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Real Time Interoperability – The New Generation of Enterprise Workflow Automation Tools

real time interoperability

In the second of this series of blogs we’re exploring how innovative new software services and tools are transforming the landscape of enterprise productivity, collaboration, data sharing and – importantly – workflow automation, by offering cost-effective, fast-to-market solutions for big gains in efficiency and security. Our previous blog highlighted the problems inherent in relying on files to share data. From the challenges of automating workflow to the inherent security risks of sharing data, and importantly how traditionally employed file-based data sharing processes don’t easily support real-time updates or collaboration. This blog focuses on currently available options for tackling these issues and the huge impact it can have on productivity when you get it right.

 

Clouds ahead in the walled garden

Although cloud-based collaborative platforms go some way to solving problems associated with file sharing, reducing version control issues and offering real-time collaboration, they generally don’t integrate well with local desktop applications or databases. Neither with other cloud platforms, resulting in the classic ‘walled-garden’ syndrome, while at the same time introducing a whole new raft of data protection and security concerns. These security issues render most cloud platforms unworkable for many organisations although some more visionary offerings such as the Symphony capital markets focused chat application are leading the way by providing a novel way of end-to-end encryption, in overcoming these security and integration challenges.

 

RTI – Entering into the new world of Real-time Interoperability

Imagine there was a service that allowed the seamless, real-time integration not only of your current desktop applications but also your new cloud services and even your chat applications. You could view and share the latest information live, present that information simultaneously across a multitude of applications and define your own automation of processes, as well as workflows based on that same live data. Together with full security and audit of every interaction and your own user-defined alerts & notifications nudging users about tasks and keeping them up to date.

Already mentioned in our previous blog in the series, a new concept which delivers all of this and more and is becoming the new model for next stage of enterprise productivity and workflow solutions combining real-time data with application and data interoperability. We’re calling it real-time interoperability or RTI. At its best, RTI does away with files completely and brings real-time data sharing and workflow tools into the chat and desktop applications that are already familiar to end users. Smart and easy to use add-ins mean that there is little or no development involved in integration and uptake is fast. End users are empowered to build their own workflow automation and data sharing tools while always working within the bounds of a secure managed strategic environment.

 

How it makes a difference

Across different industries practical applications of RTI platforms (like ipushpull) are already gaining traction in a number of key areas with common themes. For example, distribution of live data from a central system (perhaps a database, spreadsheet or in-house platform) to a community of users across different applications and devices is a common and powerful application for RTI, ranging from a securities broker sending live prices to clients’ chat or desktop Excel, to a manufacturers sending live production line information to a shop floor display or mobile devices. Reverse the solution and you have an easy to implement consolidation platform pulling data from remote locations in different formats, consolidating and reporting in real time. Reducing monthly reporting cycles down to daily by reducing or eliminating the need for files and manual processing. Each in its own way is a big leap forward in the ability to cost-effectively get the right information to the right users at the right time and in the right format. Use it wisely and the benefits of RTI are huge, reducing operational risks and costs, while improving efficiency and productivity.

While the benefits of interoperability and real time information have been out of reach for most organizations until recently, the environment is changing fast. Next time we’ll be exploring RTI in the context of Robotic Process Automation, so keep an eye on our blogs.

To learn more about how ipushpull is being used to automate and streamline enterprise data sharing and workflows please go to www.ipushpull.com

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ipushpull joins BT Radianz Cloud, simplifying cloud connectivity & adoption

BT Radianz Cloud

Fintech brings real-time data sharing and collaboration to the world’s largest secure networked financial services community. ipushpull is pleased to announce a strategic alliance with BT Radianz creating opportunities within the Radianz community to further accelerate the company’s growth.

