Microsoft Group Policies Strengths And Weaknesses

What information do people ask you for over and over again?Setting up an online portal gives your audience (either employees, partners or customers) access to information they need, such as support cases, knowledge base articles, community forums, product guides and more.The core functionality of any CRM portal is to expose CRM data to users outside of the CRM system. All portal tools can do this. But the portal you choose will depend on the specific features that are important to you. For example, did you know that not all portal tools are compliant with government regulations. That could be a deal breaker for you.Microsoft Dynamics 365 includes a Portal tool.

If you already use Microsoft Dynamics 365 you can start using it right away. Yes, it is government compliant, but that is not all you need to know.In this post we will do a complete review of the portal tool in Microsoft Dynamics 365 including background, types, configuration, licensing and our conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses.The Background of Dynamics 365 PortalThe Microsoft Dynamics 365 Portal was formerly known as ADX Studio Portal. This tool was acquired by Microsoft in November 2015 and now it is only provided as an add-on subscription for Microsoft Dynamics 365. The old ADX Studio Portal site was an on-premise asp.net web site, which means it could be hosted on a client’s own server. Since Microsoft acquired the technology, following their “Go mobile, go cloud” policy, the portal is now part of Dynamics 365 (online). The portal web site is fully managed by Microsoft and no customized asp.net code can be added to it.

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Also Microsoft Portal can only connect to the CRM instance within the same Office 365 subscription.Dynamics 365 Portal TypesDynamics 365 has five pre-configured Portal solutions. You can start with one of these and then add your own pages and business logic. How to use vrealize log insight.

Customer Portal (Feedback). We use this template to springboard our own customer applications. Customer Self-Service Portal (Feedback, Knowledge Base, Forums, Support, Case Management). Employee Service Portal (Feedback, Knowledge Base, Forums, Support, Case Management, Azure AD authentication). Community Portal (Feedback, Blogs, Forums, Ideas, Knowledge Base, Support, Case Management).

This can be used to foster cooperation among your various audiences/communities. Partner Portal (Feedback, Forums, Partner Pipeline, Case Management, Knowledge Base, Badges, Opportunity Management). We can use this to coordinate with partner sellers and distribute sales opportunities to them. It is designed to be a platform for empowering your partners and giving them the tools they need to close sales.Each portal solution comes with a set of sample pages and templates that fits the corresponding portal audience.

More portal solutions will be added in future releases.To understand the structure easily, you can consider the portal as a “Content Management System” (CMS) site that utilizes Dynamics 365 as the content repository. Ideally all the content and configuration should be stored inside CRM. The web portal only renders them to the outside.Add and Configure Dynamics 365 PortalOnce the portal add-on application is enabled in Dynamics 365, multiple solutions are installed within CRM. The new Portals tab is added to the CRM sitemap.

It includes the entities we can use to configure and manage the portal.When enabling the add-on, only the pre-configured portal you picked will be installed. But you can use the “Manage your solutions” page to install other portal solutions.After the portal site is provisioned, you can go to the portal manage page to add further configurations such as the domain name and SSL certification.

Strengths And Weaknesses Job Interview Examples

Leo is a tech and consumer goods specialist who has covered the crossroads of Wall Street and Silicon Valley since 2012. His wheelhouse includes cloud, IoT, analytics, telecom, and gaming related businesses. Follow him on Twitter for more updates!Shares of Microsoft have slipped 3% since the beginning of the year, compared to a 7% gain for the NASDAQ. Many investors are probably wondering if the stock is becoming stagnant again, as it remained for most of the past decade. Let's dig deeper with a basic SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to decide.Strengths Microsoft's main strengths are easy to see. Over 90% of PCs worldwide run various versions of Windows, while Microsoft Office remains the top productivity software suite in the world with 1.2 billion users.

