Steve Galloway - Comstat | Ruthin, North Wales

Office 365 Password Expiration Policy

by Steve Galloway | Oct 23, 2018

This topic applies to Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Business Essentials or Office 365 Business Premium.

User passwords expire on a regular basis in Office 365. Global and delegated admins can make the user’s password expire after a certain number of days or set the password to never expire. Admins can also change the number of days before users are notified of password expiration.

Sign in to Office 365 with your work or school account.
Go to the Office 365 admin center.
Go to Service settings > Passwords.
If you don’t want users to have to change passwords, select Passwords never expire. If you select this option, users won’t get any reminders anymore to change their passwords.
If you want user passwords to expire, type the number of days before the password should expire. Choose a number of days from 14 to 730.
Type the number of days before users are notified that their password will expire, and then click Save. Choose a number of days from 1 to 30.

See Microsoft Office 365 Support page

Pay an invoice sent from PayPal

by Steve Galloway | Aug 20, 2017

How to Pay

We send invoices to customers using PayPal. You can settle your account using:

PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, American Express
direct bank transfer

Settling by credit/debit card does not require a PayPal account. Existing PayPal users can settle via their usual facility. We encourage customers to settle via PayPal:

Instant email receipt on successful completion
No buyer transaction processing charges
PayPal does not distribute card information to payees
Avoid repeat billing during cheque/BACS clearing times
Reduce paper use and postage costs

Click the boxes open below to find out more.

How does it work?

When we send you an invoice for services rendered, you will receive an email from PayPal. PayPal’s email notification advises brief details about the transaction and that there is a formal invoice which you can click open. The invoice allows you to print a hard copy for your own records, and/or pay your invoice. You can see examples of PayPal’s email notifications and invoices in the next sections. When paying using our PayPal facility, you are instantly advised of successful payment, and ComStat is instantly advised of settlement.

If you want to pay by direct bank transfer, you can find our bank account information in PayPal’s email notification. Please note it can take up to 10 business days for us to identify payments depending on the electronic system you use. If it is important for us to know about an electronic payment, for example because of an imminent renewal, please be sure to advise us when you make the payment if you are not using PayPal.

Email notification

When we send you an invoice your email notification will be sent to you from our facility at PayPal. The notification informs you that an invoice is available. Full invoice information is recorded in a document which PayPal keeps online. To view your invoice, click the “View and Pay Invoice” button in your notification. If you only see text in your email, this is probably because your email client is blocking images. If so, use the tools in your email client to display graphics and images for this email. With graphics enabled, your email will look like this, although PayPal may amend layout from time to time:

Viewing and printing invoices

Your invoice provides full information about the services we have charged you for. Also, you will find a button for printing your invoice, and for paying your invoice if you want to settle via PayPal’s secure system. You do not need to be a PayPal member to pay using a credit or debit card. Usually, the print button is at the bottom of the invoice, although PayPal may be change this from time to time. If you only see text in your email, and you do not see icons for the credit cards or payment buttons, this may be because your web browser is blocking images. If so, use the tools in your web browser to display graphics and images for this invoice. With graphics enabled, your email will look like the example below, although PayPal may amend their layout from time to time:

Paying invoices

If you want to pay the invoice by debit/credit card, you will find a “pay now” button at the top and bottom of the invoice. If you are not a PayPal member, you can still pay by debit or credit card. Just follow PayPal’s guidance.

Lastly, if you want to pay by direct bank transfer, you can print your invoice and then use the banking information provided in the email notification to make payment. Remember, depending on the electronic system you use, it can take up to ten days before our offices know that there are cleared funds.

Lost or replacement invoices

We keep comprehensive records telling us when emails were sent so we can point you to dates to find the notifications and reminders in your inbox. Also, we maintain a secure Cloud-based folder which is available to you which contains reports and invoicing histories about the work we do for you. To connect to this service, please contact us.

