Who We Are

As a Microsoft partner, HRP Solutions specializes in implementing and supporting Microsoft Dynamics Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, as well as mission-critical management information systems. Our expertise helps clients harness the power of Microsoft’s advanced tools to streamline operations, develop automation strategies, and generate impactful business intelligence.

Our Vision

We envision ourselves as the market leader in consulting and IT services across the continent. With our sights set on excellence, we aim to redefine what’s possible in business automation and intelligence, empowering African organizations with the best tools and practices to thrive in a competitive landscape.

Our Mission

Our mission is to deliver cutting-edge solutions across Africa, supporting clients not just with our expertise, but with a commitment to excellence and accountability. We believe in actions over words, and we approach every project with a customer-first attitude. Here’s how we live out our mission:

• Accountability: We do what we say we’ll do, delivering solutions on time and to specification.
• Confidence: We continuously push ourselves to new heights, ensuring we provide the best solutions in every project.
• Customer-Centric Innovation: We listen closely to our clients, tailoring our offerings to meet their unique needs and helping them reach their full potential.

Our Core Values

• Integrity: Openness, honesty, and transparency define our interactions with associates, clients, and suppliers. Building trust is at the core of everything we do.
• Inclusion: We celebrate diversity, approaching every challenge with respect for the varied backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures of our team and clients.
• Innovation: Our culture is driven by creativity and intelligent risk-taking. We aspire to accomplish what has never been done, consistently bringing fresh ideas to the table.

Why Choose HRP Solutions?

Partnering with HRP Solutions means choosing a team that’s not just skilled but deeply committed to your success. We’re more than a service provider; we’re a trusted partner in your growth journey. With HRP Solutions, you can count on a blend of technical excellence, industry insight, and a commitment to helping your business achieve greatness.

Whether you’re looking to improve efficiency, foster innovation, or harness the power of data-driven decision-making, HRP Solutions is here to support you every step of the way. Join us, and let’s shape the future of business in Africa together.

URA advises that companies can either manually process invoices and receipts through the URA Web portal – this would mean capturing invoices and receipts twice (both in the company’s accounting system and the URA system) or integrate the company’s accounting system to EFRIS.

HRP Solutions has studied the EFRIS platform and built expertise in integrating Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems to EFRIS. We offer our assurance that we can handle your integration while you concentrate on more pertinent business needs.

Let us talk. Contact us to discuss.

At the same time, there are a few challenges that you may experience when managing a remote team. There may be a lack of coordination and ineffective communication. And since there’s no direct face-to-face communication, it may be much more difficult to build a strong bond with your team members.

I’ve put together my top tips to help you keep your remote team happy and motivated:

1. Maintain an open communication channel.

Ineffective communication is one of the main reasons why employees get frustrated with their work. Previously, we would communicate over email. While it serves its purpose, email communication has a lot of drawbacks. For example, there may be times when you miss an email, or you’re not there to answer it right away, so the team member may be unable to proceed with the work since they couldn’t get any clarification on the issue they’re experiencing.

We’ve switched to Slack, which has made a huge difference in our ability to communicate and collaborate. Team members can directly communicate with each other for feedback and questions without having to go through multiple people and processes.

However, make sure your employees don’t feel obligated to view or respond to work messages during their off hours. According to a study by Teem, 49% of survey respondents are unhappy with the obligation to remain available for communications through today’s tools. Have clear communication about the expected work hours of each team member to avoid employee burnout.

2. Facilitate upskilling.

One of the best ways to motivate your team members to be better at what they do is by giving them the opportunity to learn and upskill. Since they’re developing new skills, it enables them to attain personal and professional growth. It also helps them realize that you value them and want to help them achieve growth that will serve them in the long run.

This will also benefit your company since employees will have better skills to deliver exceptional work. For example, your writers may be able to write excellent blog posts but need some help to create compelling marketing copy for your clients.

I provide my team members free access to relevant online classes that can help improve their skills. I mostly use Udemy for this, as they have a wide range of courses that are relevant to the kind of work we do such search engine marketing, social media marketing and more. Otherwise, you can also check out Lynda, which has plenty of useful upskilling courses.