Image source: Microsoft.Those two pillars of growth will keep generating revenue as long as PCs remain relevant. That's why Microsoft's annual revenue soared from $36.8 billion in 2004 to $86.8 billion last year. During that period, annual earnings jumped from $0.75 to $2.63 per share. That robust growth enabled Microsoft to raise its dividends annually over the past decade.Microsoft's dominance of operating systems and productivity software ties down a large base of enterprise customers, who can't reasonably move all their data to free alternatives like Linux or Google Apps. Since many large businesses can't escape Microsoft's grasp but want more mobility, demand for two-in-one devices like the Surface to replace aging PCs.Weaknesses Microsoft's core weakness is its overexposure to the PC market. Research firm Gartner expects worldwide PC shipments to fall 2.4% annually this year, due to vendors raising prices overseas to offset currency fluctuations. By comparison, global smartphone shipments are expected to rise 3.5% this year to 1.94 billion units - more than six times the number of forecast PC shipments.

Microsoft Group Policies Strengths And Weaknesses Chart

Yet only 2.7% of smartphones worldwide run Windows Phone, according to IDC, compared to 78% for Google Android and 18.3% for Apple 's iOS.Meanwhile, Google is intruding into the PC market with Chrome OS, which runs on its Chromebooks. Chromebooks only accounted for about 1% of the PC market last year, but Gartner expects the budget devices to claim over 4% of the market by 2017. Since Chromebooks offer free productivity software and cross-compatibility with Android apps in a cheap hardware package, they could among students, young professionals, and small to medium-sized businesses.Opportunities In the past, Microsoft relied on periodic upgrades of Windows and Office to generate fresh revenue. But over time, users stuck with 'good enough' versions instead of upgrading.

Today, just 16% of PCs worldwide run Windows 8/8.1. A Forrester Research study in late 2013 found that 28% of surveyed companies were still using Office 2003.To reduce that fragmentation, Microsoft is promoting its 'One Windows' strategy.

Windows 10, which will be offered as a free upgrade to most mainstream Windows 7 and Windows 8 users, could unify all those PCs, tablets, and smartphones under a common OS. The scalability of that OS could leverage Microsoft's strength in PCs to offset its weakness in mobile. Microsoft also moved away from periodic Office upgrades with Office 365, its subscription-based productivity suite in the cloud.

Microsoft Group Policies Weaknesses

The entire cloud business - which includes Office 365, Dynamics CRM, and Azure - represents the backbone of Microsoft's long-term growth strategy. Microsoft's total cloud revenue rose 106% annually last quarter, and had an annual run rate of $6.3 billion.Over the past two years, Microsoft acquired companies like Parature (CRM software), Green Button (cloud computing), Aorato (machine learning), and Datazen (business intelligence and data visualization) to bolster its portfolio of cloud services. It will likely keep growing that business with additional acquisitions in the near future.Threats The biggest long-term threat to Microsoft is Google.

Microsoft Group Policies Strengths And Weaknesses

Since Google relies on advertising revenue, it can constantly launch free alternatives to Microsoft's paid software. Chrome OS and Google Docs are less popular than Windows and Office, but their steady growth in the low-end market has already forced Microsoft to lower its prices.Last year, Microsoft dropped Windows license fees for tablet and smartphone makers and slashed the price of Windows licenses for some laptop makers. However, that aggressive strategy caused Windows OEM Pro and non-Pro revenue to respectively decline 19% and 26% annually last quarter. Microsoft has also been handing out free one-year trials for Office 365 and OneDrive with new Windows tablets and laptops. This strategy is unsustainable in the long run, since Microsoft needs fresh software revenue to survive. That threat also applies to its cloud services, where competition between Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Google, and other companies is.

As a result, Microsoft's cloud-based revenue growth could become less meaningful to its bottom line.The road ahead Microsoft is a company in transition. In the near term, its bottom line will remain under pressure, but it's setting up the foundations for future growth. Windows 10 might reduce OS fragmentation and tether more users to its cloud ecosystem, and it could pave the way to future growth. Ultimately I'd like to see Microsoft widen its defensive moat against Google some more before I consider it to be a worthwhile long-term investment.