Through a single, resilient and secure network the award winning BT Radianz Cloud links a financial community of thousands of banks, funds, brokers,  exchanges, clearers and settlement houses to over 400 market critical providers and vendors. By partnering with BT Radianz ipushpull significantly simplifies cloud deployment and infrastructure connectivity allowing quicker sales and onboarding to an established customer network. While BT Radianz benefits by offering its customers cutting edge and innovative technology alongside its existing list of top tier vendors.

BT Radianz

Like many Fintech vendors ipushpull utilises cutting edge cloud based technologies and hosting. However financial institutions have not been quick to adopt cloud computing. This is due to a number of factors, namely:

  • Security, banks are heavily regulated so security of internal and customer data is paramount so ‘on-premise’ hosting is the norm
  • Legacy infrastructure, billions has been spent on technology infrastructure, as well as the staff to maintain it, making banks reluctant to jettison decades of investment
  • Education around the cloud, historically the cloud has been seen as a consumer technology lacking enterprise grade security, however this just isn’t the case

Some financial institutions have embraced the cloud or have made moves to but they are still outliers. The majority of financial institutions still request that Fintechs deploy on-premise installations which are not only costly to deploy and maintain they often lack the benefits which the cloud brings such as scalability, reduction in cost and connectivity. As BT Radianz is a well-established provider of cloud services through their private network, or extranet, the decision to partner with BT Radianz was led by the credibility, security and network that Radianz can provide to its existing financial services customers. Matthew Cheung, CEO of ipushpull comments:

“While Fintechs are agile and nimble and able to quickly create innovative market-ready technologies they are often dealing with financial institutions who, due to their size, are slow to adopt and deploy the latest technology. BT Radianz Cloud allows Fintechs like ipushpull to seamlessly connect with the big financial players at speed, at scale and with the highest level of enterprise security”.

Through Radianz Cloud, financial institutions can now access the ipushpull data sharing and collaboration platform allowing data interoperability from applications like Excel, databases and APIs to messaging platforms such as Symphony and Microsoft Teams and desktop containers such as Openfin and ChartIQ – all utilising the ultra-secure private network that the Radianz Cloud provides.

For more information please see the BT press release here. 

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Excel spreadsheets to WordPress in One Click

The popularity of the ipushpull plug-in for WordPress has been going strong for nearly 2 years which is why ipushpull is ranked number 1 on Google for “Excel to WordPress” and “Excel to websites”. Use of the plugin is far and wide with a variety of companies from different industries all pushing data from Excel spreadsheets to WordPress and webpages. From financial market traders to sports clubs, what our customers have in common is the need to get data in their spreadsheets to the web, and one of the many features of ipushpull does exactly that.

Displaying live data from Excel spreadsheets in WordPress has simplified several aspects of our customers’ businesses, examples of which include:

As you can see, the ways in which the ipushpull plugin is used has been as diverse as the companies themselves. The platform is very flexible by design, which means data embedded in a WordPress website can be public or private, updating live every second or manually once a month. There is no development needed. For each page an embedded code is generated and can be used in WordPress or any other web building platform.

Since the plugin has proved so popular with a lot of our customers, we have decided to add some of the following new features: the new Shortcode Generator in WordPress, the ability to download published tables and embed from CVS files, give even more functionality and ease of use.

 

Better ways to embed live data from Excel spreadsheets in WordPress

The new ipushpull button to the WordPress menu means you can insert spreadsheet data to your web page by selecting it in drop down menus, which generates a ‘shortcode’. The shortcode creates a link between the data and your web page. This quick solution allows you to embed your spreadsheets without the need to search for cumbersome workarounds, literally at the click of a button! How great is that?

Excel spreadsheets to WordPress

The other handy new feature is the ability to download live ipushpull data into Excel from your website. Maybe you need to run some data analysis, ipushpull lets you do so with live data from your website straight to Excel. As the data updates on the web page, so does your Excel spreadsheet.

