Built for a city where people work from home
Census figures for 2020 to 2024 show that 37.8 percent of Johns Creek's working residents usually work from home, more than twice the Georgia rate. For local employers, staff are just as likely to log in from a kitchen in Shakerag as from a desk in Technology Park. Microsoft 365, set up properly, lets that happen without a fragile VPN or files emailed back and forth. Set up loosely, it leaves your data open to anyone with a stolen password.
What we set up and manage
- Email: Exchange Online with strong filtering, shared mailboxes for the front desk, billing or client service, and retention set to match how long you need to keep mail.
- Your domain's reputation: SPF, DKIM and DMARC records so others can't easily send mail as you. Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook.com now expect these from high-volume senders, and missing records are a common reason invoices land in spam.
- Files: SharePoint sites and Teams arranged by department, client or case, with OneDrive for personal work. Permissions follow job roles, so the new receptionist can't open payroll.
- Sign-in rules: two-step sign-in for all users, conditional access to stop logins from odd places or unknown devices, and older protocols disabled.
- Intune device management: new laptops set themselves up when staff sign in, company data stays encrypted, and a lost or stolen device can be wiped remotely. For staff on personal phones, we protect the work apps without taking over the phone.
- Licensing: a plan matched to each role. Reviews often turn up seats for people long gone, alongside missing features like Intune or conditional access.
- Teams and phones: chat and meetings, and where it fits, Teams Phone in place of an aging desk phone system.
Regulated data in the cloud
Microsoft offers a business associate agreement for its covered cloud services, which many medical practices need. Signing it doesn't make your tenant compliant on its own. Sharing links, external access, audit logging, mailbox retention and data loss prevention all have to be configured. The same is true for financial firms that must keep and produce records. We set those controls up, explain them in plain terms and write down what was done.
Leaving the server behind
Many offices around Johns Creek still keep a server in a closet that holds the shared drive, an old accounting database and user logins. When it fails, everyone stops. We look at each workload in turn. Files usually move to SharePoint and OneDrive. User accounts shift to Microsoft Entra ID. Certain specialty programs, such as certain dental imaging, practice management or desktop accounting systems, still need a server, and those may stay local or move to a hosted server. We talk to your vendors before we recommend anything, then move in stages after hours with a way to roll back.
Moving offices or opening a second one
New office space at Medley and turnover in Technology Park mean plenty of Johns Creek moves. When your files, email and phones are already in Microsoft 365, a move becomes a weekend of network setup rather than a week of downtime. A second location, in Alpharetta, Duluth or Cumming, works the same way: staff sign in and their work is there.
Ongoing care
Microsoft changes features and defaults all the time. We track those changes, review your Secure Score and sign-in alerts, handle hires and departures and keep licenses matched to headcount. A new employee gets a laptop that is ready on day one, with access to what their role needs and nothing more.
Where to begin
A tenant review looks at your licenses, security defaults, sharing settings, admin roles and mail records. You get a short list of what to fix, in order. Most of the high-value items can be done in the first few weeks with little disruption to staff.
Questions about microsoft 365 & cloud
Our firm is on Google Workspace. Is that a problem?
No. Plenty of firms run well on Google. We manage it too. If your practice software or a regulator points toward Microsoft, we'll show you the reasons and handle the change without losing mail or documents.
How much disruption does a Microsoft 365 move cause?
Very little for most staff. Planning and copying happen in the background over a few weeks. The switch itself is usually a Friday night to Monday job, and people arrive to their mail and files in the new place.
