Modern applications help you leverage your unstructured and structured data available in your organization. They allow you to collect data, analyze it, share your findings, innovate your operations and continually improve as you grow. When you decide to modernize your
A “set it and forget it” approach is tempting when you have so many things to worry about as a modern business. You have to compete in the global market, worry about startup disruptors coming out of nowhere and keep
DevOps is a huge buzz word of late, and for good reason. A company who fails to organize around this new culture of development and deployment will quickly find themselves falling behind the new pace of technology. In a nutshell,
Business leaders are increasingly asked to do more with less AND to increase innovation within their organization – tall order! As companies are more and more reliant on technology to innovate, they get bogged down in support and maintenance tasks,
Innovation is essential for success in business, but some people just don’t like change. If you’ve ever tried to introduce a new technology or a new approach to doing business to an organization with an established way of doing things,
We all know that taking a phone call on speaker phone from your desk in your open concept workplace is really irritating to everybody else in the office. Don’t do it. Pick up your phone or put on a headset.
Got an exciting new idea and want to get it past the boss? Yeah. Good luck with that. No. I’m kidding. I’m going to help you. Innovative thinkers often face an uphill – and, yes, sometimes impossible – battle at
There are two fatal concepts for business success that you are likely going to encounter numerous times over the course of your career. They are just that common, and they are why so many enterprises fail to achieve their goals.
The key takeaways: Global surveys of business leaders show that investing in technology is a key strategy for competitive organizations. When an organization falls behind in the innovation game, catching up with the competition can be nearly impossible. The full
Imagine having a whole extra workday to create and bring your ideas to fruition. You know what? Just by eliminating some of the most common time-wasters we all encounter almost every day, you can earn one back. Here’s how. “Oh
Navantis, a North American systems integrator and Microsoft Gold Partner is thrilled to be recognized yet again as a Canadian IT leader at the prestigious Channel Elite Awards. Navantis was awarded Gold in two categories: Best Managed Services Solution and,
Five years ago, faced with more complaints and open investigation files than could be reasonably managed, the Real Estate Council of Alberta began the process of change… Through complaints, investigations, outcomes, organizational structure and corporate culture, traditional approaches were reshaped
Applications are the heart and soul of every business. They’re often the first level of contact your customers have with you. You could call them the front man for your business. When a user first interacts with you, in most
We may not realize it, but contracts help drive and shape every business. Gartner estimates that between 60% – 80% of all business transactions are governed by contracts or agreements in one form or another. So, whether we are aware
Imagine being in the midst of delivering exceptional IT service to your organization when suddenly an advertisement for cut rate vacations to Cuba pops up on your screen. That’d be quite distracting, wouldn’t you agree? That’s exactly what was happening
When we talk about Office 365 and the move to the cloud with our clients we’re often surprised to hear how disparate their opinions are. They usually know of the business agility and potential cost savings that come with moving
The IT environment has become more complicated as organizations begin hosting vital applications in cloud environments. There has never been a more critical time for businesses to gain a holistic view and complete control of their IT infrastructure. However, for
In one of the largest and most complex CRM challenges we have undertaken to date, Navantis helped this public sector organization consolidate three agencies, streamline hundreds of workflows, enable governance for strict compliance requirements, process over 3,000 license applications and
There have been reports of an issue in which the error “Subtask CheckPrereqs execution failed: Check Tenant Prerequisites” is received when running Hybrid Configuration Wizard. Microsoft recently released a fix to remediate impact. Symptoms: When you use the Hybrid Configuration wizard
