Software Platform Vs. Application: Understanding the Differences

Over the past few years, we have seen a rapid leap in the use of the term software platform. All kinds of software applications came to be called platforms but the fact is that the term platform has an entirely different meaning that distinguishes it from software applications. A platform allows software applications to function on it so that the end-users can use them. It is very much necessary to distinguish both terms in order to make it easier to answer relevant questions like how to decide which platform should be used for software development services.

What is a Software Platform?

A platform refers to any hardware or software where an application or service is hosted. A software platform is an environment designed to write and run applications. It consists of many software tools like GUI builders, compilers, and utilities. Software platforms are designed to enable applications to function together without interruptions or integrations. It can also support different programming languages, engines, and web services.  

A software platform lies between the hardware of a system and every other application on the system. It consists of APIs and services that can be integrated in an unrestricted manner to build an unlimited number of applications. The OS (operating system) in a desktop or a mobile is an example of a software platform, which is not only responsible for the functioning of the in-built apps but also responsible for other third-party applications like Instagram, Google services, Spotify, etc. Software platforms are designed for scaling up and operating different programs based on business requirements. Businesses that purchase a software platform also have the option to customize the platform that needs certain development on the existing framework. In short, a platform is an infrastructure for applications to run.   

What is a Software Application?

A software application, also known as an application program, is designed to fulfill or run a specific task either for an end-user or for another application. A software application can be a single or a bunch of programs and it normally uses the operating system of a computer or the native programs to function. It is impossible for any user to perform any task without a software application. Moreover, a software application interacts directly with the user. 

Software Platform v/s Application  

  • A software application is a set of programs used to perform a specific task on a computer or mobile while a software platform is a kind of operating system that supports in-built as well as third-party apps.  
  • A software application converts data into information. On the other hand, a software platform serves as an environment for hosting applications.   
  • A software application is a combination of computer programs, related configuration files, documentation, etc. functioning together. On the other hand, a software platform includes a hardware device and operating system on which an application, program, or operates.   
  • Some examples of software applications include Google Chrome, skype, slack, WhatsApp, MS Word, etc. Some examples of software platforms include IMB I, Microsoft’s .NET framework, and SUN’s Java.   

Wrap Up  

You can see a clear difference between a software application and a platform from the basic characteristics, yet many still get confused between a software application and a platform, not in terms of their functioning but when it comes to addressing each term. This article explains the differences between a software application and a software platform in the simplest way.   

What Is Yammer? How Can Businesses Leverage It?

What Is Yammer In Office365?

Yammer is an enterprise social networking service made use of for communication within an organization. Yammer was introduced to the world by Geni to help its employees connect and collaborate across their enterprise.

The efficiency of Yammer led to its launch in September 2008 and was later acquired by Microsoft in 2012. Yammer was rolled into Microsoft’s Office Suite 365 in 2014.

When Should Businesses Opt For Yammer?

The constant evolution of the workforce and business workflows tend to be a key reason for the increasing adoption of Microsoft Yammer. Let us walk through the major factors that resonate to the adoption of Yammer for organizations:

  • Increased Speeds – Yammer can be used by businesses that require speedy communications.
  • Larger Audience – Yammer is best-suited for organization-wide communication as well as cross-departmental collaboration.
  • Easy Information Share – Information that is once shared and uploaded can be easily accessed and shared.
  • Simple Knowledge Transfer – If your business requires frequent tagging topics across departments, and newly added users should be able to find what they require easily, Yammer is the best solution.

Why Should Businesses Give Yammer A Try?

Sharing information securely and openly encourages employees to get access to the source at a rapid pace, cutting down on email, etc is undoubtedly a major advantage that businesses can leverage out of Yammer. In a nutshell, Yammer enables effective collaboration within the work space.

Yammer enables communication with external sources such as customers, vendors, partners, as well as other non-employees to to communicate with your company by allowing businesses to create external networks.