Excel spreadsheets to WordPress

Want to share CSV files on your WordPress web page or website? We can do that too! Since CSV files can be uploaded to our platform, they can also easily be embedded in WordPress. A user can specify to automatically Pull data from the CSV file once a day at a set time or update it manually. If you would like to find out more about this or any feature, please contact support@ipushpull.com or fill out our contact form.

Start using the ipushpull plugin to get Excel spreadsheets to WordPress by downloading it from the WordPress website. Create a free trial ipushpull account to start embedding live data in your website today.

Are you using the ipushpull plugin for WordPress in your business? Write to us with some details for a chance to appear in on of our blog articles.

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Top 5 workflow tools – supercharge your Excel and spreadsheets

Microsoft Excel‘s entrenched position as the most popular business tool owes a great deal to its breadth of functionality and flexibility. Over the years Excel users, from small businesses to financial professionals, have found that they’ve been able to turn its power to solve a huge range of challenges. However, many people are also using Excel for purposes that it isn’t suited for. I’d hazard a guess that every business has at least one critical spreadsheet that has spiraled out of control over time to the point where no one fully understands how it works, making it difficult to collaborate on. So we’ve come up with the top 5 workflow tools for Excel to help you overcome this problem.

Many fully-featured spreadsheet competitors to Excel have been launched with varying degrees of success, including Google Sheets and Zoho Sheet. However, for this article we’ve compiled products that solve self-contained problems – the kind of challenges that people have used Excel for, even though that’s not what it was designed to do.

Smartsheet – the project management tool

Even the smallest business needs a tool for managing employees’ time and tracking the progress of projects. For many years Microsoft Project has set the gold standard for this purpose, but it’s expensive and far too complex. Consequently, many businesses have gone back to using Excel for scheduling and time-tracking, which has given way to version control problems arising from spreadsheets being shared between multiple users.

Enter Smartsheet – a web-based project management tool with a spreadsheet-inspired interface. It’s taken the best features of Excel and Microsoft Project, added new features like notifications and real-time reporting and presented them in a powerful but simple-to-use online package. It has no version control problems that Excel files have and it automates many of the manual workarounds. It does this without the steep learning curve of Microsoft Project, that’s why it’s in our top 5 workflow tools. Simple enough for small businesses and powerful enough for large enterprises, it counts Netflix, Bayer and Accenture among its customers.

AbleBits Suite – the timesaving tool for Excel

If you’ve recently had to merge large tables in Excel or remove duplicates then this painstaking, fiddly process is fresh in your mind. It can take up a large chunk of your time, time you could have spent doing something a lot more productive than squinting at cells one by one. Ablebits delights everyone who completes these tasks day to day with their suite of Excel add-ons, taking away the manual chores that plague Excel. To name a few of the tools, Merge Tables Wizard does exactly what it says on the tin. If you think that you could merge tables even without this tool, then you should try working with bigger tables. Advanced Find and Replace Tool gives a lot more flexibility and allows to search inside notes, formulas and even all the sheets in your workbook. If you need to Remove Duplicates and Trim Spaces or just Fill Empty Cells, they’ve got the tool for you. All in they have 10 add-ons that incorporate a variety of useful task automations.

Top 5 workflow toolsiPushPull – share and manage Excel data tool

Most businesses have critical data with functions to analyse it held in multiple Excel files. If they want to share this data across their businesses or with clients and customers they have to send entire files as email attachments or manually upload them using services like Dropbox. This inevitably leads to version control and security problems. It’s rare that these sheets get redeveloped as standalone applications – business requirements keep changing and there’s limited budget or desire to do so.

