 10 devices, which come with built-in security technology.

Remember: Not every service or device your employees use will satisfy your security and privacy requirements, so make sure you give them the best!

Unite employees in one secure collaboration hub

Most Canadian HR professionals have used email, video conferencing, social media (especially LinkedIn), and other digital tools to recruit and onboard employees for years now. What has changed in recent years, however, is the rise of the secure employee collaboration hub. Unlike unsecure stand-alone solutions, Microsoft Teams works wonders on a cultural level across organizations, industries, and supply chains.

Microsoft 365, the integrated cloud platform, includes Microsoft Teams as well as the classic productivity apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint—plus intelligent cloud services and world-class security.

So, what makes Teams so effective? For one, Microsoft Teams connects organizations to collaborate by enabling employees to see each other’s status. And, those employees have their choice of communication tools–chat, video and audio calls. That alone is welcome news to any organization still paying for video or audio conferencing!

Cut down on email

But that’s just the start. Teams encourages users to create dedicated channels for internal projects, groups, clients, and supply chain vendors. In a dedicated and secure channel, users can chat by text, share files easily, and even use fun emoticons and memes to personalize their communication. And users can always access past conversations, search through chats, and even retrieve links as needed.

Do townhall meetings

Companies can use Teams to conduct townhall events as well. These all-employee events give leadership teams the opportunity to connect, communicate, and recognize team and individual achievements. They can talk about business performance, cultural priorities, and even share some personal moments (like employee birthday or baby announcements) to help everyone feel united and on track.

Conducting a town hall on Teams is as easy as scheduling a calendar event and inviting everyone to the meeting. Team live events can host up to an audience of 10,000 people, which means most organizations can use it to talk to all their employees at once, no matter how dispersed. Speakers can deliver presentations, share videos, and field live comments in the chat window during the meeting. And they can record it all.

Record your calls

Anyone who misses a townhall meeting, or any video or call you choose to record in Teams, can watch it on demand post event via Stream. This Microsoft 365 enterprise video service automatically organizes all company videos in one place. Stream can also autogenerate captions for your videos to improve their accessibility.

Manage employees

You can manage all your employees (and your entire business) with Dynamics 365 Business Central. The small-business friendly version of Microsoft’s digital transformation platform gives organizations a suite of secure, cloud-based management applications powered by data and intelligence. Decision-makers use Business Central to digitize their operations (sales, customer support, finance, etc.) and get a complete, accurate, end-to-end view of their business.

Business Central gives HR teams an end-to-end view of employees, starting with more insightful employee records. HR can organize and analyze employees by experience, skills, education, training, and association membership, enabling more informed project resourcing recommendations.

HR teams also like how Business Central simplifies and streamlines routine but essential parts of the employee experience, such as payroll, reimbursing expenses, and tracking absences.

Better HR insights

HR teams who want to glean even more information about their human resources can explore Power BI. Microsoft’s business intelligence platform enables HR teams to access easy-to-use self-service reports and views across their talent pool. Like finance and operations professionals, HR professionals can make more informed decisions based on meaningful and reliable data visualizations.

[description] Screenshot of a Power BI illustrative graphic featuring a chart with columns and text that show a New Hire Count, New Hires Same Period Last Year, and Actives YoY % Change at the organization by month.

The HR sample content pack for Power BI contains a dashboard, report, and dataset for a human resources department that you can download.

Keep your business moving securely series

1. How to work remotely, for everyone who needs to stay productive from home
2. Eight remote working essentials to stay productive
3. Your security checklist to help protect your employees working from home
4. Empowering Canadian healthcare teams with new remote working tools
5. Secure remote working solutions for government agencies
6. Secure remote working for human resources teams

The post Secure remote working for human resources teams appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

Like so many Canadians, we’re overwhelmed by the courage and commitment of firstline workers, especially healthcare teams, across the country who put themselves at risk to support us all. We salute and thank you for your service!

The fourth in our Keep your business moving securely series, this blog post summarizes the Microsoft technologies and services healthcare providers can use to adapt to these challenging times.

Working in a complex, regulated care environment—made even more complex by current challenges—healthcare professionals need access to tools that enable collaborative workflows and the delivery of high-quality patient care. Both patients and clinicians need greater flexibility and convenience to connect with each other. And they need it all to be secure, reliable, and compliant.

Let’s explore how Microsoft solutions can support and empower healthcare teams to provide high-quality experiences, insights, and care—without compromising your security or your patients’ privacy.

