As COVID-19 continues to spread, governments around the world are taking drastic steps to protect their citizens by closing businesses and urging those that can, to work remotely from home. Many of our customers have asked us to share the details of how we enable remote work for our office and how they can implement the tools too.
We want to make sure every member of our team has the tools, resources and solutions to be as productive, creative, and secure from any location and any device they use to work. Getting there has required that we manage identity and network access for all users; help ensure devices used to access the network are secure and healthy; and provide user access to the productivity apps they need.
Here are some of the top ways that we are enabling remote work at 360 Visibility. We hope that you find these useful in enabling work from home for your employees. But also understand that every business is different and has varying levels of IT resources and are at different stages in their journey to the cloud. Whatever your specific situation may be, the IT team at 360 Visibility can assist from answering questions, providing advice and best practices, to implementing the tools you need to empower your workforce during these trying times. With that said, let’s look at 9 ways to enable remote work.
User Identity and Access
The first step is to manage user identities and access to the corporate network. By using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), you can enable users to sync their primary accounts to the corporate network and continue to access all necessary apps from any location or device.
This identity and access service provide single sign-on for seamless connection from any location and platform, and multi-factor authentication to help protect your users from 99.9% of cybersecurity attacks.
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)
Maintaining operational security remains amongst the highest priority, especially as businesses rapidly shift to remote work with various new devices connecting to the network. Multi-factor authentication can help protect your identity across multiple devices and applications.
MFA immediately increases your account security by requiring multiple forms of verification to prove your identity when signing into applications.
Managing Devices
Your organization likely contains a wide range of devices, including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. And like you, this transition to the cloud necessitates stronger management of devices and platforms.
Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Microsoft Intune integrate to create a single console where you can monitor and manage all your devices, endpoints and apps and quickly identify security vulnerabilities that can be patched with updates.
Productivity Applications
With this foundation in place, our employees can work seamlessly in the cloud. Microsoft 365 enables users to access resources and share files with Office apps across web, mobile, and desktop, storing their content in the cloud by default.
Outlook mobile, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive are deployed on all our corporate devices, so people can access their emails, calendars, and files.
Meetings and Collaboration
All of us at 360 Visibility use Microsoft Teams daily for chat, meetings, calls, and collaboration. Many of our customers are using Teams as part of their existing Office 365 subscription. Now that we find ourselves working remotely, we’ve been able to stay productive and work without disruption.
Teams and the Microsoft 365 environment empower us to collaborate. We can record meetings for later viewing, create groups for chat and file share, all while maintaining security and compliance.
Access to Line of Business (LOB) Applications
While most of our legacy applications have been modernized or moved to the cloud, some businesses may still require VPN access to get to critical applications.
Deploying Windows Virtual Desktop replicates your entire work environment, from documents to apps to the look of your desktop, allowing you to access everything you could as if you were in the office.
Service Monitoring
Ensuring everything works smoothly while everyone works remotely is critical. Service monitoring in Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 help to report on application and network performance, keeping your business running smoothly.
Culture and Change Management
Remote work can create challenges as some users are able to adjust their process better than others. Here are some quick tips to help make the switch to remote work easier.
- Save files to your OneDrive folder instead of your C: drive. This lets you collaborate with others in Office 365
- Share OneDrive links instead of attachments in emails to make sure everyone always has the latest version of a document
- Use Microsoft Teams to the fullest. Hold all your calls, meetings, and chats on Teams
Designing for Specific Roles
What we’ve described benefits most workers, but it’s important to enable remote work for other types of workers too.
Developers
Engineers and developers need to collaborate on code and typically work on desktops. Using laptops with Windows Virtual Desktop allows them to remotely access their desktop work environment.
Call Center and Help Desk
Support technicians can continue their work remotely and take calls or meetings using Microsoft Teams.
Firstline Workers
Teams enables all workers to connect and access important information, connect to remote sites and ensure their workflows continue.
Switching to a Work from Home Policy with Microsoft
Enabling a team to work remotely is an ongoing challenger, one that presents differently for every organization. We hope that reading about our approach and how we’ve enable our teams to work remotely can be useful in your efforts.
The team at 360 Visibility is always here to assist you in understanding best practices and deploying the correct Microsoft solutions.