The iPushPull cloud service lets you share data ranges directly from desktop Excel and access them in other spreadsheets, on the web, on mobile and in other applications like Slack and Symphony. As your spreadsheet data changes, it automatically updates everywhere else. It’s the perfect tool for aggregating sales and finance data from multiple sites across organisations. With this live collaboration tool you can distribute information to customers or clients without leaving Excel, with built-in permissions and auditing to control who views or modifies the data.

top 5 workflow tools

Workday Worksheets – forecasting and planning for enterprises tool

This new addition to the host of Workday process management and planning tools, creates a new way to reconcile the forecasting and budgeting process for financial services. The original app is a collaborative tool for organisations to share live data and manage spreadsheets, and even has a chat interface. It gives enterprises a more adequate solution to working with spreadsheets than Excel. The Worksheets application looks great as a standalone tool, but you have to migrate to the Workday platform. A subscription to which is quite pricey, therefore making it more viable for large companies such as enterprises. The app isn’t directly integrated with Excel but spreadsheets can be uploaded to Worksheets.

OpenasApp – turn your sheets into mobile apps tool

Anyone who’s tried to open a full-sized spreadsheet on a mobile device will know that the user experience is not great. Finding the data you’re looking for is time-consuming, involves lots of swiping, pinching and zooming. Trying to manipulate the data or perform calculations is even more difficult. The new offering from OpenasApp lets you transform your spreadsheet data into an interactive mobile app. You select tables of data from your spreadsheet and use OpenasApp’s wizard to create your app. It attempts to work out what kind of data you have selected, and automatically generates graphs and charts using its built-in BI functionality. It even lets you integrate simple calculations into your new web app (unfortunately it doesn’t support macros yet). It’s a new product so it’s yet to be seen how popular it will prove, but we’ve put it in our top 5 workflow tools because its ability to create web apps on-demand using your existing business data is very attractive.

As a result of its functionality and flexibility, Excel has outgrown its original purpose. So there’s an increasing range of products and tools to help customers make their spreadsheets better such as the top 5 workflow tools we’ve described above. If you have a favourite tool that’s improved or replaced your spreadsheets, please tell us! And if you’d like a free trial of iPushPull, please sign up here today.

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Tech trends 2017: Convergence – Not the movie

Tech trends 2017: Convergence

Convergence. Sounds like the title of a dodgy b-movie, doesn’t it? And it is. In fact, there are several. But I’m not concerned with badly-scripted, straight-to-streaming films today. Convergence is one of the hottest subjects in tech press at the moment, particularly in the area of cloud services and productivity tools. For tech trends 2017: convergence is likely to remain there and here’s why.

Some are euphemistically calling it a bundling event, which sounds like a Black Friday sale at Walmart, but it amounts to the same thing: implement or acquire exactly the same features as everyone else and force them into your core product. In other words, the tech equivalent of a huddle of hipsters hanging-out in the same Dalston dive and choosing to assert their individuality by growing exactly the same beard.

Dropbox announced their new suite of productivity tools, which amount to a loosely-related collection of features that have been cherry-picked from the likes of Evernote, Office 365, Quip and others.

Tech trends 2017: ConvergenceSlack integrated voice calling into their product earlier this year, just in time for Microsoft to announce Teams, which is essentially Slack with voice and video calling (as noted by CEO Stewart Butterfield in a full-page ad in the New York Times). In a move that surprised nobody, Slack responded this week with the addition of video calling (sadly lacking the very useful screen-sharing facility in Teams). Incidentally, both of these products look a lot like Yammer, which is, of course, owned by Microsoft.

I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling to keep up. You might argue that this sort of product convergence is good for competition and consumer choice; I can see that argument too. The problem for end-users is, when every product claims to do everything for everyone, how do we choose the right one?

Tech trends 2017: Convergence or integration?

Convergence is just another way of saying the current trend in tech is to value convenience over function. If it continues, we will simply end up with a selection of cloud-based multi-tools and users will find themselves choosing between the digital equivalent of a tin-opener attachment or the tool for removing stones from horse’s hooves.

The trouble is, as anyone who has ever tried to fix the car with a Leatherman or put up a shelf using a Swiss Army Knife will know, these general-purpose tools will only get you so far. They are fine for simple tasks, but bigger projects require more specialised and sophisticated tools to get the job done well.