Need support? Microsoft and our partners can help. Customers can contact their Microsoft rep or email us. You can also work with Microsoft partners specializing in healthcare, such as Dapasoft or ThoughtWire.

Put your security first

While it’s tempting to use any application or service that works, make sure all of the technology you rely on satisfies your security and compliance requirements. Healthcare organizations can provide their employees with access to key data in a secure, scalable, and controlled way with Windows Virtual Desktop. This solution stores data securely in the cloud, not on devices, which tend to get lost or damaged.

Stay connected with Teams

With people at home and in-person consultations minimized, video conferencing provides a way for clinicians to conduct virtual visits and provide people with advice and a diagnosis. Patients can safely and securely access their visit directly through the Microsoft Teams mobile app or their web browser.

The meetings platform in Microsoft Teams combined with the Bookings app enables providers to schedule, manage, and conduct virtual visits with patients. In fact, healthcare providers use Teams for more than chat, video, or voice calls. Teams allows them to connect, communicate, coordinate, access healthcare tools, and share documents, data with patients and each another—all in an efficient and secure way.

Employees can use the hub to receive direction, complete documentation, then access appropriate information from any device, securely, in real time. In Teams, you can even create tags and organize users based on attributes such as a role, skill, or location. Once applied, you can message everyone tagged at the same time in a chat or channel conversation. For example, you can message all @porters on a ward.

Learn more at aka.ms/healthcareincanada.

Get a healthcare bot to help

With the Microsoft Healthcare Bot, healthcare organizations quickly build and deploy an AI-powered bot for their websites or applications to deliver personalized, health-related information to patients or the public through a natural conversation experience. The bot can be easily customized to suit an organization’s own scenarios and protocols.

Microsoft Healthcare Bot uses artificial intelligence to help the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other frontline organizations respond to inquiries, reducing the strain on healthcare systems by empowering people to make better decisions. This bot is ideal for organizations that want to free up the time of their doctors, nurses, administrators, and other healthcare professionals to provide critical care.

Manage challenging times

Built with the Power Platform, Microsoft’s business application platform, the Crisis Communication App helps organizations coordinate information sharing and team collaboration and collects data about the safety of employees. Admins can publish updates and provide emergency contacts for different locations, and employees can report their work status and make requests to managers. You can even add RSS feeds with news updates from WHO, CDC, or local authorities.

With Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow), Microsoft’s task automation technology, enables you to create multi-step flows across services. For example, you can create a flow between emails, calendars, and spreadsheets, ensuring that the right business apps connect for maximum efficiency.

Explore remote assistance with holograms

Remote Assist on HoloLens gives remote health experts a real-time view of the world, so they can collaborate to solve issues faster and to enable quicker transfer of knowledge. It combines video, screenshots and holographic annotations to give frontline employees access to expert advice.

Healthcare resources from Microsoft Canada

Supporting Canadian Healthcare

Healthcare Industry by Microsoft

Industry Blogs – Healthcare

Live and on-demand healthcare webinars

Keep your business moving securely series

1. How to work remotely, for everyone who needs to stay productive from home
2. Eight remote working essentials to stay productive
3. Your security checklist to help protect your employees working from home
4. Empowering Canadian healthcare teams with new remote working tools
5. Secure remote working solutions for government agencies
6. Secure remote working for human resources teams

The post Empowering Canadian healthcare teams with new remote working tools appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

Get a security checklist to protect your employees working from home. Intelligent security can help you identify, pre-empt, mitigate, and stop internal and external attacks. The third post in the Keep your business running securely blog series explains the threats Canadian organizations face and the concept of layered security then suggests some solutions and practices you can embrace to help modernize your security.

Cyberthreats represent a clear and present threat to Canadian organizations of all sizes, in both the private and public sector.

Security risks on the rise

Unfortunately, cybercriminals prey on fear and uncertainty; during times like these, hackers run scams and commit fraud like, but not limited to, email attacks, fake websites, and text scams. Remember, hackers don’t discriminate or care who they attack.

Criminals search for organizations relying on outdated or unsecure IT to work remotely. Make sure you take steps to protect yourself!

If anything, unsuspecting small businesses represent an ideal target for cybercriminals. They count on these businesses to skimp or to implement sporadic and inconsistent cybersecurity measures. And yes, during a crisis, those same criminals capitalize on fear and uncertainty to target employees, especially those unaccustomed to working remotely.

