Microsoft Office Communications Server Client in everyday use with Scott Barr

Engage, Inc hosted a Microsoft Office Communications Server client in everyday use webinar on June 24th, 2010.  The turn out was great and the information was valuable.  Scott, who has over 15 years of experience in the IT field and over 5 years of working with, hosting and integrating Microsoft Live Communications Server, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office Communications Server, gave the audience a nice overview of what Microsoft Office Communications Server can do for your business and how it can improve your business processes.  Instant messaging, IM conferencing, VOIP calls, VOIP conferencing, video calls, video conferencing and screen sharing were just some of the topics covered.

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Microsoft Office Communicator Presence Etiquette

With Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you have the power and flexibility to become more productive in your daily business life.  Use of Microsoft Office Communicator can greatly increase collaboration between co-workers and clients. But, just like anything, too much of a good thing can become overwhelming.  How can this be overcome?  Etiquette is one simple answer.

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The 4th of July brings back fond memories of going to the beach or the lake or someone’s back yard for fun and good food.  As we grow older we are told of the significance of the date and what happened many years ago on that special day.  While doing some research for this article, I found a letter Ronald Reagan had written in 1981 that really brought out some emotions on what the day meant to those that signed their names to the Declaration of Independance.  The full letter can be found here

There is a legend about the day of our nation’s birth in the little hall in Philadelphia, a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words “treason, the gallows, the headsman’s axe,” and the issue remained in doubt.

The legend says that at that point a man rose and spoke. He is described as not a young man, but one who had to summon all his energy for an impassioned plea. He cited the grievances that had brought them to this moment and finally, his voice falling, he said, “They may turn every tree into a gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop, they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the Bible of the rights of man forever.”

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Using Microsoft Office Communicator – Call Forwarding Settings.   

With Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you have the ability to forward and route incoming calls a variety of ways.  These options will allow you to be more efficient and productive during you busy work day.  

Below are some simple instructions for Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 (MOC) to get you going:

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With the recent reports out from Forrester Wave and Gartner, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is positioned as a strong market leader of CRM suites for the ability to execute, completeness of vision, current offering and market presence.  This is the case for the SMB to the mid-size and on to the large organizations.

The Forrester Wave research examined 516 different criteria segmented by customer size and Microsoft CRM was found to be head and shoulders above the rest of the field which included Salesforce.com, Oracle Siebel and SAP.  Some of the positive points highlighted from the study are: Read more »

The Power of Choice and the Freedom to Collaborate with anyone. 

With Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you now have the ability to engage people who are not on your OCS deployment or who are not federated with your organization.  Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access, also known as CWA, allows you to send out an invite to almost anyone with internet access via email and have them join as a guest and allow you to have a chat session and or  screen share to collaborate or troubleshoot issues. See client requirements here: http://bit.ly/cvZEdw

Below are the instructions on how easy it is to collaborate with someone who is not on your network by using OCS and CWA.

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Like a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota so many years ago, the face of healthcare information technology in the United States is on the precipice of about a $20 billion dollar facelift that will forever change the face of EHR (electronic health record). As has been well publicized, “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” that was signed into law by President Obama in February of 2009 has allocated approximately $20 billion for “meaningful use” of a “certified EHR” in the form of increased Medicare and Medicaid payments.

What does this mean for eligible physicians? It means potentially a provision of approximately $40,000 in incentives to be paid out beginning in 2011 over a five year period. However, perhaps much less publicized, but nonetheless there are the penalties that could be imposed beginning in 2015 for those not showing “meaningful use” of a “certified EHR.”