It’s a feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried to perform some serious financial analysis using an online spreadsheet (assuming you’ve solved the not-insignificant problem of accessing the data you need in the cloud), or do something as simple as generate a table of contents in the online version of Microsoft Word.

When it comes to technology, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery; integration is. At iPushPull, we are striving to bring together the tools you know, whether on desktop or mobile, with the accessibility of the cloud. We don’t believe convenience has to come at the cost of function, and we certainly don’t subscribe to the view that you need to give up the powerful, fully-featured applications you need in order to be productive.

The list of tools we are integrated with is expanding continuously, and now includes Slack, WordPress, Microsoft Teams, PDFs and of course Excel. You can chat in Slack with your team while viewing live updating data, host it on your WordPress website, or simply view live data on your mobile with our platform.

Start your 30 day free trial to see what iPushPull can do for you.

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Real-time Profit and Loss, Risk and Alerts on your Mobile

As a trader or risk manager in the digital age, is there any reason for you to be tied to your desk? Could you be spending more time doing more productive things, improving systems, analysing markets or even freeing up time for the family? Read on and find out how to keep track of real-time profit and loss, risk, and get immediate alerts.

 

How iPushPull can help monitor real-time profit and loss….

Whether you need to get out for lunch for an hour, away for the day or on a business trip or vacation, with iPushPull you can be away from the office with more confidence. Letting you stay on top of your work with any mobile device.

It’s easy – using simple Excel add-ins or APIs you can securely share real-time profit and loss, risk and other live data via the iPushPull platform direct to mobile devices and desktop browsers.

You can now see your live risk screens on the go and set custom email alerts based on your own limits or calculations. You can even set up SMS alerts for when you have no internet access. Now you’ll never miss a market move.

iPushPull is your very own automated trading assistant keeping an eye on things when you can’t.

 

real-time profit and loss riskLess Hassle – More Control

Ever tried accessing your risk systems remotely via VPN, remote desktop or similar? By the time you’ve logged on to the VPN and tried to resize your desktop layout just to make it viewable on your mobile – you’ve probably given up, unless you have lots of patience. Viewing data on the go can be so much easier.

With iPushPull you can control exactly what data you share and with whom. Our permission features lets you define and control what you can view when you’re out of the office, not your colleagues, developers or system providers.

You can share data purely for your own consumption or you can share different data with colleagues or clients, but you don’t need to give them access to the whole data set as you would with many other methods of remote access.

 

Cross Platform and Less Risk

If you know your way around Excel you can easily use iPushPull to pull together live data from one or more platforms and aggregate or manipulate it as you wish. Then simply push it out to the users you’ve given permission to so they can access it using desktop Excel, on their mobiles or at www.ipushpull.com.

With end-to-end encryption, iPushPull offers next-generation cloud security – meaning simple, secure access to live risk data from mobile devices and desktop browsers wherever you are. And you can share just the data you really need in an easily-viewable, read-only format, so there’s absolutely no risk of fat fingers and unintended mouse clicks.

Sign up for a free trial at www.ipushpull.com.

For more information go here or to set up a demo give us a call on +44 20 3808 4085 or email sales@ipushpull.com

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Faster Excel workflow with new iPushPull Add-in

Top 5 workflow tools

Following the release of the new iPushPull web platform, the Excel add-in has now been updated with great new features for a simplified experience and a much faster Excel workflow. These features provide a streamlined version of the Excel add-in and automates manual tasks, saving you precious time. Download the new version here.

We’ve put together a few tips on using the new add-in:

Faster Excel workflow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View the support article for creating new iPushPull pages from desktop Excel for an easy step by step guide to using this upgraded feature. Learn to create a simple Live Push without functions or a simple Live Pull in just a few clicks.

Faster Excel workflow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Intuitive features for faster Excel workflow

One of the great new features is a quick access of functions through right clicking, where iPushPull options are now available. You can also navigate to an iPushPull page in the web platform just by double clicking on that page through the My Pages/Push/Pull dialog boxes. View the support article on this feature here.