In their national survey, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner found 92 percent of Canadians expressed some level of concern about the protection of their privacy!

Privacy matters

Protecting your privacy—and that of your customers and vendors—is another important reason to improve your security. Canadians, as customers, clients, and citizens, expect the organizations they rely on—big and small—to go out of their way to protect any data they provide and their communication, including emails and video conference calls.

When employees rely on different devices and apps to share files, send emails, or do video calls, your company’s risk of a security and privacy breach climbs exponentially.

The most secure strategy

Adopt a layered security approach. Think of each security technology or practice as a layer of armour. The more layers you add, the fewer potential breaches and the lower the damage should a hacker breach your cyber defence. Don’t rely on just one layer! One layer of cybersecurity, like an antivirus software, cannot protect your business working remotely. That app or utility is just one piece of the security puzzle you need.

Knowledge is power. Visit the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre for more information about current fraud and identity attacks in your area.

You may not need to adopt all the technologies or practices we talk about next, but we strongly recommend that you consider them. Think of how they can work together as a digital defence plan. Beyond file protection, your plan must also protect transactional information, databases, lists, and all other sensitive data, including your identities. Remember: Identity theft can wreak havoc on thousands of lives.

Your security checklist

From the simple to the more technically complex, here are some security layers to consider when devising your security strategy.

• Employee training -> Train every employee *not* to open attachments or to click links in unsolicited communication, even if the emails, texts, or calls seem to come from a recognized source, especially when they request information, personal, or otherwise. This Microsoft article offers descriptions of phishing threats and a list of the telltale signs employees should look for, such as:
  • The communication you receive is unsolicited
  • The sender does not mention you by name
  • The communication requests information
  • The sender asks you to install/adjust/enable software
  • The sender’s email address does not look accurate
  • The sender’s address does not match their name
  • The link or URL does not point to the correct website
  • The communication contains errors, like typos
  • You can see multiple recipients received the email
  • The communication or website doesn’t look right
  • The page that opens is an image, not a page
• Secure employee hub -> Ensure your employees communicate securely using Microsoft Teams, a collaboration hub. This one app reduces internal emails and keeps employees connected by enabling them to message, call, and host meetings. Keep your calls secure and private! Get links and guidance in this Teams blog post.
• Built-in security -> Rely on business-class solutions that feature built-in enterprise-grade security. Ensure all employees run always-up-to-date software, and/or keep their applications and devices current by running the latest security updates. Windows users should enable Windows Defender Antivirus.

Microsoft Security Graph, which underpins Microsoft Security, enables rapid threat detection and response based on billions of daily emails and insights from intelligence, machine learning, and analytics.

• Advanced threat protection -> Office subscribers can add advanced threat protection, which leverages the Microsoft Security Graph to provide industry-leading defenses. The most basic plan introduces features like safe attachments, safe links, anti-phishing policies, and real-time reports. See Advanced Threat Protection plans.
• Multi-factor authentication -> Introducing a second form of authentication when employees sign-in is one of the most effective things you can do to protect your organization. Its familiarity from the consumer digital world makes it easy for employees to understand and accept. Set up your multi-factor authentication (MFA) now.
• Device management capabilities -> Even with work laptops at home, employees still use personal devices to access company data. Put security measures in place to protect your network and control access. Office subscribers can expand their Microsoft 365 subscription to include device management as well as a full suite of advanced security features, including Advanced Threat Protection, app protection, and more:
  • Advanced Threat Protection – for phishing, malware, and zero-day threats
  • Selective Wipe – to remotely wipe company data from lost or stolen devices
  • App protection for Office mobile apps – to restrict copying/saving of your info
  • Information Rights Management – to control who has access to company info
  • Windows Defender Exploit Guard – to provide pre-breach threat resistance
  • Exchange Online Archiving – to enable a long-term business preservation policy

Additionally, here are some smart security layers for mid-market and enterprises:

• Device management in Azure -> In Azure, you can combine Azure AD Conditional Access and Microsoft Intune application protection policies to manage and help secure data in approved apps and on personal devices.
• Single sign-on -> Azure Single sign-on enables you to connect identities to all of your apps from anywhere, enforcing strong authentication to prevent compromise, and using Conditional Access and Identity Governance to ensure that only the right people have access to the right resources.
• Visibility across your digital estate -> Azure Sentinel gives you the ability to identify security risks across your operations. With artificial intelligence built-in, Azure Sentinel makes threat detection, hunting, prevention, and response smarter, faster, and automated.
• Secure access to your on-premises apps -> Most organizations run lots of business-critical apps that may not be accessible from outside the corporate network. Azure AD Application Proxy is a lightweight agent that enables access to your on-premises apps, without providing broad access to your network. Combine it with existing Azure AD authentication and Conditional Access policies to help keep users and data secured.

