Your usual 9 a.m. meeting could show up at 10 a.m. in Outlook this November 1st. Check your calendar before a scheduling error becomes a missed meeting. Microsoft confirms that affected calendar events can be an hour off starting November 1. Most of BC is staying on Pacific time year-round, so our clocks won’t go back on November 1. However, some existing Outlook meetings still use the old time-zone rules. Microsoft has released updates to support the change, but updating your software alone does not necessarily correct meetings already in your calendar. Our support team has been helping clients work through these changes. We’ve put together a step-by-step guide to help you check your settings and update affected meetings. You can access the guide here: smartdolphins.com/time-chang…

Happy Certification Nation Day to all the other Great Place To Work® Certified organizations celebrating today! Congratulations to everyone celebrating today! @GPTW_Canada #GPTWcertified #CertificationNationDay #GreatPlaceToWork

Effectively managing files across SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams is an essential skill for teams looking to strengthen collaboration and improve productivity. Date: Thu, October 8 Time: 11 AM – 12 PM Register free: tinyurl.com/muk4pfnf

Understand what your data is telling you with Power BI. This webinar will cover the foundations of Power BI. You'll learn how to build dashboards that tell the story behind your data. Date: Thu, Oct 1 Time: 11AM–12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/bdjz893k

This session helps leaders and managers take a strategic, risk-based approach to cybersecurity. You'll gain the perspective to make informed decisions that protect your organization. Date: Thu, Sep 24 Time: 11AM – 12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/3hzun26t

Where cloud data physically resides and under whose rules, can carry implications. You'll leave this session understanding your cloud data's footprint and the tradeoffs behind where it's stored. Date: Thu, Sep 17 Time: 11AM – 12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/3mrjkckz

Accountants and Lawyers can claim 1 CPD hour for attending this event. This session helps lawyers, accountants, and others who work with financial data apply the Excel skills that matter most. Date: Tue, Sep 15 Time: 11AM–12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/3s9kzy5c

Transition to the AI tool made for professionals. This introductory session helps business professionals get familiar with Claude and its key features. Date: Thu, Sep 10 Time: 11 AM – 12 PM Register free: tinyurl.com/238xnc2p

Many modern security incidents begin with human error. This session helps professionals recognize threats, build safer security habits, and respond when something looks wrong. Date: Thu, Sep 3 Time: 11AM–12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/3hawfdm4

You've built a custom GPT or Cowork project that plugs into your data and gets real work done. The trouble is, it only works for you. These tools benefit your work, but a team benefits from one AI, grounded in shared company data, that everyone can access. That's what Copilot Studio makes possible. It lets teams build agents connected to your company's information, so the right answers are available to whoever needs them: - An HR agent that answers policy questions in seconds instead of digging through documents - A sales assistant grounded in your CRM that can surface contacts and spot patterns across your pipeline - An onboarding agent that knows every role and answers new employees' questions on the spot One connected AI, built once, working for the whole team. Comment what agent you'd build for your team.

Turn the to-do list in your inbox into an organized list of action items with Outlook, Planner, and To Do. This webinar will cover how to use tools already available in M365 to improve organization. Date: Thu, Aug 27 Time: 11AM–12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/3tw5xbzb

Most companies didn't actually train people on Microsoft 365. They gave everyone a login and moved on. So employees learned just enough to get through the day: - emailing files instead of using SharePoint or OneDrive - scheduling meetings that could've been Teams chats - ignoring tools like Planner, Lists, or Bookings entirely In an office, someone can lean over and ask a quick question. That's the small stuff that keeps people moving. Take it away, or never build the habit in the first place, and people avoid the features they don't understand and fall back to slower workflows. The fix usually isn't another massive training session. It's ongoing support: - short practical sessions - documentation people actually use - workflow guidance - someone to ask when work gets stuck The companies getting value from these tools are treating adoption as ongoing operational work, not a one-time rollout.

Documents that are difficult to navigate prevent information from being effectively communicated. This webinar will cover techniques to work efficiently and produce polished, professional documents. Date: Thu, Aug 20 Time: 11AM–12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/2fjh88c9

Everybody has heard that public Wi-Fi is a problem. You're using it anyway. Here's how to cut the risk. That free network at the coffee shop, airport, or hotel lobby comes with two real problems. First, you don't know who set it up. Is 'CoffeeShop_Guest' the real one, or a copycat two tables over running a fake network to catch whatever connects to it? Second, whoever controls the network can try to steer you to fake login pages or tamper with connections that aren't properly secured. A few habits cover most of the risk: Use a VPN. It routes your traffic through an encrypted tunnel to a trusted endpoint, so even a network you don't trust can't read or redirect what you're doing. An office VPN or a paid service both work. (A VPN built into your home router won't help here, that one only covers devices at home.) Turn on MFA everywhere. A stolen password alone shouldn't get anyone in. Lock your devices. Strong unique passwords or biometrics on each one. No sticky notes. Watch what you share. Vacation posts and out-of-office replies hand bad actors a script: 'Hey, I know you're away, can you approve this wire urgently?' Save the travel posts for when you're home. None of this is complicated. It just needs to be set up properly.

Out of the box, ChatGPT doesn't have the context of your business, so its outputs stay generic and need reworking before they're useful in your day-to-day work. This session is for professionals ready to move beyond basic prompting, showing how ChatGPT Projects can keep related work organised and in context across sessions, and how Custom GPTs can be configured with set instructions and knowledge to produce outputs suited to your specific tasks and workflows. You'll learn how to apply these features to everyday work while keeping the judgment and oversight needed for reliable results. Date: Thursday, August 13 Time: 11 AM – 12 PM Register free: tinyurl.com/3r28dw7m

Someone starts a proposal in Word. They email it to three people. Two of them make changes and send it back. One saves it to their desktop with "v2" in the filename. The other replies to the wrong thread. A fourth person opens the original and starts editing because nobody told them a new version existed. Now you've got four copies, none of them complete, and a meeting in 20 minutes.
 OneDrive lets your team work on the same file at the same time. Not a copy. The actual file. You can see who's editing, changes happen live, and every previous version is saved automatically. No more "final_v3_REAL_final" filenames. The tools are already in your Microsoft 365 subscription. You just need someone to set them up and show your team how they work.

Watch our free webinars to learn how to use it effectively. Sign up on our website.

We’re hiring a Technology Adoption Consultant. This role works across Smart Dolphins and Poplar, helping small and mid-sized organizations improve how they use Microsoft 365, AI, and workplace technology. You will work directly with clients to understand business needs, support technology adoption, deliver practical training, and help translate tools into better ways of working. This is a strong fit for someone who enjoys solving business problems, working closely with people, and helping organizations adopt technology in practical, sustainable ways. Apply now: careers.risepeople.com/smart… Location: Victoria, BC (hybrid) Type: Full-time

This session will help professionals build the most important security habits. Including recognizing phishing and social engineering, safe password management, and responding appropriately to attacks. Date: Thu, Aug 6 Time: 11AM–12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/mr3vh5x3

Microsoft Teams serves as a central hub for collaboration, and file management, and new features make it better. This session will apply newer features to keep communication organised and connected. Date: Thu, Aug 30 Time: 11AM-12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/yuwu8nff

This session helps professionals who are new to Excel build a confident foundation for working with data. You'll gain skills to help manage information accurately and work efficiently in Excel. Date: Thu, Jul 23 Time: 11AM – 12PM Register free: tinyurl.com/yca765c5