Download the new Excel add-in to take advantage of these great new updates.

 

 

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On Premise and Remote Desktop to Cloud Sharing

Uploading and downloading files, cutting and pasting, is that how you share on premise and cloud documents right now? Not as smooth as you’d like, is it? There is a much more streamlined process, without extra downloads or extra copies of files cluttering your drive. With iPushPull you can work with files straight from your desktop, with on premise and remote desktop to cloud sharing.

Let’s take Salesforce and Cloudera for example, in fact any cloud data storage is tied to uploads and downloads. In the time it takes you to do so, the information you download might already be outdated. If you’re sending your clients current prices or sales forecasts, you’ll probably need to go through the motions every time, slowing your production. Perhaps you’re using the company FTP server with multiple files on your hard drive, that need to be saved with a different handle on their name, every time. Except when you open the folder, you’re baffled about which file is the latest. The iPushPull platform eliminates all the unnecessary manual tasks, and automates the process. Instead of struggling with multiple copies, you can share your data straight from your desktop.

on premise and remote desktops to cloud sharing

Connecting on premise and remote desktops to cloud sharing – an in-depth look at the service

It’s not secure to attach files to emails, so instead of risking your client data being accessed by outside parties, opt in to secure end-to-end encryption. iPushPull’s powerful user access control system allows you select exactly which part of the document you send to other users or clients. More specifically, you can select one or multiple cells to be accessed by particular users. Parts of a spreadsheet can even be invisible and there’s a handy read-only choice too. Extensive control from the comfort of your desktop has never been easier.

Remove technical barriers from your day, by sharing this system with clients as there is no integration required from client side, desktop sharing is easily available from their existing in-house system. Plug and play with the secure add-in connecting from MS Excel and other client side applications. Instead of spending days on producing product proof and closing deals, you can now do so in minutes. Through better automation combined with the iPushPull live data page model, real-time results are within reach. So make your data work as hard as you do!

Automated live updates is one of the features most favoured by our users. Now you don’t even have to update your spreadsheets manually in the cloud. Just set up your spreadsheet with the live feature and your clients can receive updates in real-time (per sub-second).

Such a simple, easily integrated solution can bridge the gap between your local data and the cloud. All you need is to download the iPushPull Excel plug-in and you’re good to go. We’ll even throw in real time text alerts and easy to use mobile access, so you can do your work on the go and keep on top of updates wherever you are. Contact our team today for a tailored solution or a free trial of our on premise and remote desktop to cloud sharing platform.

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Effectively Share and Collaborate on Excel Data: iPushPull vs. Dropbox

When it comes to effectively sharing and collaborating on Excel data, one might think that iPushPull works similarly to Dropbox. Both applications incorporate cloud hosting, data sharing, and editing by multiple users straight from desktop applications. The main difference is files. Dropbox is a file sharing service whereas iPushPull is a data and content sharing service. Files have issues with version control, access control, security are are static snapshots in time. Because Dropbox relies on files it does not enable users with real-time functionality, monitoring, or access controls.

DropBox creates multiple versions of the same file when changes to a document are saved at the same time. Valuable time is spend merging changes to make sure that all modifications to a document are correct. Is it an inefficient way to work collaboratively. iPushPull’s unique technology allows multiple users to edit the same content at the same time. By keeping your content up to date and live, all the correct and relevant data is always at your fingertips.

Effectively Share and Collaborate on Excel Data

Share and Collaborate on Excel Data – Cells, not Files

A common problem is that there is lots of data in multiple Excel spreadsheets but only a few cells or ranges of data are of interest. With Dropbox you need to manually collate and update data in spreadsheets which puts you at risk of copy-paste errors. However, with iPushPull, you save time and avoid risk by cutting out the extra work. The iPushPull Excel add-in updates the Excel data automatically from your desktop onto the web in real-time, enabling you to access the relevant information on any device including mobile.

