Deploy/Adopt: Realizing Value : Office 2007

The Productivity Hub is now live!

cmross — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:26:00 GMT

I mentioned this during my session at ILTA this week, and the response has been overwhelming. Suzanne has provided more information below, as well as a link for downloading.

What is the Productivity Hub?

The Productivity Hub is a SharePoint Server 2007 site collection. It comes packed with over 300 pieces of content, including videos, documents and PowerPoint slides. Customers may then create a learning community within their firewall.

The Hub uses SharePoint Server’s social networking features to engage end users. It also offers training for “coaches”, or power users internal to each customer. Coaches reduce the burden on training and helpdesk staff by adding another level of support.

The Productivity blog is another strategy to build a daily customer connection. Blog posts from the Crabby Office Lady, product managers, the field, and our learning partners feeds directly into the customer’s Hub through the included RSS feed.

The Hub pilot has reached over 100 customers around the world. During the pilot, one customer remarked, “We owe you a debt of gratitude,” and another said they weren’t allowed to move forward with deployment until they installed the Hub.

Customer benefits:

•Helps reduce costs: Streamlines training and helps reduce training overhead. Acts as a tool for training departments and IT.

•Multiple learning paths: Includes learning roadmaps, coaches, forums, searchable content and more.

•Helps increase productivity: Accelerates 2007 Office system adoption through a learning community.

•Drives adoption: Ongoing access to training enables deeper use and helps create new power users.

•Ignites collaboration: Creates customer evangelists through the coach program.

•Proof of concept: Provides a vision for collaborative learning – leading to collaborative work.

Hub Download link

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=277fefca-d62f-41bc-943d-79002254cfee

Free Office 2007 Deployment Training Available

cmross — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:06:19 GMT

Our Office marketing team continues to develop ways to help IT get relevant training in this “new economy”. If you’ve not taken advantage of a Microsoft Office 2007 Labcast before, what are you waiting for? They use a virtual lab to get you the experience you’re seeking around deploying Office 2007, server management tools and application compatibility. Register today. Good stuff!

Join the Desktop Deployment: Planning, Deploying and Managing Office 2007 Labcast series to learn about new tools and technologies to deploy the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. During these half day events you will receive practical technical information and proven techniques to help simply your 2007 Office deployment. The labcast provides a hands-on virtual lab environment where you can perform the tasks yourself with step-by-step guidance from Microsoft professionals, giving you experience-based knowledge on how to deploy the 2007 Office system. Click here for more information about the 2007 Office labcast series.

Labcast sessions :

Deploying the 2007 Microsoft Office system with the Deployment Workbench

o Add the 2007 Office system to the Deployment Workbench

o Perform multi-language integration

o Learn about the Office Customization Tool (OCT)

o Use SMS 2003 for 2007 Office system deployment

Click on the date to register

Deploying the 2007 Microsoft Office system with the Deployment Workbench

3/23/2009 8:30 AM CST

4/06/2009 1:00 PM CST

4/20/2009 8:30 AM PST

5/04/2009 1:00 PM PST

5/18/2009 8:30 AM CST

6/01/2009 1:00 PM CST

6/15/2009 8:30 AM PST

6/29/2009 1:00 PM PST

Assessing Application Compatibility and Managing Your Office Clients with Group Policy labcast

· 2007 Microsoft Office system Planning and Migration Tools: Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM)

o Install and configure OMPM

o Perform a scan on a user system

o Convert documents with no issues to the new file formats

· Managing the 2007 Microsoft Office system with Group Policy

o Import the new Group Policy Administrative Templates for the 2007 Office release

o Use Group Policy to configure the Default File Save options in the 2007 Office release

o Use Group Policy to configure the Default File Save options for Office 2003 (to support a mixed Office environment)

Click on the date to register

Assessing Application Compatibility and Managing Your Office Clients with Group Policy labcast

3/23/2009 1:00 PM CST

4/06/2009 8:30 AM CST

4/20/2009 1:00 PM PST

5/04/2009 8:30 AM PST

5/18/2009 1:00 PM CST

6/01/2009 8:30 AM CST

6/15/2009 1:00 PM PST

6/29/2009 8:30 AM PST

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft is a registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Microsoft Business Value Planning Services

cmross — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:40:58 GMT

Recently, I’ve been hearing more from customers looking for Microsoft’s help in quantifying the ROI that deploying the 2007 Microsoft Office System will support. We’ve been fortunate to have both a consulting arm, field sales and Partners that can help customers with this, through offerings such as the Rapid Economic Justification. Last November, we added a benefit to our Software Assurance licensing agreement to make this a paid-for service, the Business Value Planning Service.