3. Give due reward to deserving employees.

Positive reinforcement can be a great way to motivate your employees and keep them motivated to continue doing exceptional work. If good work goes unnoticed, your employees may feel invisible and underappreciated. According to the previously-cited Teem study, 48% of respondents were unhappy because they felt underappreciated in their role. But if you acknowledge their outstanding work and show your appreciation for it, they may feel more motivated to continue delivering the same quality of work.

There are plenty of ways in which you can reward deserving employees. For instance, you could incentivize them with bonuses or raises after they consistently deliver outstanding work. Or if someone in the team has been doing much better work than others, you could look for ways to promote them.

For impressive teamwork, make sure you acknowledge it and thank the team for their contribution. If any project is doing exceptionally well, announce it in your special announcement channel. This will show employees that their hard work is paying off and they’re not just blindly working on something that will go unrecognized.

4. Make the most of team collaboration tools.

Even when there is a smooth flow of communication between team members, it’s not always possible to work collaboratively without any confusion. This tends to be a huge challenge for remote teams and there can be a delay in some projects as a result.

For example, let’s say certain sections of a website design need reworking based on your client’s request. It may not be easy to point out exactly which sections need reworking and how. If you’re in a physical office and can talk to your web designer face to face, this issue wouldn’t arise. In a remote team, this difficulty to collaborate can result in frustration. And if you’re going to ensure that your employees remain happy and motivated, you will need to tackle this issue. In other words, you will need to enable every team member to collaborate efficiently with each other.

Trello has been a savior for our remote team. Everyone stays updated about our projects through the platform. Each team member can keep track of updates on current projects, such as whether a certain blog post for a client is still being written or if it has been published. Use a tool that lets your people keep track of the progress of other members without the need to constantly follow up.

Final Words

In addition to the above, I also suggest that you have a proper schedule in place for each team member. And make sure whoever is in charge of assigning tasks to team members can coordinate with team leads so that no one is overburdened with excess work.

The Cloud

Perhaps the biggest benefit that more recent versions of Office and the Office 365 platform usher in for business users has to do with how it embraces the cloud-based world in which we now live. Data created and stored online, Office is now accessible from any computer on the planet with an active Internet connection. This allows employees to be just as productive at home (or in an airport lounge, or in a local coffee shop) as they could be if they were sitting in front of a computer in their office.

Embracing Mobile

Along the same lines, another massive benefit of Microsoft Office for business has to do with the way it allows its users to embrace mobile computing. As most of the modern day smartphones that millions of people carry around with them are literally more powerful than the shuttles that sent men to the moon in the 1960s, it makes sense that a solution would come along to allow them to leverage that power to their advantage. Microsoft Office lets users create documents from any device, anywhere, with no exceptions.

Value for the Price

Modern day versions of Microsoft Office are also inherently scalable, which is another significant benefit for business users. Businesses can now choose the exact deployment tract that fits their needs, allowing them to pay for exactly what they need without also spending money on applications they never use. Business users who choose to purchase the “Office 365 Business Essentials” plan, for example, will pay just $5 per user per month. Buying the software outright is also always available, with packages starting at just $229.99 for Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote for a single PC.

Safety and Security

Another big benefit for Microsoft Office business users comes down to safety. All data stored in the cloud is housed in one of Microsoft’s own data centers. This extends real-time scanning of messages and documents for things like viruses and malware, as well as other security provisions that all adhere to multiple industry-standard specifications.

Collaboration Tools Like Never Before

Modern day versions of Microsoft Office also unlock the power of collaboration at the business level. It offers a wide range of different tools that make it easy for multiple employees to all work on the same files from separate computers. Office 365 also includes calendaring, contacts, online meeting and other functionality designed to make it easier than ever to collaborate with people OUTSIDE a business as well. A business user and their own client can remotely collaborate on the same files at the same time, making it easier to meet demands and exceed expectations across the board.

