![\"Image](\"https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/03/COVID-19-image-1-1200x600.png\")
We know that across the world, non-profit organizations and NGOs are helping with crisis management, coordinating volunteers, and much more. To help non-profits around the world better prepare for unforeseen emergencies, we provide free access to Workplace through our Workplace for Good program, allowing organizations to connect teams and coordinate communication among remote workers or on-the-ground volunteers.
\n“Thanks to Workplace, we are able to deliver real-time, essential updates to our staff on the Covid-19 outbreak,” says Carey Kyer, Lead – Internal Communications at World Health Organization (WHO). “Workplace ‘ticks the box’ on our need to communicate, engage and connect real-time with our colleagues around the world, especially during this public health emergency of international concern.”
\n“Our Covid-19 Workplace group is the second most-followed group at WHO. It’s become an easy-to-access channel for our staff around the world to watch the daily press briefings, staff seminars and to find resources, while providing an open forum for staff to ask questions and receive instant feedback.”
\nOur sympathies go out to all those affected by this outbreak around the world. We hope our technology will be able to help in preventing more people from being exposed to the virus and have an impact on this worldwide crisis.
","frontmatter":{"name":"Workplace","date":"March 27, 2020","title":"Workplace - Using Workplace to stay connected to your workforce during the coronavirus outbreak","description":"Discover Workplace, an online team collaboration tool using Facebook features for work. Communicate within your company through a familiar interface with Workplace by Facebook.","link":"https://www.workplace.com/workplace/blog/keeping-employees-connected-during-an-emergency","price":null,"tags":["Team collaboration"]}}},{"node":{"id":"34c15cef-2722-5835-98c5-39e49a56837e","excerpt":"Image of a man working on a couch. With COVID-19 continuing to impact people and countries around the world, teams everywhere are moving to…","fields":{"slug":"/microsoft-teams/"},"html":"
With COVID-19 continuing to impact people and countries around the world, teams everywhere are moving to remote work. Earlier this week, I posted a letter from Lily Zheng, our colleague in Shanghai, detailing her team’s experience using Microsoft Teams to work from home during the outbreak. Lily’s team is one of many. Here at Microsoft in the Puget Sound, we’re encouraging our teams to work from home as much as possible, as are many organizations in this region. And we expect this trend to continue across the world. At Microsoft, our top priority is the health and safety of employees, customers, partners, and communities. By making Teams available to as many people as possible, we aim to support public health and safety by keeping teams connected while they work apart.
\nAs we have read through your responses to Lily’s letter, it has become clear that there are two big questions on your minds. First, how can people access the free Teams offerings that Lily referenced? Second, what is our plan for avoiding service interruptions during times of increased usage? Below, you’ll find detailed answers to both. And over the next few days we’ll be sharing more tips, updates, and information related to remote work here. So check back often.
\nMaking Teams available for everyone\nTeams is a part of Office 365. If your organization is licensed for Office 365, you already have it. But we want to make sure everyone has access to it during this time. Here are some simple ways to get Teams right away.
\nIf you want to get started with Teams, we can get you up and running right away.
\nThe self-service links above work great for individuals, but if you’re an IT professional who wants to roll out Teams centrally, here’s what to do.
\nIf you work for a business that isn’t currently licensed for Teams, we’ve got you covered with a free Office 365 E1 offer for six months. Contact your Microsoft partner or sales representative to get started today. (Note: the same offer is available in the Government Cloud, but not available in GCC High and the Department of Defense.)\nIf you work in education and want to set up teachers, students, and administrators on Teams, use Office 365 A1. This free version of Office 365 is available to all educational institutions. Sign up by following this link.
\nYou and your team depend on our tools to stay connected and get work done. We take that responsibility seriously, and we have a plan in place to make sure services stay up and running during impactful events like this. Our business continuity plan anticipates three types of impacts to the core aspects of the service:
\nActive/Active design: In Microsoft 365, we are driving towards having all services architected and operated in an active/active design which increases resiliency. This means that there are always multiple instances of a service running that can respond to user requests and that they are hosted in geographically dispersed datacenters. All user traffic comes in through the Microsoft Front Door service and is automatically routed to the optimally located instance of the service and around any service failures to prevent or reduce impact to our customers.
