Benefits of Microsoft Office 365 in the Forest Management Cloud

Interpine’s Forest Management Cloud Service also includes Microsoft’s Office 365. When managing forests, you have a wide range of documents and information. This can range from GIS to EXCEL, WORD, PDF’s, Photos and more. You need somewhere to store this and link back where possible to your stand records. Microsoft Office 365, ensures your documents and information travel wherever you are; online or offline, on your iPhone, Android tablet or MacBook or Windows PC it does not matter. It also has the benefits of ensuring a copy is always backed up (a major peace of mind in business).

So what are the benefits of moving this to the cloud? If you’re like most small to medium forestry management businesses then chances are you’ve struggled with this issue and with good reason. After all, you’ve got a lot to think about. What is the cloud really going to cost? Will it enable your people to work how and where they want while keeping you in control? How do you know your data is secure? Don’t worry. We hear you!

That’s why we recommend Microsoft Office 365 to work seamlessly with our Forest Management Cloud Solution. Office 365 is a cloud-based service hosted by Microsoft that brings together familiar Microsoft Office desktop applications with business-class email, shared calendars, instant messaging (IM), video conferencing, and file sharing. With Office 365, you’ll receive secure, enterprise-grade tools for a predictable monthly cost and no upfront infrastructure investments. Get your work done faster from virtually anywhere, working with the Office you already know!

“Seamlessly link your forest management staff around NZ with email, document storage and more, with little IT investment”

Figure 1 Make your documents available in the cloud (Office 365 website view above left) and keep a sync’d offline copy on your PC (As sync’d to your own computer above right)

What is Office 365?

So what does all this mean?

EXAMPLE: You’ve just completed a field site visit for a forest you manage.

1. You use Microsoft Word (licensed as part of the Office 365 subscription through our Cloud Service) to complete a written report for the client.
2. You take some photos on your smartphone and upload those directly to the Office 365 Skydrive so you can access them to include in your report.
3. You need to include a quick map, so download your GPS track as a GPX file and upload into your GIS folder locally on your computer in your SkyDrive folder (which is sync’d within a moments to the companies Team Office 365 Document Folder for that forest).
4. You login to GeoMaster Cloud Environment and overlay the GPX track in ArcMap, taking a snapshot to paste into your report. (The GPX, Photo’s and Site Report in WORD is available to you in the remote desktop environment again as it is always in sync with your teams documents online).
5. Then you add an event of the site visit in GeoMaster, attaching a link to the written site report online.
6. You might even attach some of the photos of a Forest Health concern to specific stands within GeoMaster.
7. This then leads you to plan a spraying event in GeoMaster, allowing you to setup a planned job, create an operation map, add prescription notes, and planned costs all within GeoMaster.
8. You export the map, GPS file of area to spray and operation report from GeoMaster to the companies’ team Office 365 document folder.  Then right click and select “Share” which prompt to email this to your spraying contractor.
9. Your spraying contractor gets you email, with links to the prescription report, maps, GPS files for loading into his helicopter.  He replies with a quote and timing which you use EXCEL to read (also licensed as part of your Office 365 license).
10. You head out to site with your contractor, taking your tablet PC, laptop or smartphone. You can bring up any of these documents with ease with or without an active internet connection as they are stored directly on you PC, smartphone or tablet in offline mode.

If you want more information on Office 365, feel free to contact the Interpine team. As a Microsoft Small Business Partner, Interpine provides Microsoft Office 365 to suit your needs and ensure it works seamlessly with Products like GeoMaster.