Navantis Manage 360 OnCloud, our unique, one-of-a-kind management tool is layered on top of Windows Azure Pack and provides visibility, manageability and control for workloads on premise, in the Navantis OnCloud Data Center and in Azure. Built to run on
For the IDCEC (Interior Design Continuing Education Council) ensuring courses are current and compliant to IDCEC standards and managing member information was a rigorous and complex process that involved multiple systems and people. Completely paper-based processes meant educators were often
While in the early stages of a large Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment for a nationwide non-profit organization, our team of Dynamics CRM consultants were asked to clarify deployment options to help the organization make more informed decisions. One of their
If you’re still running Windows Server 2003 (WS03), I’m sure you are starting to get a sense of impending doom. On July 14, 2015 support for Windows Server 2003 will cease, leaving the 61% of customers, according to Microsoft data, who
Last week I attended CLEAR’s Regional Seminar in Toronto, where a number of regulators from across North America came together to discuss issues surrounding transparency and openness. During the session an interesting topic sparked a bit of a debate among
The Sales Collaboration Panel is the next feature of Dynamics CRM 2015 I’ll discuss in my series. Imagine a world where your marketing team was able to tailor every engagement with a lead or client by gaining input from the
Microsoft has introduced a new product structure with its release of Dynamics CRM 2015. The introduction of Product families is the first feature I will discuss in my Dynamics CRM 2015 series. This feature promises to improve selling effectiveness and
Still contemplating the upgrade to Dynamics CRM 2015? There has been a slew of new features and updates released with this latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015. The growing buzz around the new capabilities have diluted the true business
It’s undeniable, big data is everywhere and is being generated by everything around us at all times. It’s changing the way organizations operate and changing how people work. Now more than ever business and IT leaders are forced to work
Nicolae Tarla, Senior Consultant at Navantis and one of five Canadian Dynamics CRM MVPs, announces the release of his second CRM guide book, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customization Essentials. Released by Packt Publishing, the book provides new and seasoned users who
We are excited to announce that we are one of the newest sponsors of CollabCon 2015! Bringing together some of the brightest minds in the industry, CollabCon 2015 is a business and information technology conference that will help you discover creative and
In October a vulnerability known as POODLE, affecting a core networking protocol (SSL 3.0), was disclosed. This vulnerability is an industry-wide vulnerability, meaning the risk is not specific to a single operating system or browser. The vulnerability affects the SSL
Is Conservation Demand Management (CDM) worth the effort? Is it possible you are missing an opportunity to save, and conserve – and letting your customers do the same? Do you maximize best-in-class communications planning to optimize the benefits of building
Technology has changed drastically over the last 11 years. Remember when we had to use maps to get around? Us either. But back when Window’s Server 2003 (WS 2003) was first released that’s how we did it. Looking back, a
Navantis, a systems integrator and Canadian IT leader, is pleased to have been awarded Best Talent Management Strategy at the inaugural Canadian HR Awards Gala in Toronto. HR professionals from across the country gathered on November 7th, 2014 to honour
We are thrilled to announce that Nicolae Tarla has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status for Dynamics CRM! The award recognizes Nicolae’s exceptional knowledge of Dynamics and his contributions to the technical community. Among a community of
Cloud computing is big business. The use of highly scaled, automated IT platforms is growing rapidly. According to a study conducted by McKinsey & Company, 80 percent of the large organizations in North America it surveyed are planning or have
It’s a sad but well-known fact of IT life: many organizations feel they can’t afford or justify keeping a full-time dedicated SharePoint administrator on staff. So either the job gets added to some unfortunate soul’s already full roster of duties, or worse, nobody handles on-premises SharePoint administration duties at all – leaving the platform to fend for itself.