Using Office 365 Support

by Steve Galloway | Oct 21, 2016

Office 365 help series – Using Office 365 Support

Getting help with Office 365

Before contacting Office 365 Support:

login to Office 365 admin to check for known Office 365 issues – see section 3 below
check your computer network cables or wireless connections are connected and operational
reboot your router and check if your ISP is dealing with network issues that might be affecting you
ISPs can throttle email for business users who subscribe to residential services – check status with your ISP
take screen shots to fully illustrate your issue
document circumstances/symptoms, noting recent installations, updates, or operating system changes

Do not contact Microsoft until you have checked these details. Microsoft may not be able to help you until you verify these points first. Also, Microsoft will not be able to help with problems caused by third party applications, operating systems, or hardware.

Exchange email often poses special support problems. If in doubt, contact ComStat.uk for help. Premium clients should use their dedicated number for accelerated support.

Toggle through the sections below to find out more about the Office 365 Support dashboard.

1. Login to Office 365 Admin

To open a support ticket for Exchange email, Skype for Business, Sharepoint, Sway, and other utilities:

login to https://portal.office.com
pull down the tile menu
click open the admin tile:

2. Opening Support Dashboard

From the Office 365 dashboard – see screen shot below – you can preview existing Office 365 issues under management and you can click open support or new service request to register new help requests. Also, you can use the dashboard to monitor existing support tickets.

3. Selecting Support Option

Before choosing which kind of ticket you need to post, be sure to check the status of the service you are querying. In the example below, Skype for Business functionality is limited. In this case, if you have an issue with Skype you should click open the service which is flagged to find out if service degradation might be the cause of your problem and when the target date for restoration of service is planned.

Outlook, Sharepoint, and Harmon.ie

by Steve Galloway | Mar 31, 2016

Office 365 help series – Outlook, Sharepoint, and Harmon.ie

1. About Harmon.ie

Emails are increasingly used as documents of record for project management, task management, and work orders. Emails are stored separately from other kinds of documents, however, and are difficult to search and manage as users’ and organizations’ email volumes grow. These videos here explain how modern tools like Harmon.ie combine emails with other document types in a unified location to help individual users and teams access email and documents together. The last section demonstrates Harmon.ie’s features.

2. Connect to Harmon.ie

Harmon.ie is a third party tool that runs in Outlook desktop to help users distribute files to Sharepoint and OneDrive within the Outlook Desktop. Using Harmon.ie, users can:

navigate Office 365 Sharepoint sites
navigate Onedrive
find files
link files to emails
upload files, and download files.

This save users having to navigate their Office 365 portal to perform these tasks. Watch this video to learn how to link Harmon.ie to a Sharepoint site. You can find your Sharepoint site in your site settings.

Finding Onedrive/Sharepoint Content

Once Harmon.ie is added to Outlook for Desktop you add a SharePoint “site” to Harmon.ie to find manage files saved in OneDrive or SharePoint. Most small business users rely on OneDrive to store their documents. OneDrive is an app which sits within Sharepoint, so users add their Office 365 Sharepoint site to Outlook, which in turn includes their OneDrive location.

Here is a an overview of Harmon.ie desktop for Outlook. For more detail, click here.

Connect Outlook Desktop to Office 365

by Steve Galloway | Mar 27, 2016

Office 365 help series – Outlook for Desktop

Outlook for Desktop

This video below explains how to connect desktop versions of Outlook to Office 365’s Exchange Online email service. Business Premium and Enterprise users can download the Office 2016 App suite from the Office 365 portal.

For guidance on using the browser based web app, Outlook Web App (OWA), click here.

This tutorial uses Outlook 2016 for desktop. The method is the same for Outlook 2013 and 2010, although navigating to Outlook’s settings might differ from one version to another.

Establishing an Outlook email account, or “profile”, will also connect you to other services like Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks. Most of the features available in Outlook for desktop are available in Outlook Web Access (OWA). The advantage of using Outlook for Desktop are:

more tools for composition and editing
local copies of email, calendars, and tasks
tools for connecting to local file stores using Outlook’s desktop
tools for connecting to OneDrive and Sharepoint

OWA is still an important feature. For instance, use OWA settings to change passwords.

Click on the “best practice” video tutorial below to find out how to connect workstations and laptops to Office 365, GMail, and other tasks.

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