Security checklist summary

• Employee training to spot phishing and other cyber crimes
• Secure employee hub like Microsoft Teams
• Built-in security with Windows Defender Antivirus
• Advanced threat protection for Office subscribers
• Set up multi-factor authentication for everyone
• Device management capabilities with Microsoft 365

Mid-market/enterprise solutions:

• Device management with Azure AD Conditional Access and Microsoft Intune
• Single sign-on with Azure using Conditional Access and Identity Governance
• Visibility across your digital estate with Azure Sentinel
• Secure access to your on-premises apps with Azure AD Application Proxy

Keep your business moving securely series

1. How to work remotely, for everyone who needs to stay productive from home
2. Eight remote working essentials to stay productive
3. Your security checklist to help protect your employees working from home
4. Empowering Canadian healthcare teams with new remote working tools
5. Secure remote working solutions for government agencies
6. Secure remote working for human resources teams

The post Your security checklist to help protect your employees working from home appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

What happens when Canadian entrepreneurs spot an opportunity to help speed up the insurance claims process? Encircle, that’s what!

What’s Encircle?

Encircle works with customers primarily in the insurance industry to reinvent processes and improve productivity. This Kitchener, Ontario-based software company provides an alternative to traditional, cumbersome, paper-based systems. Their simple, but powerful cloud-based, mobile tools allow organizations to deliver a more fair, transparent, and rapid claim experience.

How it works

Encircle delivers mobile and web software to policyholders, insurance companies, and restoration contractors. Their tools create transparency by showing what’s happening in the field, in real time. Field staff can use smartphones to capture photos, videos, notes, and sketches. Through Link, policyholders can highlight areas for concern in a claims situation before the insurance company or contractor sets foot onsite. This improved communication ensures that the right people and right equipment get deployed.

“Better communication solves many of the challenges the insurance industry faces, especially in dealing with damages and casualties. The Encircle platform introduces a more transparent way to communicate that inspires trust and helps insurers make fast and reliable decisions. Consumers benefit too, from a much better, faster and less contentious process.”

– Mike Kirkup, Chief Technical Officer at Encircle

Trial by fire & flood

Encircle played a vital role in helping businesses and customers during disasters, such as the Fort McMurray wildfire in May 2016 and the Windsor flood of October 2016. Because of the increased level of quality in reporting, claims that would otherwise take up to 24 hours were turned around within an hour using Encircle.
Kate Nelson, an Adjuster at Gore Mutual (a Cambridge, Ontario-based insurance company), put it this way:

“Encircle eliminated a huge amount of back and forth calls and emails that take up so much time. Our files were updated automatically while most other teams of adjusters had to wait hours for photos, notes, documents to upload.”

– Kate Nelson, Adjuster at Gore Mutual

The making of a startup

Encircle was one of the startups that went through Velocity—the acclaimed entrepreneurship program at the University of Waterloo and the largest free startup incubator in the world. During his tenure as the Director of Velocity, Mike fell in love with the Encircle concept and joined the company as CTO. He brought Encircle to the Microsoft for Startups program to help realize the potential of the business.

“It just works”

Under Mike’s stewardship, Encircle also moved to Microsoft Azure. This migration resolved the data residency concerns of their Canadian clients by leveraging Microsoft’s datacentres in Ontario and Quebec. Today, the company relies on Azure to run their entire backend infrastructure—including their mobile and web app, API, and data storage. “One of the great things,” reports Mike, “is that we don’t have to call or complain because it just works.”

The road ahead

With an incredible foothold in the market already, 2017 and beyond will see Encircle expand further into the United States, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The team sees enormous, global potential for their solutions. And they see a way to scale quickly, thanks to Microsoft’s network of datacentres delivering local cloud services reliably worldwide.

Do you run a startup?