It took innovative thinking to successfully negotiate that contract for new equipment; the documents are signed and sealed and the equipment installed. Job well done. But it isn’t over yet. Because although today all the salient facts are at your
With the turning of the calendar to July 2014, much as been written about the implementation of the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL). Organizations’ reactions range from fear over financial penalties and jail time to utter confusion regarding compliance to outright
Navantis is thrilled to announce that our team has won the 2014 Microsoft Canada Innovation in Dynamics CRM IMPACT Award. At the Microsoft World Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington D.C. on July 13, 2014 Navantis was recognized for our team’s
With more than 100 vendors operating in the market, IT service desk tools have become widely available and highly commoditized. Each year Gartner releases their ITSSM Magic Quadrant to help customers evaluate vendors and support decision making. The research is
Think the new Anti-Spam Legislation set to go into effect on July 1, 2014 is about email? Think again. Labelled harsh, penetrating and with powers to fine up to $10 million, the legislation covers much more than spam emails. Preparation
IT teams are under an increasing amount of pressure to improve inefficiencies with a continuously shrinking budget. As a result, business executives are involving themselves in IT operations more than ever. According to IDC predictions, approximately 56% of technology decisions
The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) has gained an increasing amount of attention over the last few weeks. Although the legislation has been in the works since late last year it is only now that businesses have begun to understand the
Microsoft has recently released a bulletin and fix for what they have deemed a critical vulnerability affecting the Office suite of products (which includes SharePoint and its companion Office Web Apps). The vulnerability affects both SharePoint 2010 and 2013 where
Thinking of moving your business to the Cloud? Making the decision to move to the Cloud can cut costs, inspire innovation, and improve productivity and efficiency; all things that can propel a business ahead of its competition. But the bottom
Richard N. Foster, former senior partner with McKinsey and best-selling author of two books “Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage” and “Creative Destruction” promoted that, “to outperform the market, you have to change at the pace and scale of the market, without losing
It’s been awhile since my PC has been compromised. Years in fact. As a road warrior I am constantly travelling, tapping into public networks and accessing critical data and applications that I need to meet deadlines, make decisions and generally
It isn’t until disaster strikes that organizations often learn how vulnerable they are. A large US-based financial institution was planning a new marketing campaign. Independent research showed that customers perceived them as behind-the-times and lacking in innovation and they were
Having just returned from the mind-blowing SharePoint Conference 2014 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, I wanted to get my thoughts and impressions down while they were still relatively fresh. A LOT went down these past 5 days, and
Like everybody else out there after upgrading to CRM 2013 some customizations stopped working. Customizations, let’s not use the strong term “non-supported”, which may panic some people, but let’s refer to them as a grey area. Customizations like pre-filtering the
Your membership constituents are your most valuable asset. Keeping and maintaining a healthy and vibrant community means consistently delivering value at every step along their relationship journey with you. For best-in-class membership organizations, this translates into continually improving services for
Managing contracts is one of the most challenging tasks in any size organization today and one that has the potential to expose your company to risk along with significant financial loss through penalties incurred or bonuses not being realized. Most
The headline in the Toronto Star on Thursday, January 9 said it all “Canada viewed as Safe Haven for Cloud Computing”. With more and more companies including cloud as part of their data and application management strategy, Canada is poised
You have heard the saying ‘we’re only human’? It’s a phrase we use to remind ourselves that we are prone to making mistakes. In your business, your team members do not intentionally enter incorrect data or lose information but it
There is a widely-held opinion that SharePoint’s 2013 Records Management out-of-box functionality is not robust enough to manage records at an enterprise level. This blog explodes that myth and exposes the top challenges that can make or break your SharePoint
One of the biggest challenges projects face is reaching a successful closure, one where everyone at the table agrees that together we’ve made it to the finish line with flying colors. At Navantis we rely on a powerful tool to
As the holidays approached this year and we were busy filling stockings and putting presents under the tree for those we loved, we felt it was the perfect time to also give a thought to those who struggle to get
In a SharePoint environment, on average, a quarter of the cost is associated with facilities, another 40% is allocated to labor, and the ROI is still questionable for many organizations. It should also be considered that experienced SharePoint resources are
