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,
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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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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