DEVsource Technology Solutions

Tip #20 of 25: How many times this week did you switch between Teams, Word, Excel, Whiteboard, and three other apps just to get work done? Exhausting, right? What to do: Add Teams apps and extensions directly to your channels and chats. Whiteboard for brainstorming, Word for documents, Planner for tasks, Forms for surveys. Work happens in Teams without tab switching. Why it matters: When your tools live inside Teams, your team stays focused. No more context switching. No more hunting for files in different places. Conversations, decisions, and collaboration all happen in one place. Teams becomes your actual workspace, not just your messaging app. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.

Tip #19 of 25: If someone misses a meeting, your current answer is either "check your email" or "ask someone who was there." There is a better way. What to do: Turn on meeting recording in Teams and enable transcription. Every meeting produces a searchable record. This includes who said what, what was decided, what the next steps are, and this happens without anyone having to take notes. Why it matters: Recorded and transcribed meetings eliminate "I didn't know that was decided" from your vocabulary. The conversation becomes a reference, not a memory. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.

Most small business breaches don't start with sophisticated hacking. They start with a weak password, a clicked link, or an account nobody remembered to lock down. Over the past few weeks we've covered five habits that close those gaps: passphrases that are harder to crack than complex passwords, two-step verification that makes a stolen password useless, a password manager that eliminates reuse entirely, screen locking that stops physical access cold, and a vendor access audit that takes an hour and costs nothing. If your team isn't doing all five, this video is worth 90 seconds of your time.

Cybersecurity doesn’t always fail because of sophisticated hacking. Sometimes, it fails because someone clicks too fast, opens an unexpected attachment, trusts a familiar voice, scans a QR code without checking it, or says “hello” one too many times. In this video recap, we’re covering Tips 6-10 of our 25 Tech Tips series, and each one focuses on a small habit that can prevent a much bigger problem. Hover before you click. Verify unexpected attachments. Use a safe word for sensitive calls. Check QR codes before trusting them. Hang up on suspicious silence. These steps only take a few seconds, but they can help protect your business from phishing, malware, AI voice scams, quishing, and robocall targeting. Watch the recap and share it with your team.

Tip #18 of 25: How many times this week did you search Teams to find the right channel to post in? Or worse, post in the wrong channel and have your message buried in noise? What to do: Create dedicated channels for how your business works. One channel for leadership discussions, one for IT support requests, one for department updates, one for project collaboration. Structure before adoption. Why it matters: A few well-organized channels with clear purposes eliminates confusion, keeps conversations focused, and makes sure messages get to the right people. When everyone knows where to post and where to look, nothing gets lost, nothing gets mixed up, and your team uses Teams instead of reverting back to email. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.

Tip #17 of 25: Your Teams channels are full of useful information and most of it disappears into the scroll within 24 hours. Here's how to fix it. What to do: Pin important messages, decisions, and files in your Teams channels so they're always visible at the top, not buried in the history. It takes two seconds and saves hours of "wait, where did we land on that?" Why it matters: A decision that lives in a scroll is a decision that gets relitigated. Pinning turns conversations into a living reference your whole team can access. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.

Tip #16 of 25: How many times this week did you search your email to find a decision that was buried in a thread from three weeks ago? Too many to count? What to do: Move team communication off email and into Teams channels. Use one channel per project, department, or ongoing topic. Conversations stay organized, searchable, and visible to everyone who needs them. Why it matters: Email was built for one-to-one communication. Channels were built for teams. When your team communicates in channels, nothing gets lost, nothing gets buried, and nobody misses a key update because they were left off a CC. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.

Tip #15 of 25: If something looked wrong in your systems at 8am tomorrow, would your team know exactly what to do in the first 60 minutes? What to do: Create a one-page checklist for the first hour of a security incident — who to call, what to shut off, and what absolutely not to do. Why it matters: The decisions made in the first hour of a breach determine how bad it gets. Panic without a plan makes every outcome worse. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.

Tip #14 of 25: "I'll update it later" is one of the most common reasons businesses get hacked. What to do: Work with your IT provider to turn on automatic updates across every business device from computers, phones, and servers. Set them to run overnight so they never interrupt your daily workflow. Why it matters: Most cyberattacks exploit known vulnerabilities that already have a fix available. Staying current closes those doors. Ignoring updates leaves them open. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.

Tip #13 of 25: The first thing most ransomware attacks do is look for your backups and delete them. Take the steps to ensure this is not possible. What to do: Ask your IT provider whether your backups are stored somewhere that can't be modified or deleted, even by someone with full admin access to your network. Why it matters: A backup that an attacker can delete is not a safety net. This single distinction separates businesses that recover in hours from ones that end up paying the ransom. Full write-up + the series: link in comments.