The major reasons why enterprises should give Yammer a try are as follows:

Organic Knowledge Repository

Enterprises will require teamwork and teams require a medium to share ideas. It is difficult if these groups have to physically get together every single time a day for discussions, especially for large multiple groups within an organization.

For instance, consider an HR Benefits group. Such a cross-functional cloud group can effectively be a medium for people or members to discuss on various requirements and concerns. Unlike within an email inbox, the messages are unlikely to be deleted or lost, which is yet another advantage.

External Collaboration

In addition to having internal interactions within groups, Yammer allows employees to open up a dialogue window to communicate with external sources as well. Yammer has been successful in extending the organic knowledge management feature with external clients, vendors, and even contractors, for that matter.

Seamless Workflow

The global mobile workforce that grew by 38.8% in 2016 is forecasted to grow to 1.87 billion people by 2022. The reason for this growth has been the increasing trend of employees moving to portable tablets, and other devices such as wearables, ultrabooks, and other primary work devices.

Yammer’s mobile application allows employees to stay up-to-date and to derive critical insights in real-time.

Use Cases Of Yammer

The ease with which Yammer can be set up and its features that add value to the organization make it a need for businesses. Let us walk through the major ways by which Yammer adds value to businesses:

Collaborate Remotely Across Geographies

Organizations that have multiple offices at various locations find it easy to collaborate with Yammer across multiple geographies. Department heads can now answer to queries spontaneously without any delay. Businesses that require teams to work remotely on a common task especially when the multiple offices are not situated in physical proximity, Yammer creates a common workspace to collaborate effectively.

Employees can now stay connected, bonded, and updated as well. Yammer is perfect for targeted collaboration where announcements can be shared, accomplishments are notified, and connecting with coworkers is made easier. Yammer is highly effective even for enterprises with a large number of participants.

Enhanced Employee Informal Training

Businesses leverage the advantage of acquiring niche industry knowledge as they continuously read updates via Yammer. Even if employees might be on autopilot, Yammer encourages them to learn and stay updated.

Additionally, groups of individuals who are engaged in similar activities such as analytics, project management, training, customer service, leadership activities, etc, but not involved in a common organizational unit, can still share and learn on a common topic across geographies and organizational structures.

Platform To Showcase Internal Achievement And Encourage Improvement

Sales acceleration, product improvement, service efficiency, are all internal achievements that require appreciation. Departmental innovations as well as achievements, when posted as appreciation boosts employee confidence and improves their efficiency in turn.

Yammer can also be used by businesses as a tool to collect employee thoughts transparently and openly. With the evolution of Yammer, businesses no longer need to purchase a one-off product or service for updating innovations and achievements. A dedicated group on Yammer can do the job better.

An Enterprise-Wide Communication That Fosters Transparency

Yammer perfectly suits the purpose of enterprise-wide communication. Business leaders can now post updates, feedback, announcements, etc more transparently. Yammer provides businesses with an easy-to-use interface with which employees can respond to feedback either by text or via files such as photos and other documents.

The Microsoft Yammer open chat tool fosters honesty, openness, as well as transparency in an organization. Businesses can suggest department heads to make use of Yammer to create protocols for posting achievements and updates. It also ensures the management can oversee the activities of the workforce and can suggest improvements, correct workflows, etc and can thus improve productivity.

Omnidirectional Collaborations Of Any Type

Yammer works for any type of communication. With Yammer, businesses have increasingly shifted from traditional top-down communications to omnidirectional communicational and let all participants have a say.

A Social Introductory Space For Collaborative Work

Businesses that have been used to traditional workflows may find it difficult to shift spontaneously from traditional modes of working to advanced, workstream collaboration. Microsoft Yammer provides businesses that are a little behind the workforce adoption curve with an easy entry. The social collaboration offered by Yammer lets businesses adopt it easily without any hassle.

With Microsoft Yammer, more and more businesses have realized that changing their processes and workflows from traditional to Microsoft Teams is far better than working in silos.

Effective Communication For Large Departments

Employees within the same organizational structure must collaborate effectively. This will create a platform that enables different types of departments to have their own space.  Individual employee level contributors can also share information of a specific nature related to the organization’s objectives with their leaders easily. Yammer, thus maintains the departmental culture and also fosters unity and is not affected by departmental size.