What it is

Microsoft Business Value Planning Services (BVPS) is a Software Assurance (SA) benefit through which Microsoft pays Partners to deliver and engagement through which a certified BVPS consultant helps customers develop a plan for improving business process through the use of the Microsoft Office System. Depending upon the specifics of your SA benefit, this may be funded for 3-15 days of engagement. During that time, the consultant follows a proven agenda that includes identifying a business process improvement scenario from the following list:

Automated Forms: Reduce costs and streamline form driven business processes.
Automated Performance Reporting: Improve decision making through near-real time creation and access to performance reports.
Budgeting: Improve accuracy of creation and tracking of departmental budgets.
Collaborative Document Development: Improve a company’s ability to develop and review documents across teams and improve content reuse.
Content Search and Reuse: Improve a company’s ability to organize and find information through online repositories.
Merging Project Plans: Integrate multiple project planning efforts for better resource planning and tracking.
Performance Management: Improve a company’s performance management processes through more efficient and effective planning, forecasting, analysis, and reporting.
Project Portfolio Management: Improve a company’s project prioritization and selection, and the project portfolio’s overall strategic alignment.
Remote Training: Reduce costs and streamline a company’s training processes through virtual / remote training.
Routing Communications: Improve communication and speed issue resolution through new and integrated communications – email, telephone, instant messaging.
Sensitive Records Management: Improve a company’s current process for creating, managing and deleting sensitive records such as legal, financial, medical and HR.

How to get it

If you have Software Assurance, you’re halfway there! The next step is to choose a Partner to help you, from the list of Packaged Service Providers found here. You can also check with your preferred Partner, to see if they are already certified (if not, point them to www.MicrosoftBVPS.com for more information). The consultant assigned will contact you and explain the agenda, find out a little more about your business and discuss the scenarios you would like to know more about.

In summary, I really like this benefit because it gets to the heart of what customers need today in justifying IT spend and valuating ROI. If you have any questions about this benefit, you can contact Microsoft directly from bvpshelp@microsoft.com

Join the Deployment Champs Club

cmross — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 08:16:02 GMT

I’m sometimes taken aback when talking with customers about deployment and they just can’t believe that Microsoft actually cares. We do! An effort that’s been kicked off by our east coast sales teams is the Microsoft Deployment Champs Club. It’s all about showing love to enterprise customers by providing [even more] resources to assist with the planning, piloting and rollout of Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista.

While the club is limited to enterprise customers, everyone who signs up will get access to the myriad of free resources available, access to events and online presentations.

You’ve Got Questions? Try Microsoft Answers.

cmross — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:26:53 GMT

Technorati Tags: microsoft answers,mvp

Microsoft Answers is a site we’ve launched to provide a more friendly UI for getting answers to Windows Vista questions.

You will also see that there’s a forum moderated by the Microsoft Answers Team (employees and MVPs), for those queries that seem to stymie the search engine.

Interestingly, the site is built around the idea of a social network. By logging in with your Windows Live ID, you can Follow other individual’s activities. Why would you do this? Well, let’s say they ask a really good question that you’re curious of the answer to. Or, perhaps you’ve seen their profile and think they your IT infrastructures and interests are similar. It’s an interesting concept, at the least.

Both are efforts to break through the barriers that may be preventing customers from deploying Windows Vista or getting past nagging issues. And as always, don’t hesitate to contact your account team or services Partner for help!

Below are links to a couple of articles in the blogsphere:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/12/23/microsoft-answers-beta-website-launched

http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Microsoft_site_gives_Vista_answers36845064.html

Technorati Tags: Vista