Microsoft recently announced that they will be making some updates to the cloud recordings regional storage control. If you’re not familiar with Microsoft Stream, all meeting recordings within Microsoft Teams are stored in Microsoft Stream. However, tenant admins do have the option of turning ON/OFF the ability to “Allow Cloud Recording”. Currently, the meeting recording feature is turned off for customers whose Teams data is stored in-country if Microsoft Stream isn’t available in the in-country data residency region where the data is stored. However, with this latest update from Microsoft, they’ll be adding an additional setting that will allow you as a customer to use cloud recordings if Microsoft Stream data residency isn’t yet available in your country.

When does this update drop?

As far as when you can expect this update, Microsoft has indicated that this will begin rolling out at the end of June and expects this to be completed by July.

How does this affect you?

First off, if you’re a customer whose Microsoft Stream data is already in the in-country data residency region where your data is stored then this won’t affect you. If you’re unsure where your Stream data is stored, just navigate to web.microsoftstream.com and find the question mark ‘?’ in the upper right-hand corner and then select About Microsoft Stream.

Once there, you’ll see a line saying “Your data is stored in…“.

Here is the complete list of regions and countries where Stream data is stored:

• United States
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Australia
• India
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• US Government Community Cloud (GCC)

If you don’t see your country or region above, there’s still hope! Microsoft is planning on supporting Stream for these additional locations by the end of 2020:

• China
• Germany
• Norway
• France
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• Sweden
• GCC-High / GCC-DOD

After this update, if your tenant admin turns on AllowRecordingStorageOutsideRegion then the recordings will be stored in the nearest regional data center for Microsoft Stream. Provided this is enabled, this will be the default behavior once this fully rolls out in June/July. However, if you prefer to only store your recordings in-country, it is recommended that you disable the meeting recording feature in the Teams admin center and re-enable it once Microsoft Stream is deployed in that country.

How will meeting recordings function after this update?

There are two different routes this can take:

• If your admin turns AllowRecordingStorageOutsideRegion ON BEFORE the Stream service is available in-country, all recordings will be stored in the in-region storage.
  • If Stream is made available in-country later, any existing and new recordings will continue to be stored in the nearest regional data center.
• If your admin turns AllowRecordingStorageOutsideRegion ON AFTER the Stream service is available in-country, all recordings will be stored in-country.

Note: New tenants and existing tenants that have not yet enabled meeting recordings will save new recordings in the in-country storage after Stream is available in-country. However, for any tenant that enables meeting recordings BEFORE Stream is available in-country, they will continue to use the in-region storage even after Stream is available in-country.

Can Microsoft migrate my meetings from in-region to in-country after Stream becomes available in-country?

The short answer is no, sorry. Your recordings won’t be migrated. If your admin has turned ON recording before the Stream service is available in-country, then all past meetings recordings, as well as new recordings, will continue to be stored in-region even after Stream becomes available in-country.

What about live events?

Microsoft plans on implementing similar changes for Live Events soon. No ETA just yet though.

How should you prepare for this change?

Depending on how your organization allows/disallows recording will dictate how you proceed. Once this change takes place you’ll need to ensure “Allow Cloud Recording” is set accordingly, depending on the experience you want your end-users to have.

Send an email to a channel

Many people may not know this, but each channel in Teams has its own email address. Let’s say you’re in Outlook and you receive an e-mail that you wish had been communicated in Teams instead. No need to worry, you can send an email to your channel in Teams simply by going to the channel name and clicking More options ‘…’ > Get email address. You can also reply to an email in a channel and even view the original email if the email sent to the channel is too large to view in the conversation.

Use commands in the search bar

Another hidden feature that you may not be aware of is the use of commands which are basically shortcuts that you can use to perform common tasks in Teams! Want to see your recent files? Just type in /files in the search bar.

Need some help with Teams? Just type /help and you’ll be directed to the help topics, training, and news for Microsoft Teams!

These are just a couple of the commands, but you can get the entire list here or just simply type the “/“in your search bar.