What does all this mean for those involved in sculpting these EHR solutions? Well, there are many companies out there chiseling out their solutions for customers. These companies are all sketching out their visions of what “meaningful use” means for their customers, with the help of the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and how to become a “certified EHR”.  Some companies are taking the entire mountain as their canvas to work with in sculpting out their complete EHR solutions. Others are simply examining all the various facets which compose a complete EHR, and sculpting out the parts they have familiarity and expertise with, hoping to add it to a complete EHR vision. One small facet, to be considered in all of the potential solutions, is that the physician must demonstrate that the “certified EHR” technology is connected in a manner that provides for the electronic exchange of health information to improve the quality of health care, such as promoting care coordination. A complete and accurate EHR on a patient will be built over time from various sources of information contributing data. One could even argue that a solid EHR can be built from good EMRs being provided and built upon. It is similar to the old computer information saying, “garbage in, garbage out.” Therefore, we in the information technology arena, no matter how lightly we may touch data that may eventually flow into an EHR, have a responsibility to make that data as reliable and accurate as possible.

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The webinar series will kick off on June 15^th with an Introduction to USFederal360™ and Correspondence Management.  Although this webinar will be geared towards those involved with and working in the public sector,  the same Microsoft CRM and SharePoint solutions apply to most organizations having to deal with large amounts of correspondence, while tracking the process and revisions of those items.

On June 24^th Engage will be hosting a webinar on Microsoft OCS.  This informative webinar on Microsoft Office Communications Server will cover the day to day uses of Microsoft OCS and how it can benefit your business. 

We will demonstrate the basics of : Read more »

How fondly does an entire generation of folks remember seeing Laura Ingalls running down that grassy hill in the opening credits of Little House on the Prairie. No longer are we living in the age of Little House on the Prairie where a region’s healthcare services are provided by someone like Doc Baker who either had to render medical care to his patients by the townsfolk hitching up the wagon and traveling on into town or, if you were lucky, the doc could saddled up his horse and ride on out to the farmstead to deliver medical services. These are now merely quaint visions of a bygone era. Ever-evolving technology has forever changed the landscape in which medical professionals operate within.

In today’s society, healthcare services are no longer only confined within the walls of hospitals, traditional clinics nor doctors’ offices. With a rapidly changing, growing and aging population has come the need for more mobile, connected and independent healthcare services to follow suit. Healthcare services are starting to follow patients when and where they need it: community clinics, specialty pharmacy and ad hoc services on private and corporate premises, outpatient-style facilities and in-home care for those determined to “age in place” with their own independent lifestyles. Add these services to those of a traditional patient or practice service model, and their information needs and connectivity can become an administrative nightmare.

As with any problem or business need facing healthcare professionals in today’s society, there is a veritable cornucopia of software solutions out to address the ever increasing demands placed on today’s healthcare organizations. Many are adopting customer relationship management technologies to increase efficiency, improve patient satisfaction, and to help providers to proactively manage patient’s overall health, which improves patient outcomes. One such software platform making inroads into the healthcare information technology arena, and offering quite a lot of versatility and power, is the Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software solution. Microsoft CRM is offered within the Microsoft Dynamics platform suite of software solutions. Here at Engage, Inc. it has enabled us to offer a variety of CRM built solution accelerators to ancillary healthcare operations which are now enabled with the same visibility, operational ease and delivery capabilities as if the patients were housed with their existing facility. Best of all CRM securely enables the data for your partners, clinical staff and clients securely via the web, telephone, or other healthcare appropriate environment.

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2010 has been, and will continue to be,  a great year for Microsoft.   With their release of Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4, and Silverlight 4 all  with in the first half of the year, Microsoft is giving developers a unified set of tools to create applications for the desktop, the web, and even the upcoming Windows 7 Phone.

The implications for this are huge, and the success of the Windows 7 Phone will hinge on Microsoft’s development communities ability to create applications in numbers large enough to compete with the already huge Apple and Android application stores. By giving developers the same set of tools to create Windows 7 phone applications, that they have been using for years to create desktop and web applications, Microsoft is ensuring a smooth transition for developers, and a new community of mobile developers will no doubt arise.

Should Silverlight be nervous with HTML 5 features being adopted by some browsers now?    While  there are some great new features that will come with HTML 5 – css3, scalable vector graphics, h.264 video, embedded audio – Silverlight offers a whole lot more.  Like what happened with HDDVD, Blu Ray technology won out because of  certain industries.  The same decisions by similar industries – online gaming for one - have been made to go with Silverlight.  Silverlight also has more support and possibilities for enterprise data driven applications.

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