Interlink Cloud Blog

See what Microsoft Kaizala is, how you get it, and how it’s different from Microsoft Teams

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A common struggle for organizations is figuring out the best way to bridge the gap in communication between corporate offices and their firstline workers – the people who work in service or task-oriented roles across a variety of industries such as retail, hospitality or manufacturing. Oftentimes, associates in these roles want a more convenient and secure way to connect with their team, view company resources, and manage their schedules or shift changes. As a solution, Microsoft has developed Kaizala – the messaging app that brings unique capabilities to Microsoft 365, with its ability to connect and engage people both inside and outside of an organization’s directory – including contract workers, vendors, partners, suppliers, and customers.

Sound a little familiar? Microsoft Teams already offers features like instant chat, mobile applications, and even Shifts for firstline workers, so why do you need a Kaizala integration at all? Kaizala was designed to complement Teams – which is why Microsoft recently announced they would be delivering Kaizala capabilities into Microsoft Teams as part of an integrated offering. Read on to learn more about Kaizala, including what it is, how you get it, and how it's different from Teams...

Microsoft 365 licensing comes in different versions - with one for smaller businesses and three for larger corporations. How do you determine which plan is going to add the most value to your organization?

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All businesses share common needs: increasing productivity, working more efficiently, and securing their data. Before smaller organizations were forced to pay for Enterprise subscriptions that had features they would never use, or they would just live without. That’s no longer the case with Microsoft 365 Business —organizations now have their own value bundle.

Now Microsoft is offering Microsoft 365 Business, combining the productivity tools and features of Office 365, with the security of Windows 10. This cost-effective subscription is built specifically for small and midsize businesses to empower their team to be more productive through collaboration while keeping a peace of mind that their data is secured.

When looking at these subscriptions, it’s important to understand the differences between M365 Business and M365 Enterprise E3 because it is not always obvious which option is best for your business. This blog will dive into the comparison of each option to help guide your decision. To start off, why should companies choose Microsoft 365 in general?

PowerApps is a low code/no code suite of apps, services, connectors and data platforms that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs.

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Using PowerApps, you can quickly build custom business apps that connect to your business data stored either in the underlying data platform (Common Data Service) or in various online and on-premises data sources (SharePoint, Excel, Office 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on).

Apps built using PowerApps provide rich business logic and workflow capabilities to transform your manual business processes to digital, automated processes. In addition, apps built using PowerApps have a responsive design and can run seamlessly in a browser or on mobile devices (phone or tablet). PowerApps "democratizes" the custom business app building experience by enabling users to build feature-rich, custom business apps without writing code.

PowerApps also provides an extensible platform that lets pro developers programmatically interact with data and metadata, apply business logic, create custom connectors, and integrate with external data.

Microsoft has made massive changes to its end-user automation tools including branding, pricing and the complexity of its licensing.
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On the branding side, Microsoft Flow is now called Power Automate. Power Automate is a cloud-based software tool that allows employees to create and automate workflows across multiple applications and services without the need for developer help. View the video below to learn more about Power Automate.

Autopilot is here to help simplify the process of deploying or onboarding new devices within your organization – find out how.

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Typically, deploying new Windows devices has been entirely in the hands of IT. Custom images have to be built, maintained and applied to get everything ready for new users…despite having an OS pre-installed. This can be followed by hours of the manual setup of applications, policies, and drivers for each new or repurposed device. All this manual set up takes away time and resources that could be better spent on other valuable projects. Sound familiar? Thankfully, Microsoft has developed Windows Autopilot – a new cloud-based technology that is quietly transforming this typical tedious provisioning process into a more automated and user-friendly process.