Learn how Microsoft for Startups works. The Microsoft for Startups program provides qualified privately held startups with Microsoft development and testing software, training, phone support, and Microsoft Azure cloud services. To qualify, your startup must be less than five years old and earn less than $1 million annually. Check out these cool stories of other entrepreneurs who received invaluable assistance from Microsoft.

The post Startup Story: Encircle speeds up insurance appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

Born in the Microsoft Cloud in 2016, My Intelligent Machines (MIMs) is a Canadian software startup on the most impressive mission imaginable: speeding up the fight against breast cancer, heart disease, and leukemia. How? By radically accelerating post-genomic research using artificial intelligence and bioinformatics.

Personalized medicine

You may not know the term, but personalized (or precision) medicine promises to make all of our lives better. With the power to analyze an individual’s genetic code, health care providers have unlocked the ability to deliver improved preventative care as well as more effective treatments for various diseases. They can now identify more at-risk people and treat them before they get sick.

Bottle-necked demand

Unfortunately, the slow and expensive process of commissioning genomic research has impeded its availability. A genomic study requires the manual work of highly trained, third-party technical specialists known as bioinformaticians. Conducting each study takes upward of four weeks and costs approximately US $2400.

“Despite its truly transformative potential, only a fraction of life scientists currently use omic data in their research. Traditional bioinformatic service delivery is slow, expensive, and inconsistently represented. MIMsOmic changes all that by democratizing genomic research.”

Sarah Jenna, Ph.D., MIMs Co-Founder & CEO

Enter My Intelligent Machines

MIMs addresses these time and cost concerns head-on. The startup, which brings together a dream team of technical and scientific talent, was co-founded by:

• Bioinformatics expert Abdoulaye Baniré Diallo, PhD, CSO
• Genomics expert Sarah Jenna, PhD, CEO
• Artificial intelligence expert Mickaël Camus, COO/CTO

Democratizing genomic research

MIMs strives to empower and inspire life scientists by giving them access to powerful genomic tools and technologies—including its new MIMsOmic platform. Using an AI bioinformatician, MIMsOmic allows users to find, analyze, and interpret massive datasets—without any training in bioinformatics and computer programming required.

“The MIMsOmic intelligent platform democratizes genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic research by helping scientists get reliable results, quickly, and cost-effectively. We’re talking half the cost—and in just two days, not 30.”

Sarah Jenna, Ph.D., MIMs Co-Founder & CEO

A platform to watch for

The MIMsOmic platform harnesses ground-breaking hybrid neural network and autonomous system technologies. These are accessed securely and reliably through Microsoft datacentres, where MIMs can ensure its clients a world-class level of security and privacy. MIMsOmic is currently in alpha stages, with a beta release scheduled later in 2017 and plans for a global launch in 2018.

“Designed and developed for any life scientist, the MIMsOmic platform has a very intuitive interface. You can upload your data, chat with the AI system to get assistance with your questions, and then run the analysis. The next morning, you get your dashboards, which you can discuss with the AI.”

Sarah Jenna, Ph.D., MIMs Co-Founder & CEO

The Azure connection

MIMs currently leverages several Azure services to deliver a secure, reliable, and efficient user experience. Some of these services include Storage, Web Apps, Container Service (using Swarm and Kubernetes), Application Gateway and Availability Set.

 “Azure allows us to deploy, execute and control many virtual containers, in a secure way, in real time. We used this platform to develop an intelligent system that understands, semantically, the meaning of the questions from life scientists. They can chat with the system and then deploy multiple processes to answer specific demands, all in a transparent way.”

Mickaël Camus, Ph.D., MIMs Co-Founder & CTO

A brilliant future

The MIMs technology team has begun to explore and integrate with Azure cognitive tool kits, specifically the Custom Speech Service and the Academic Knowledge API. The team believes that these technologies may hold the key to improving communication and facilitating the exchange of ideas amongst users and the AI.

 “Azure allows us to store and share precious genomic data collected by different labs all around the world in one spot, in one place—securely. It allows us to share massive amounts of omic data, run the same carefully vetted bioinformatic algorithms, and deliver standardized analysis.”

Sarah Jenna, Ph.D., MIMs Co-Founder & CEO

A Microsoft for Startups project

MIMs received support from Microsoft’s global startup support program Microsoft for Startups, which provides promising startups with software, service, support, marketing expertise and cloud services—all designed to help them launch successfully. Check out these cool stories of other entrepreneurs who received assistance from Microsoft.

Do you run a startup?