Effective Channel For Crowd-sourcing Feedback And Obtaining Responses

Microsoft Yammer encourages employee groups to disseminate important information. Creating specific groups around channels that align with topics involved in enterprises such as leadership groups, announcements, promotions, etc can sustain corporate initiatives for positive outcomes.

Future Of The Digital World: How Yammer Will Transform The Workforce

It is forecasted that by the year 2025, 70% of the workforce will be millennial. The ability to access their smart devices instantly drives their affinity towards applications such as Yammer. Be it their personal or work life, the growing number of employees are adopting Yammer and this trend drives workforce digital transformation increasingly within businesses as well.

If you want to learn how Yammer can transform your workforce with its collaboration tools to improve communication and productivity, drop us a call and talk to our experts!

The Complete Microsoft Technology Stack For Businesses

Microsoft Technology Stack

Microsoft is a technology giant that imparts services to businesses, beginners, and even seasoned digital veterans to develop and deploy enterprise projects. Once a business has decided on an application, the next biggest thing on the list is determining a tech stack. 

In this ever-changing digital era of technological breakthroughs, the Microsoft technology stack has remained popular, especially for large enterprise projects.  Most enterprise-grade applications trust Microsoft’s technology stack for its dependable performance. The global community support of Microsoft technology stack has led to a solid foundation for enormous application development projects. 

Microsoft Technology Stack – The Best Of Both Worlds

Microsoft technology stack is a powerhouse that plays a tremendously huge role in shaping benchmarked applications and software products that are developed by tech-breathing developers and businesses!

Microsoft has well-adapted to the current technology changes and trends. Microsoft has proven its ability to work with modern frameworks and languages. Additionally, taking into account its experience in the development industry over the decades, Microsoft can be considered the best of both worlds. 

Unique Value Offered To Businesses

The group of products Microsoft offers is enormous. It consists of a wide array of platforms and frameworks. Let us walk you through some of the key technologies of the Microsoft Stack that is crucial for developers as well as businesses to learn about.

The .NET Framework

What is .NET Framework

The .NET framework is a software development framework to create both form-based and web-based applications. Application development with Microsoft .NET framework involves web applications, web services, Windows mobile and desktop applications, web and windows services, as well as console applications. 

What is .Net Used For?

Microsoft’s .NET framework can be used to build different types of applications that include web, console, mobile as well as windows-based applications. 

The core of the .NET framework has been made available under an open-source license and can be used on all operating systems as well. Microsoft .NET has emerged as the leading and proven front-end application development framework. The ASP.NET development services have gained high levels of popularity by its capability to make use of the framework in any way by addressing various form factors as well as User Interfaces. 

The ability of this framework to create robust and complex applications with ease inspires developers to code without tremendous effort. The ability of the .NET framework to combine native development and managed code makes it stay out-of-the-box and in demand.

The .NET framework consists of a multitude of ready-to-use components and is readily accessible through popular APIs utilized by developers globally. Making itself available even on non-windows systems, .NET API is consistent, very well-documented, and utilized by millions. 

The feature-rich .NET framework has a knowledge base available via official Microsoft documentation, StackOverflow, MSDN, and many other blogs and forums. 

MS SQL

What Is MS SQL?

SQL Server is Microsoft’s relational database management system that provides reliable server security using encryption. A standard set of procedures of the MS SQL makes the processes of fetching, recovering and restoring of data easily.

What Is MS SQL Used For?

MS SQL is used to handle various crucial processes such as data fetching, restoration, data recovery, storage and so on. The easy to install procedure of MS SQL makes the installation process simple to decipher, learn, and perform.  

Organizations vary in their need for databases. Some may require large volumes of data to be stored and some require to handle complex data. The Microsoft SQL Server comes in varying editions. Each edition of Microsoft SQL has its specific pricing plan and features. Be it a small, medium or large, every business can leverage benefits from MS SQL by choosing the edition tailor-fit for your business model.