I have taken part in many team building activities over the years. They typically involve being plopped into a group of colleagues you don’t work with on a daily basis and participating in endless icebreakers in an attempt to “get
At Navantis we see hundreds of SharePoint environments. Some we build, some we rescue and a lot of which we manage. Our clients run their business on SharePoint. It’s their communications portal, their frontend interface to applications, their internal or
The recent announcement that Lenovo is planning to throw their hat in the BlackBerry fire-sale ring has caused a flurry of commentary in newspaper business columns and blog posts – and the noise is not likely something that will help
Last week I underwent an intensive immersion in all things Yammer in a two day session provided by Microsoft and Yammer folks in Chicago, and I left with a newfound enthusiasm for the Yammer platform and its potential for adoption
I recently returned from my second International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference and thought I would blog about some of the trends I’ve noticed within the legal vertical since I started at Navantis 18 months ago. There’s no real structure
There are a number of things I hold onto from my past, but my operating system isn’t one of them. Microsoft Windows XP was released in the fall of 2001 and has had a good long run, its support from
Like most of us on every project we bump into some of the CRM restrictions and we need to somehow display some records and the only way it seems to be a SSRS report. One way I found it can
TORONTO, ONTARIO, August 26, 2013: Navantis, a North American systems integrator and Microsoft Gold Partner today announced the acquisition of the Dolphin Contract Manager (DCM) solution from San Francisco-based Seal Software, a premiere provider of Contract Lifecycle Management, Contract Discovery
A large number of organizations rely on public folders for day to day business and they cannot get away from them. This becomes an issue for those organizations in that they are limited in their ability to migrate or upgrade
Have you ever experienced the inconvenience of trying to view a website on your mobile phone only to encounter missing content or bad formatting? Or how about the frustration of clicking on a link in your boss’ email only to
One of SharePoint’s most valuable functions is its Search Capability. Not only does it leverage the content that it crawls within your organization’s database, but it is also able to track the frequency each keyword is used in the Search
On the occasion of my colleague and good friend, Mark AuCoin, being named Microsoft’s Global Pre-Sales Specialist of the Year, I thought I would share some thoughts on the CRM Demonstration process. As a potential CRM customer, I’ll describe what
Certified for Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution Peopleworks is maximizing on industry trends to drive member engagement through online collaboration. Peopleworks supports an innovative and key differentiator in its forums and message boards section of the Online Portal. This forum and
As part of my job at Navantis over the years, I have sat in on hundreds of our clients’ meeting rooms. In many of those rooms, I see very elaborate and expensive video and teleconferencing equipment. I have seen many
This is the first blog in a series of posts related to “Migration” and “Upgrading” to the latest SharePoint 2013 Platform. Many of our Enterprise customers are hearing a lot of good things about the new features and functionalities. They
At Navantis, we have completed many CRM implementation projects and I believe the ‘missing link’ in most plans is the amount of time allocated to Change Management. Training alone does not ensure the successful adoption of your new CRM environment.
Now that it has been a week since MMS2013, and the dust is starting to settle down, I’ve been going over my notes and the great material I had the opportunity to experience while there. As a consultant, I approach
I have implemented System Center 2012 Configuration Manager for many clients, and while many of them use it just for their desktops or laptops, they do not use it for their servers. For various reasons, they are reluctant to add
It was another packed day at MMS2013, so busy that I need to master my own schedule to get the most out of it. It is often doubted just how busy a typical day is at MMS2013, so I figured
When I registered for MMS2013, it was noted that as participants, we should be prepared for lots of walking. I normally expect this, but this year MMS2013 is taking place in Mandalay Bay, where the Convention Center and Event Center
With MMS 2013 just around the corner, one of the most exciting aspects of the event this year is the focus on some of the new CISCO gear (Nexus 1000V and Cisco UCS) and Microsoft Hosting solutions (SPF System Center,
Today, I won’t be going into a detailed explanation of how to dynamically change the fetchXML for a sub-grid. Instead, I’m going to show you a small detail that will fix your view. So let’s begin… We have the following
Today, I’m going to give you a brief introduction to PowerShell 3.0, the newest version of the PowerShell family that comes built in with Windows Server 2012. For many years, there has been a controversial topic among the Microsoft and
Are you a project manager who is continually calling Accounting to ask for information on your jobs? Do you ask questions like: What are my commitments? How am I doing compared to my budget? What is the Net Profit on
Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012 have been out for a while now. There is a lot that is new and there is a lot that is awesome in this release. For a complete list, please see “What’s
We get asked this question a LOT. When do I need CRM vs. using Outlook, Sharepoint, Excel, Access or any other Microsoft platform product that provides an ability to track data in some kind of structured way? The answer is
The clock is ticking for those enterprises who still have SharePoint 2003 deployments, and the distant drumming begins for those who have any investment in the SharePoint 2007 platform. Microsoft’s support of both of these products have recent or upcoming
I get asked the question “What are you working on these days?” a lot. Well, one of my responses is, that I spend a lot of my time of late having conversations with our clients around Office 365. When I’m
When I first encountered Visual Studio 2008 Database Projects (or “Data Dude”), I was truly blown away. Database development suddenly got real. For too long database development was delegated second class status – all of the work in the database
Online meetings are integral to successful businesses. The beauty of virtual rendezvous lies in their convenience and cost effectiveness: members from around the globe can meet at a specified time and confer with one another without incurring travel costs. A
The primary goal of corporations is to create money for its shareholders. Executives and managers are faced with the responsibility of making sure that the businesses with which they are associated remain profitable for the sake of its stakeholders. Solely
In the grand old tradition of “Top x” lists, here’s my own (highly biased) take on the best features of Microsoft’s newest client operating system (in no particular order). Keep in mind, my perspective is that of a power user,
In an effort to go towards a user-centric environment, Microsoft introduced a new method of deploying applications in ConfigMgr 2012, entitled Applications Management. It provides a way of deploying an application to a user by associating a user with a
Welcome to the first of many blog post addressing IT Service Management and Delivery. Over the past several years, we in the IT world have embraced the “as a Service” mantra in the race to the Cloud. Striving to establish
I was reviewing some of the available CRM content off various websites and I was amazed to see that, for the most part, IT professionals are still talking about traditional uses of CRM. By traditional, I am referring to Contact
Recently I installed an instance of TFS 2012 and TFS 2012 Build for a client. It is a simple setup with TFS 2012 on one server and TFS 2012 Build (one controller and one agent) on another server. The client
Managing QA, Automation, Performance and Distributed test environments are key part of software testing lifecycle and QA process. The lab management feature of Microsoft Test Manager enables testing teams to simply manage their existing test environments and simplify the process
One of the key features in SharePoint is the ability to create customized sites and to save these as “Site Templates”. You can take a site that you have spent hours configuring to a specific customize format including creating document
The new SharePoint 2013 app model allows for some great opportunities to integrate externally hosted and/or developed apps that can be used to surface or send data into your SharePoint intranet, extranet or public facing web site. However, this model
One of the key features in SharePoint 2013 is the ability to add in third party applications through the SharePoint App Store. Adding an app is easy – just go under settings and click on Add an App. On the
There are by default four search scopes in SharePoint 2013: This Site (the default) People (searches personal sites and skills) Conversations Everything For search results of “This Site”, the search results page is actually in the site collection itself. For
Many of us in the Microsoft community started our career with Access. I started my career building Access applications in Access 2.0 and have used various versions since then to deliver small business applications. IT departments generally LOATHE access databases
I have a term set of every ICD-10 code, which is a taxonomy for categorizing diseases. It is organized in a hierarchical term set and contains approximately 10,000 terms. I created a site and turned on managed navigation and pointed
As with most Microsoft products, every time there is a new version the hardware requirements to run the new software increases to keep up with evolutions in hardware and to provide more resources to the new features within the product.
In SharePoint 2010, there is a little know feature that enables self-service site creation by end-users. It’s turned OFF by default but in can be activated through the Central Admin: When this is turned on, anyone with Contributor or
On November 1st, I blogged about my existing SharePoint 2013 sites being down for maintenance – presumably to migrate them to the new RTM bits. At that time, this was the error message: Well apparently, Microsoft didn’t hit their
I just installed Visual Studio 2012, and was pleasantly surprised to find a new storyboard tool based on PowerPoint! When you run the tool, you get regular PowerPoint with a set of shapes preconfigured to work together that represent common
One of the key limitations in SharePoint 2010 is flexibility in the navigation structure to span multiple site collections. This isn’t possible without significant custom development in SharePoint 2010 and is one of the more exciting features in SharePoint 2013.