\nReduce incident scope: We seek to avoid incidents in the first place, but when they do happen, we strive to limit the scope of all incidents by having multiple instances of each service partitioned off from each other. In addition, we’re continuously driving improvements in monitoring through automation, enabling faster incident detection and response.
\nFault isolation: Just as the services are designed and operated in an active/active fashion and are partitioned off from each other to prevent a failure in one from affecting another, the code base of the service is developed using similar partitioning principles called fault isolation. Fault isolation measures are incremental protections made within the code base itself. These measures help prevent an issue in one area from cascading into other areas of operation. You can read more about how we do this, along with all the details of our service continuity plan, in this document.
\nAdjusting to remote work can be a challenge. We get it, and we are here to provide the tools, tips, and information you need to help you and your team meet that challenge. We’re inspired by the agility and ingenuity that impacted schools, hospitals, and businesses have shown throughout COVID-19, and we are committed to helping organizations everywhere stay connected and productive during this difficult time.
","frontmatter":{"name":"Microsoft Teams","date":"March 27, 2020","title":"Microsoft Teams - Our commitment to customers during COVID-19!","description":"Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork in Office 365. Jump in and experience how teams can achieve more together when all their chats, meetings, files and apps live in a single workspace.","link":"https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/05/our-commitment-to-customers-during-covid-19/","price":null,"tags":["Remote","Team collaboration"]}}},{"node":{"id":"bc890e07-26ca-5dda-8a69-6fb2b06a90cc","excerpt":"As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread around the world, our uncompromising priorities at monday.com remain the success of…","fields":{"slug":"/monday/"},"html":"Teams throughout the world are adapting to a new normal: working remotely. And with colleagues distributed far and wide, teamwork is more important than ever. That’s why we’ve made some changes to our Slack for Nonprofits program.
\nNow nonprofit organizations of any size are eligible to receive three months of our Standard or Plus plan for their workspace, completely free of charge. With a more powerful, secure version of Slack, you can connect your teams and improve everyone’s productivity.
","frontmatter":{"name":"Slack","date":"March 27, 2020","title":"Slack - Nonprofits Get paid Slack plans for free","description":"Slack is where work flows. It's where the people you need, the information you share, and the tools you use come together to get things done.","link":"https://slackhq.com/nonprofits-offer-paid-slack-plans-free","price":null,"tags":["Team collaboration"]}}},{"node":{"id":"c65b1942-1de1-5635-a28e-99f94a2101d3","excerpt":"If you and your team are working from home to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, Quip can help. Get Quip for free with unlimited users…","fields":{"slug":"/quip-work-from-home-with-quip-for-free/"},"html":"If you and your team are working from home to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, Quip can help.
\nGet Quip for free with unlimited users and storage\n
","frontmatter":{"name":"Quip","date":"March 27, 2020","title":"Quip - Work from home with Quip for free.","description":"Quip combines documents, spreadsheets, and chat, so distributed teams can work together effectively. Even if you aren’t in the same place, you can stay on the same page. Learn how Quip can help you work from home in this helpful video.","link":"https://quip.com/work-from-home","price":null,"tags":["Team collaboration"]}}},{"node":{"id":"7bca4ac2-c0a1-5454-bf15-8414b2dfaae6","excerpt":"Starting today, small teams can use Atlassian Cloud products at no charge, in addition to our existing free offerings for teams of all sizes…","fields":{"slug":"/were-making-our-remote-friendly-software-products-available-for-free/"},"html":"At Atlassian, we believe that all organisations deserve access to best-in-class tools that unleash their teams’ potential. That’s why we’re excited to announce that starting this week, our flagship cloud products are now available for free to teams of up to ten people. This is not a time-bound offer. Rather, it’s our full commitment to make our products more easily accessible to more teams throughout the world, full stop.
\nStarting today, teams can get cloud-based editions of Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Core at no charge. This adds to the existing free offerings already in place for Trello, Bitbucket, and Opsgenie, which give all types of teams a set of great capabilities for collaboration. These products can be accessed starting today at www.atlassian.com/free.
","frontmatter":{"name":"Atlassian Cloud","date":"March 27, 2020","title":"We’re making our remote-friendly software products available for free","description":"Accelerate and scale the full potential of every team’s work with Atlassian enterprise cloud solutions","link":"https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/atlassian-cloud-remote-friendly-tools-free-small-teams","price":"","tags":["Tech","Team collaboration"]}}}]}},"pageContext":{"tag":"Team collaboration"}}}