Microsoft Office 365

What Is Office 365?

Microsoft Office 365 is a (SaaS) solution that is adopted by businesses to access a suite of Microsoft services that includes applications such as Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and other enterprise-scale Microsoft Office applications. 

What Is MS Office 365 Suite Used For?

MS Office 365 suite can be utilized efficiently especially for businesses that have employees working in multiple remote locations. The Microsoft Office 365 suite provides desktop facilities that let businesses use their cloud-based applications more conveniently. 

Additionally, for the workforce to collaborate and work together on various tasks, real-time updates are a key feature of the MS Office 365 suite. This avoids redundant copies.

The advantage of being flexible enough to scale your business by using Office 365, custom solutions can be created. This avoids the need to adopt new tools or change to a new ecosystem entirely. Flexibility and scalability features offered by Microsoft Office have prompted organizations to adopt cloud-based models.

The technique of versioning is involved which provides the functionality to go back to an older version whenever required. 

Shared calendars, team chat, etc are other benefits. The latest versions are made readily available, thus avoiding compatibility issues with all team members using the same version. Since MS Office 365 operates on the cloud, it helps in substantially saving costs by eliminating the need for capital and energy spends. 

The built-in security features offered by MS Office 365 include (ATA) Advanced Threat Analytics that makes use of machine learning techniques, prevention of any data losses, message encryption, management of mobile devices, etc. 

Microsoft SharePoint Framework

What Is SharePoint?

The SharePoint framework is a web-based collaborative platform that fully supports client-side as well as server-side development. This framework supports a page-and-part model that offers easy integration and with the support of Microsoft Graph for open source tooling. The SharePoint framework enables usage of the same technology and tools for building responsive and mobile-ready applications.

What Is SharePoint Used For?

Microsoft Sharepoint lets developers follow a structured approach to develop modern applications that are end-to-end and not dependent on .NET or beyond. This framework is made available to the existing sites. 

It also offers the ability to host client-side web parts that are developed within the new Sharepoint framework with existing pages. This allows for extended support of new open-source opportunities with the existing tools and solutions. Its iterative experiences in build-testing with Gulp and the scaffolding of projects with Yeoman make it a powerful development framework. 

The new SharePoint page structure allows developers with varying skills to develop mobile-ready and responsive applications right from day one. SharePoint has become the most preferred collaboration platform to build the next generation of solutions. 

Microsoft Azure Stack

What Is Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a set of cloud services that allow users to build, test, deploy, and manage applications and services on a global network, via Microsoft-managed data centers. Azure is a consistent cloud platform where you can run applications in an on-premises environment. 

What Is Azure Used For

Microsoft Azure provides hybrid cloud use cases for on-premise applications such as financial reporting, global audits, expense reporting and so on. 

Microsoft Azure offers services, containers, microservice and serverless architectures that can be utilized either to build new applications or to update existing ones. DevOps processes can be consistently made use of across the Microsoft Azure platform in the cloud as well as Azure Stack on-premises. This is performed for the rapid modernization of mission-critical applications.

With the Azure stack architecture, it lets you build Azure services for remote locations as well. These include services with intermittent connectivity and even while it is disconnected from the Internet. For this, hybrid solutions are created to process data locally in the Azure stack and then gathered in Azure for continued processing and analytics. 

Microsoft Azure provides the ability to be installed on-premises and hence regulatory requirements for deploying cloud applications on-premises without having to change code, are met easily. 

It also provides an integrated delivery experience that runs quickly with its integrated systems from the Azure Stack. The Stack can be integrated easily into the data center via the Nagios extension or the System Center Operations Manager Management Pack.

Microsoft Visual Studio Platform

What Is Visual Studio?

Microsoft Visual Studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which is an efficient platform for developers to code, debug, and test their applications with great accuracy. 

Microsoft Visual Studio can perform database development with SQL Server Data Tools to coding Android and iPad applications using Xamarin. Microsoft Visual Studio offers a consistent development experience with a great user interface. Microsoft Visual Studio also avoids the complexities involved in a distributed cloud infrastructure. 