In hooking up the SharePoint 2013 navigation to the term store, I found a few bugs at least in the current early preview version (I’m using the Office 2013 cloud version, let me know if you find the same behavior
One of the cool new features in SharePoint 2013 is the ability to use the Term Store to drive navigation. In my previous post, I created a Term Set called Diseases. Let’s use this to now drive the navigation for
The SharePoint 2013 term store is a “farm” level repository of hierarchical term sets and terms used by SharePoint for both metadata and navigation. If you are using the Office 2013 preview environment, by default the term store administrator is
In my last article, I documented how to create a Master Page in SharePoint 2013. Master Pages define the global chrome elements of your web site. This article explains how to create custom page layouts in SharePoint 2013. For more
This article explains how to create a Master Page in SharePoint 2013 from an existing HTML page with associated graphics, scripts, CSS files, etc. This article is targeted primarily at designers who want to start customizing their SharePoint 2013 site
We have a client that is hosting their site on Microsoft Azure. It is a basic content managed site with a SQL Azure backend. When our client got their monthly hosting bill, we discovered a significant transfer cost that couldn’t
In the new SharePoint 2013 preview environment (sign up for an Office 365 Developer Site and you can create your own environment) you get a very nice “Central Admin” type tool for managing all your site collections. By default, you
The SharePoint 2013 preview has been announced and there are some interesting new features, although from my perspective, this is less a revolution than SharePoint 2010 was based on what has been announced so far. Here are some of the
Maturing Enterprise Content Management has become a critical success factor in managing information in global organizations. In many cases, we see organizations who have implemented traditional ECM solutions such as LiveLink, Documentum, Filenet, etc. five to ten years ago. Many
In my visits with customers, I have noticed a new “sprawl” phenomenon – multiple SharePoint farms. In most cases, you only need a single SharePoint farm. There are some good reasons why you might need a second one (for example,
One of my colleagues sent me a couple good articles on SharePoint Governance specifically related to manufacturing companies. http://searchmanufacturingerp.techtarget.com/news/2240036242/Microsoft-SharePoint-best-practices-begin-with-governance-experts-say http://searchmanufacturingerp.techtarget.com/news/2240035866/More-manufacturers-turning-to-Microsoft-SharePoint-collaboration Some good insights and we would agree with most of the suggestions in these articles. I especially like this comment:
We have just published a new white paper entitled, “An Introduction to SharePoint Governance”. The following topics are covered in the white paper: Introduction What is Governance? Governance and SharePoint: An Example Why Governance? Reduced Risk of Failure A SharePoint
When intranets started, they were almost exclusively defined as being for “internal staff”. They were typically hosted within the internal network and no one from the outside world would be able to access anything within the intranet. The same was
There are many “off the shelf” SharePoint training programs. These include online courses, computer based training and in classroom training sessions. When we do training, we target the following audiences: IT Staff Developers Site Owners (those with Design or Full
Microsoft’s current Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) is a SharePoint cloud offering mainly targeted to small businesses who want an instant SharePoint collaboration environment without the need to host on premise. It costs $10 / user / month at a
Metadata is information that describes, classifies or identifies a piece of information. Metadata is typically described as a set of attributes that help to describe or classify an object. For example, here are just some of the metadata attributes for
We have many customers who are upgrading from SharePoint 2003 or 2007 to SharePoint 2010. Their existing SharePoint implementations vary from full blown intranets, local collaboration sites, or application portals. We find many cases where one line of business implemented
SharePoint 2010 provides a container approach to partitioning information, security boundaries and infrastructure: When you design your SharePoint governance strategy, you can apply decisions on how the platform is divided at each layer in the model. For example,
One of the key facilitation techniques we engage in with all our customers is to start with “pain points”. As part of every planning engagement, we start with a group session with a broad variety of stakeholders. Using one of
When we engage organizations in SharePoint Governance Strategy projects, we’re working with the organization to help define their overall approach to implementing, rolling out and operation of their SharePoint platform. The typical deliverable is a large document that provides the
Planning creates the following benefits: Stakeholder buy-in Alignment to business objectives Operational sustainability Ability to measure success Prioritization of spend Adoption It also reduces traditional project risks: Expectations not being met Uncontrolled growth Re-work Project failure Before you invest significant
Like many IT projects, SharePoint projects experience significant failure rates or do not achieve their desired objectives. One of the key reasons for challenges with rollout is the failure to establish a formal governance program for SharePoint. This may lead
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