Add tags to your team

Looking for a quick way to reach a group of people within a team? Look no further, tags will let you do just that! Tags allow you to categorize people based on attributes, like a role, project, skill, etc. For example, let’s say you wanted to reach all Nurses in a team, you could easily create a tag for “Nurses” and add all nurses to that tag. Once the tag has been created just @mention it in a channel and everyone that has been assigned to that tag will receive a notification.

To create your tags just select Teams  on the left side of the app and find your team in the list. Then select More options   and choose Manage tags  . This is where you will create your tag name and add the people you want to be associated with this tag.

Once created just @mention the tag name you created and you’re all set!

Additionally, you can start a chat with members of a tag by selecting New chat and typing in the name of the tag. Everyone in that tag group will be added to the To: field. I think it is safe to say that the days of @mentioning each person one by one are gone!

Pop-out your chats

One of my favorite additions to Microsoft Teams is the ability to pop out a chat in Teams. Teams now allows you to pop out your one-to-one or group chats into a separate window. After you pop it out you can resize it, reposition it, or close the window as you wish. For all you multi-taskers out there, this is one feature you can’t live without! You can check out all of the different ways to pop out a chat here.

Open multiple instances of Teams

At times, you may find yourself jumping around between multiple conversations, teams, channels, or even accounts (if you’re using guest access). Although pop out chats can help combat this to some degree, it still leaves a gap in your multitasking endeavors. One of the easiest workarounds is opening a browser and navigating to teams.microsoft.com. Now you can run your desktop application and the browser-based client at once! We can make this process even quicker though by adding the website as an app in your browser. For example, open Edge Chromium and navigate to teams.microsoft.com. Once there, all you’ll need to do is go to the ellipses (three dots) on the upper right-hand corner of your browser and then go down to Apps > Install this site as an app.

Once you’ve chosen to install the site as an app, you’ll see a popup where you’ll be able to name the app. In the screenshot below, you’ll notice that I’ve just named mine Microsoft Teams Edge Chromium. Then select Install.

After the app has been installed you’ll notice that you have an additional Teams icon in your taskbar. With the Edge Chromium Browser, it will automatically pin the app to the taskbar.

If you a Chrome user, no need to worry, I’ve got you covered. I have instructions on how to install Teams as an app in Chrome here.

Save an important message for later

Do you have a really important message that you need to remember to read again later? No need to worry, you can easily mark a message as saved or unread so you can come back to it at a later time. You can do this by going to the top of the message that you want to save/mark as unread and select More Options “…” > Save this message or Mark as unread. If you’ve saved the message you can access it at any time by selecting your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner of your client and then choose Saved.

@Mention a user, team, or channel

Need to get someone’s attention in a channel conversation or chat? You can @mention them by typing “@” and then their name (no spaces). What if you need to get the attention of the entire team? Easy, just type in @team, select the team, and then type out your message. If you just want to @mention a particular channel within the team you can do that as well by typing @channel, selecting the channel name, and then typing out your message.

The most significant update is the new Together mode, which, as the name suggests, aims to make video conferences more informal and bring participants together. Instead of 49 individual participant rectangles appearing in gallery mode, switching to Together mode removes the barriers between participants and uses “AI segmentation technology” to place the head and shoulders of participants side by side in a virtual auditorium.

Microsoft is currently working on other views that will available in this mode, including a virtual coffee shop.[ Related: 11 best practices for Microsoft Teams video meetings ]

Jaron Lanier, the CTO Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft, said the new viewing mode is a direct consequence of the pandemic and the significant increase in the number of video calls people make.

“This is very much a specific design in response to the pandemic. The design was initiated during the pandemic, developed during the pandemic and is released during the pandemic,” Lanier said.

With many employees now in the midst of their fourth month working from home because of the COVID-19 outbreak, daily video calls with colleagues have become the new normal as teams try to continue working collaboratively across different environments. During pandemic, Teams has seen its daily active user count jump to 44 million, then surge past 75 million. In response, the platform has evolved over the last several months to improve the experience for both existing and new users.

Though at first Together mode might seem a like a gimmick, the underlying technology  is fundamental to improving the video conferencing experience.