What Is Visual Studio Used For?

Microsoft Visual Studio is used to develop computer programs, websites, web applications, web services, and mobile applications. 

Visual Studio as an ideal IDE is widely used to develop GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces), web console, and mobile applications along with cloud and web services. Creating managed as well as native code is a simple task with Visual Studio.

Visual Studio makes use of various platforms of Microsoft application development software such as Windows API, SilverLight, Windows Store, and so on. 

Visual Studio is not a language-specific IDE. Hence, it is used to code in 36 different programming languages and is available for Windows as well as Mac OS.

Microsoft Visual Studio makes itself available in three different editions. They are the Community Edition which is a free version for developing free, paid, .NET, and web applications. The Professional Edition of Microsoft Visual Studio is the commercial edition that supports XML and XSLT editing and also includes tools such as Server Explorer. It also supports the integration of Microsoft SQL Server. The third edition is the Enterprise Edition which is an integrated end-to-end solution to develop highly scalable and quality software solutions. 

Web API Framework

What Is Web API?

Microsoft Web API is an easy-to-use web development framework that provides information from the server which works on protocols such as HTTP, WebSockets, SSL, JSON, and XML, and can be invoked by the mobile, desktop or web applications. 

Utility Of Microsoft Web API

The Web API is used as an effective tool to push data to the server which is then processed by the server code or can be saved in any of the persistent layers. 

The Web API developed can be utilized by the Interface application to fetch information that needs to be portrayed to the users. Additionally, Web API does not pose any limitations to use just a single interface or technology for interacting with its users.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

What Is Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Microsoft’s Customer Relationship Management system is a category of integrated data-driven software solutions. This software package streamlines the marketing, sales, and customer service domains efficiently.  

What Is Microsoft Dynamics CRM Used For?

Microsoft CRM applications can be used to meet the various requirements of a specific business. In addition to being extensible and scalable, Microsoft Dynamics CRM software helps enterprises manage their operations, improves growth, streamlines workflows and increases efficiency and productivity of the workforce significantly.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

What Is WCF?

The WCF is a secure service used to process business transactions. It is designed as a manageable approach in being able to create web services as well as web service clients.

What Is WCF Used For?

The WCF framework is used for building service-oriented applications. This is performed by sending information in the form of synchronous and asynchronous messages from one service endpoint to another. The WCF complies with modern industry standards for Web service interoperability. 

Another use case of WCF involves the support of publishing service metadata in formats such as WSDL, XML schema as well as the WS policy standards over the HTTP, HTTPS, or the Web service metadata exchange standard. 

It ensures security by encrypting messages via authentication via standards such as WS-SecureConversation or SSL. 

To learn how technology giants implement Microsoft technology stack for positive business outcomes, call our strategists right away! 

ASP.NET And Web Forms

What Is ASP.NET?

Being an open-source server-side framework for developing web applications, ASP.NET is developed by Microsoft for the development of dynamic web applications, and services. The successor to Microsoft’s ASP or Active Server Pages technology, ASP.NET allows coders to build ASP.NET applications that use any .NET supported language as it is built on Common Language Runtime or CLR.

What Is ASP.NET Used For?

ASP.NET is used to develop dynamic web pages. ASP.NET has an extension framework called the SOAP that permits ASP.NET elements or components to process SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) messages.

The successor of ASP.NET is termed as ASP.NET Core framework, which is a re-implementation of the modular web framework in conjunction with some of the other frameworks such as the Entity Framework and MVC. ASP.NET Core uses an open-source .NET compiler platform, known as Roslyn and is also cross-platform as well.

What Is ASP.NET Web Forms?

 WebForms is a web application framework supported by Microsoft technology to be written in any programming language that supports the CLR (Common Language Runtime). 

What Is Web Forms Used For?

WebForms are formed from server controls, which are the building blocks that act as reusable components to render HTML markup and to respond to events. The 2 basic methodologies of Web Forms include a website format and the other a web application format.

