Top Blog Posts of 2020

As we end 2020, the Excel and Flourish team wanted to share some of the most popular blog posts from 2020. Since 2020 saw a huge shift in the way everyone conducts business around the world, you will that our most popular posts are dominated by working from home strategies, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams.

Breakout rooms available in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams continues to improve and introduce new features. Breakout Rooms are now available in Microsoft Teams. Here are the highlights from the Microsoft announcement.

Breakout rooms make it easy to divide your meetings into sub-groups to facilitate smaller discussions, brainstorming sessions, learning groups, and even holiday mixers.

Organizers can jump in between meetings on their own, deliver announcements to all breakout rooms at once, and bring everyone back to the main meeting at any time. And unique to Microsoft Teams, breakout rooms can be initiated both in Microsoft Teams channels and in Microsoft Teams meetings to give you flexibility on how you want to meet. Breakout rooms are especially great this time of year for mixing and mingling and playing games during a virtual holiday party.

Zoom Tips to Help You Meet Like A Pro when working from home

With many businesses now encouraging or even mandating that employees work from home amid global health concerns over the coronavirus, millions of people can expect to have their daily routines and work styles impacted. But not everyone is accustomed to working from home and getting into work mode from a space that’s not your regular one can be a huge adjustment.

One of the most popular ways to meet online is Zoom. Here are just a few essential tips to get started.

New updates for Zoom - September 21, 2020

Zoom is rolling out some exciting new updates and improvements that will impact your day-to-day zooming life. Some of these features have been in the works for months, so I’m very excited to share the news with you. These will be available to the public on Monday, September 21, 2020.

Enhanced integration with Outlook client - Outlook users will like this one! The Zoom desktop client integration with the Outlook client now provides the option to sync your Zoom status and profile picture to Outlook.

Calendar Integration sync improvement - Deleting a meeting in the desktop client will now delete the calendar event on the synced calendar if write permission is given.

Studio Effects - Want to have some fun? Considering I had an accident that scorched off my eyebrows earlier this summer, this might have been helpful if it had been released earlier! Users can now apply eyebrows, mustache, and beard, and lip color filters as part of their video appearance. Note: This feature is currently in beta.

Skills Jennifer Loves to Teach

I get really jazzed about what I teach. So when people ask me,” what are your favorite topics to teach?” That’s an easy answer. When I’m watching people as I’m training them, I like to teach the topics that I can literally see the light bulb go on. Let’s take a look at some of my favorite classes.

Overcoming Inbox Overwhelm - I get emails from people who I’ve taught this class to years later saying,” I might have slipped but I remembered your concepts and I can go right back.” That class has a lot of impact on a day-to-day basis.

Magic Shortcuts & Timesavers - I really love Excel- obviously, it’s in the name of my company- and another class that I really like teaching from are my Excel Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts. The simple things that I can train in 90 minutes can help people be so much faster at Excel, and in my mind, every keystroke costs money. So, if I can save some keystrokes, that’s a win.

Office 365 is now Microsoft 365

As of April 21, 2020, the official branding of Microsoft's productivity suite has changed from Office 365 to just Microsoft 365. The new naming convention reflects Microsoft's strategy of providing a single complete productivity platform for its customers.

From the customer's perspective, there is no separation between Windows 10, Office 365, and Azure—it is all just one platform, the Microsoft 365 platform.

Microsoft 365 is a subscription service that ensures you always have the most up-to-date modern productivity tools from Microsoft. There are Microsoft 365 plans for home and personal use, as well as for small and midsized businesses, large enterprises, schools, and non-profits.