DropBox lacks the ability to effectively share and collaborate on Excel data as it does not possess advanced monitoring features. For every data page you create, iPushPull provides you with a statistics and analytics dashboard. Activity is recorded every time a user pushes or pulls data, giving you centralised control of your information.

Additionally, with iPushPull’s access control settings, there is no need for separate spreadsheets for different users. You are able to allocate different levels of access to individual users or user groups (read-write access, read only access, no access). You can apply these access controls to a whole data page, down to a singular cell of data. 

 Take control of your data today and sign up for free to iPushPull!

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First Look at Microsoft Teams

Earlier this year Microsoft executives were internally pushing for a bid for Slack at about $8 billion (at the time Slack was valued at $3.8 billion). However this was vetoed by none other than Mr Gates and CEO Satya Nadella. They both believed that it was better to build than to buy, and chose to beef up Skype instead. So Microsoft Teams was developed as a “chat-based workspace that’s focused on real-time collaboration”. The first look at Microsoft Teams generated an interesting reaction from their biggest rival, Slack.

Yesterday, on the morning of Microsoft’s launch of Teams, Stewart Butterfield the CEO of Slack took out a defiant and defensive full one page advert in the New York Times (see below).

first look at Microsoft Teams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

….but Slack has good reason to be concerned.

Here is what our first look at Microsoft Teams showed

The overwhelming first impression is the excellent integration with online Office365 (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook etc..). It is very impressive. This will immediately be of interest to enterprise users familiar with the Office ecosystem who hadn’t even considered Slack before. Microsoft 1, Slack 0.

Slack is the fastest growing start up in history because people are fed up with email, especially for collaborative work. In addition, Slack has had extremely strong user growth because the real-time chat effectively becomes a ‘one stop shop’. Slack users can pull information from any integrated 3rd party service, directly into a chat channel without having to open another program. For example, you can pull in Salesforce data while you are having a chat with your sales team or the developer team can have automatic server messages within a chat. This concept of pulling information into Slack from different sources has also helped the recent rise of “Bots”.

However, Microsoft yesterday demonstrated similar capabilities by pulling Twitter messages into Teams, and is looking to build a similar suite of offerings and integrations much like Slack has. iPushPull will be one of them.

We found the UI to be cleaner then Slack, even if it is noticeably slow. Perhaps, because everyone around the world is testing it out for themselves.

Live data in Microsoft Teams

The tabs feature is very cool. For example, you can add an Excel tab to a channel which displays any Excel files that are on Onedrive. You can make changes in desktop or online Excel which, after a refresh, will be viewable on the Teams tab. Great for collaborative working. However, you cannot display live data in Excel on Teams. This is where iPushPull comes into play.

While we work on a full integration for Teams, in the meantime we can integrate a full iPushPull page within Teams using the HTML tab function. Et voila you can get live real-time data on Teams direct from desktop Excel.

first look at Microsoft Teams

Who will win the race from here?

Perhaps Microsoft Teams makes Skype for Business and Yammer redundant. My guess is that ultimately Microsoft want to get everyone using an Office365 account (I couldn’t log-on with an ancient Hotmail account for example) which is why you can’t import your personal Skype contacts (quite annoying). There is a also a much greater scope for richer integrations into Microsoft Teams, compared to Slack’s mainly text-based interface.

It feels like Teams is a superior offering for enterprise users. Slack may well be the contender for the anti-Microsoft crown aimed at non-enterprises, start ups, small business and millennials who did not grow up with Microsoft and use Google Apps for Work instead. Office 365 does have 85 million users versus Slack’s 4 million and this is a great offering from Microsoft to stop ‘pesky upstarts’ biting at their heels. Looks like they have learnt from their mistakes with Yammer.

To see how easy it is to get live data into Excel, Slack and Microsoft Teams, sign up for a free trial of iPushPull today.