Microsoft lets a model named the code-behind model to deal with dynamic program code which is automatic in Visual Studio as well as in other APIs as well. WebForms can be used to build applications that can involve separate presentation logic and content. 

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 

What Is WPF?

The WPF is a graphical subsystem of Microsoft. Also known as Avalon that was first released as part of the .NET framework version 3.0, it is a consistent programming model to develop applications. The user interface stands separated from the business logic with WPF.

What Is WPF Used For?

The Windows Presentation Foundation is used to render user interfaces in Windows-based apps. WPF makes use of an XML-based language, known as XAML, for linking different interface elements.

The WPF applications that are deployed as standalone applications unify various elements such as 2D, 3D rendering, documents, runtime animation, typography, and so on. These elements are then linked depending on various events and data binding features. The characteristic utility of WPF includes Direct3D used to render graphics and desktop items such as windows, Data Binding, TemplatesImaging, Animations, Media Services, Effects, etc.

What Is Microsoft Win Forms?

Microsoft Window Forms is a GUI class library that helps in writing applications for desktop, tablets, and so on. It is an event-driven application that provides easy access to native Windows UI common controls.

What Is Microsoft WinForms Used For?

Microsoft Window Forms are used to display data and handle data inputs. It can also be used to deploy applications securely and easily.

That’s A Lot! How Do You Know What You Need?

It’s best to leave that part to the software developers as they are the ones dealing with the tech stack on a daily basis and the right technologies should be selected based on the requirement.


Is Microsoft Office 365 Really Worth It?

No one can deny the fact that Microsoft revolutionized personal and enterprise software markets from the beginning of time since computers became mainstream in personal and business applications. One of the best product offerings Microsoft had and which helped it to become such a massive influence in the everyday life of the common man was Microsoft office products.

If you look at the history of MS office products, it has been in existence for about 25 years now! For Millenials, it is like their entire life knowing and experiencing this product from its inception to each stage of its growth. Starting from the first version that ran in MS-DOS, now it has evolved into Office 365. Let’s look at the evolution and understand why Office 365 is still the best out there. 

What is Office 365?

Office 365 brings together a variety of Microsoft services like email, excel, powerpoint and productivity tools together into the cloud and provides storage using Microsoft OneDrive. It comes in multiple versions which are home, business, enterprise, government, non-profit and education versions aimed at widening their market focus.

As of April 2019, Microsoft is reported to have a staggering number of 180 million monthly active users for its Office 365 products and the numbers are growing month on month. Microsoft is really upping its game in the cloud business by capturing a large market owned by Google. For example, comparing the entry-level pricing plan, Office 365 wins as compared to Google Suite: ‘Business Essentials’ plan will give you 1TB storage as compared to Google’s 30GB on its ‘Basic’ plan.

What you need to keep in mind is that Google also counts email storage as part of the storage plan. Even though Microsoft 10 introduced Office web apps which enabled users to collaborate from multiple devices and web browsers and even Office 2013 had some cloud sync options, it is important to note that it was Office 365 which truly utilized the power of cloud computing and helped Microsoft win back its share of users which were slowly decreasing due to the popularity of Google cloud products. 

Google cloud introduced the ease of collaborating online way before Microsoft realized its potential. Even though Google captured a lot of early markets with small businesses, Microsoft had an impressive early advantage with the enterprises.

Microsoft was already being used by the enterprises and most of its users were already familiar with the Microsoft way of doing things and they were in their comfort zone. GSuite’s success was validation and Microsoft lost no time in catching up by upgrading their offering by launching updates and products as Microsoft Office 365.

Office 365 became the obvious choice for the enterprises as all they needed to do was update and move to the cloud.

Let’s discuss a few pros of Microsoft Office 365 while we are here. 

What can businesses accomplish using Office 365?

Cloud management of apps

Previously for running Microsoft products, you had to set it up locally or setup data centers on-premise to manage your business for many of the products like Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.

