21st December 2018 – Removal of desktop add-ins

An FYI product updated delivered on Friday 21st of December 2018, will remove the requirement for users to install FYI desktop add-ins for Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). The following article summarises:

• Benefits of the update

• Summary of product changes

• Steps each user must complete once the update has occurred

Benefits of the update

The main benefit of this update is how it simplifies the process as you onboard each team member onto FYI. With a further update in January, will remove the need for desktop add-ins to be installed for Outlook, removing the need for any installation on the workstation at all. Users will also have the benefit of:

• Online or desktop editing of documents: If they choose to, your team members can now work entirely from the browser as FYI gives you the choice of editing Office Documents online or on the desktop. This allows them to be completely mobile and work from any machine.

• Editing of non-office documents: When a user edits a non-Office document on their desktop, such as a PDF, all the changes any changes are automatically captured back into FYI. This is done seamlessly using their OneDrive which is included as part of all Office 365 plans.

Summary of product changes

• There is a small change in the terminology of changes to a document from “Check out” to “Edit”.

• When editing an Office document users will have the choice between Office Online or Desktop. The default creates of new documents is still using Office Desktop. 

• When finished editing a document, users need to select “Finished editing” either from the Document Drawer or in the document list via the Edit icon. The updated document will automatically be imported back into FYI, updating the earlier version. This is important as when a document is out for editing, other users can’t make changes. 

• To help keep on top of which documents each team member has locked for editing, there is a new list of “My Edits” within the Dashboard. 

• When selecting “Edit” for a non-Office document such as a PDFs, the document will be automatically saved to their OneDrive in a folder called “FYI – My Edits”. This folder will automatically be created if it doesn’t exist. This feature utilises the OneDrive subscription that each user is entitled to via their Office 365 subscription

Steps each user must complete once the update has occurred

To make the most of this exciting update, your users must take the following steps:

• When they go to use FYI for the first time after this release is made available, they should log out and log in back in again for the change to take effect.

• All documents currently checked out needs to be checked back in

• Each user should enable and configure their OneDrive on their desktop. This is the OneDrive associated with their Office 365 login that they use for FYI. Having their OneDrive enabled on the desktop is not compulsory for core features such as creating Office documents, but it is required in order to edit none Office documents in the desktop and then to have the changes automatically imported and updating the original document.