Learn how Microsoft for Startups works. The Microsoft for Startups program provides qualified privately held startups with Microsoft development and testing software, training, phone support, and Microsoft Azure cloud services. To qualify, your startup must be less than five years old and earn less than US $1 million annually.

The post MIMs: The artificial intelligence startup taking on cancer and heart disease appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

Born in the Microsoft Cloud in 2016, Quartic.ai is a Canadian AI and Industrial IoT startup on a mission to make manufacturing more productive and flexible through digital transformation. How? Through an innovative application of IoT (Internet of Things), artificial intelligence (AI), industrial domain knowledge, and technical expertise.

Everyday magic

As consumers, we take complex manufacturing for granted. When was the last time you thought about the ingenuity of a pack of gum or the remarkable efficiency of a cold can of soda? Irrelevant as the packaging seems, our global economy depends on the ability of manufacturers to make, package, and ship products efficiently and safely. Above all, manufacturers need agility in their processes to develop and introduce new products.

A history of innovation

With so much at stake, manufacturers have invested in R&D since the days of the industrial revolution. This commitment to continuous improvement manifests itself in modern manufacturing through processes like operational excellence, reliability centered maintenance (RCM), and operator drive reliability (ODR).

“IoT is far from new in manufacturing. It’s just a new name for connecting sensors to software. Before modern IoT, those sensors only worked on isolated, proprietary computers and software controlling each production line. The focus was only on automation. Today, with cloud computing and artificial intelligence, we can at last recover stranded intelligence otherwise left on the factory floor.” – Rajiv Anand, CEO and Co-founder

Integrating legacy systems

Deming®, Quartic.ai’s flagship product, integrates diverse data—like PLCs, DCS systems, plant historians, new sensors, ERP/CMMS systems—quickly and easily. Further, Deming adds context to this data. With all manufacturing data in one place, and in context, operations, maintenance/reliability, and/or engineering teams can use Deming to build and deploy their own custom machine learning applications.

“Recovering stranded intelligence allows manufacturers to broaden their focus from automation alone to operational excellence and value stream optimization. This application of artificial intelligence for predictive analytics defines modern IoT.” – Rajiv Anand, CEO and Co-founder

Transformative benefits

By empowering manufacturing teams to integrate their data and deploy their own machine learning applications, Deming gives manufacturers insights and a platform to transform processes that unlock significant new benefits. For instance, Deming monitors the performance of their industrial assets in real-time to avoid production delays, mitigate waste, and predict throughput accurately.

“AI only becomes valuable once it’s verticalized and you bring domain expertise to it. But Manufacturers certainly cannot afford, nor have the time, to turn their experienced operations, manufacturing, and chemical engineers into data scientists. Deming solves that unmet need with Azure. It empowers domain experts to build AI applications.” – Rajiv Anand, CEO and Co-founder

Behind the scenes

The sheer scale of data demands industrial-strength computational power and airtight security. Quartic.ai relies on the hyperscale power, reliability, and world-class security of Azure cloud services to deliver its solution. Just how much scale? Deming streams 11,000,000 points of data a day at a single facility for just one manufacturer!

“When we consider the many relationships that make Quartic.ai possible, Microsoft comes top-of-mind. On the technology side, we leverage best-in-class cloud IoT and AI services. And as a business, participating in the Microsoft for Startups program was a watershed moment. We got the resources we needed to realize our vision.” – Rajiv Anand, CEO and Co-founder

Meet the founders

Based out of Waterloo, Ontario Quartic.ai was founded by Rajiv Anand and Ash Bhardwaj, veterans of the industrial process control and asset reliability fields. After implementing sensor based process automation and predictive maintenance in hundreds of applications, this team set out to leverage the rich, but stranded, intelligence infrastructure in manufacturing.

A Microsoft for Startups project

Quartic.ai received support from Microsoft’s global startup support program Microsoft for Startups, which provides promising startups with software, service, support, marketing expertise and cloud services—all designed to help them launch successfully. Check out these cool stories of other entrepreneurs who received assistance from Microsoft.

Do you run a startup?

Learn how Microsoft for Startups works. This program provides qualified privately held startups with Microsoft development and testing software, training, phone support, and Microsoft Azure cloud services. To qualify, your startup must be less than five years old and earn less than US $1 million annually.

Deming is a legal trademark of Quartic.ai. All rights reserved 2017.

The post Quartic.ai, manufacturing agility with IoT & AI appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.