All these are now hosted in multiple Microsoft data centers across the globe which lets you access your apps from anywhere by reducing costs considerably and without the overheads of on-premise installations. 

Digital workplace and easy collaboration

Microsoft offers a lot of important services under a single platform. The offerings are a lot Microsoft Office(in the cloud), Exchange Online(email messaging), SharePoint Online(Collaboration platform), Skype for Business(communication tool), Yammer(enterprise social media), OneDrive(file share repository), PowerBI(insights and online analytics), Microsoft Flow (workflow app), Teams (chat-based workspace), Calendar (scheduler and calendar management) are only a few of them.

All these apps make it easier to collaborate and make work more productive. 

Easy-to-setup subscription service

A subscription service may be an overhead for personal use but it could be a big cost-saver for a business. Rather than paying a huge upfront cost to set up a software and waiting for months and years for an update or bug fixes could be a big bottleneck for your day-to-day operations.

A subscription pricing will distribute a huge cost for a longer period of time making your technology budget more predictable and handy. 

Stays updated all the time

A cloud software managed by Microsoft means that for the end-users, all the updates are available real-time. With the previous version, the users had to wait for the release of the next version to see this change.

The updates for Office 365 are released regularly by Microsoft with new features and security updates which gets updated automatically in the cloud. 

Rich in Security Features

The worry most of the users of Microsoft Office 365 can have is if their data is secure as their data is always stored elsewhere, what if someone breaches it and access their confidential information.

But, the users need not worry. Office 365 is completely safe for your data as Microsoft follows extreme measures for this. The server locations are never disclosed to the public to start with. Other than this Bitlocker, SSL over HTTP and IRM is used for document libraries.

Office 365 will never use your data to send you targeted ads as Gmail does. It efficiently manages your privacy settings and uses multi-factor authentication for passwords. A lot of checks and measures are in place to ensure maximum security for your data. 

If you start looking at the feature list of Office 365, we can go on and on. The biggest competitor of Office  365 is the GSuite. GSuite is most popular with the smaller businesses and most of the enterprises go with Microsoft Office 365.

If you really start looking at the reason behind this, it all boils down to the familiarity of the platform. Enterprises have been in business for a while now and all its employees are familiar with MS Office products which makes it easier to adapt or move to Microsoft Office 365.

If your business or enterprise ever need help with setting up Office 365, you can employ the consulting services of ClaySys. 

Error – Change the mode of display

ClaySys AppForms (All Versions) 1.5


Error Display Mode feature in ClaySys AppForms helps to decide how to notify a user if an error occurs.  Users will be notified about the errors occurred in Rules, SQL/Stored Procedure or in Webservice by user friendly messages defined in the Exception Message section of  the central admin. This feature is available in Security module as a combobox field with four options in Add New User and Edit User window.

Pre Requisites:

  • Select “Exception Message” menu in the central administration.

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  • Enter Exception Code, Message and Comments and Save it as shown below.

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Note: We should use pre defined Exception Codes only.

  • Go to the Security module. Select the desired user who should be notified as per the above defined error messages if an error occurs.
  • Take “Add New User/ Edit User window”. Select the mode of error display from “Error Display Mode” combo box.

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  • Following are the options available:
    • Show and log the error message.
    • Show user friendly message.
    • Show user friendly message and log
    • Flash out the error message.
  1. Show and log the error message: The user will get the default error message with “Log” and “Cancel” option. So if the user selects the “Log” option, the error message will be logged in to the log table and the error window will be disappeared. If the user chooses “Cancel”, the error won’t be logged into the log table.
  2. Show user friendly message: In this mode, the user will be notified with error message which is defined in the central admin. This mode does not have an option to log the message into the log table.
  3. Show user friendly message and log: This option helps to notify the user about the error with the message defined in the central admin and at the same time user can log the error to the log table.
  4. Flash out the error message: In this mode the user will be notified with user defined error message but with no option to Cancel or Log the message.

End user view

  1. Show and log the error message:
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2. Show user friendly message
NewItem403. Show user friendly message and log
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4. Show the error message and hide
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