While my current role as Director of the US Business Intelligence and Analytics team here at Microsoft has me focused heavily on supporting our internal leadership and teams versus several of my former roles, which were highly externally focused, such as leading our US SMB Community, leading our US Partner Community engagement, leading our Worldwide Partner satisfaction and community efforts, etc., I still enjoy the opportunities I get to interact with our partners from around the world whenever I can, as well as the engagement with my counterparts here at Microsoft from around the world.

Thank you to you all for the partnership, collaboration, engagement, and opportunities to work with you all throughout these years. Here’s wishing you all a very Happy Thanksgiving day with your friends, family, and loved ones, wherever you are.

Best wishes to you all,

Eric Ligman

Director, Business Intelligence & Analytics

Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights

It’s once again time to take a quick moment to step back and share my thanks and gratitude with all of you, the fantastic people I have the incredible privilege and honor to connect with, speak to, interact with and work with with around the world in my role here at Microsoft and with our customers and partners everywhere. I am so thankful each and every day to all of you for all you do and the impact you make day in and day out.

Once again this year. my current role keeps me more behind the scenes instead of being the public face/voice I have been in previous roles; however, as I’ve said before, have no doubt that my dedication and drive to deliver the highest value and impact for our partners and customers around the world here at Microsoft has never been higher or stronger.

I truly appreciate all of the, “Thank you’s” and feedback so many of you have shared with me regarding my “Largest FREE Microsoft eBook Giveaway!” post and how you have been using those for yourselves and others. I am thrilled to hear that it has helped so many of you.

I always hope that in some way I am able to give back to this wonderful community that has been such a pleasure to work with and be a part of throughout the years and once again, I offer my sincerest wishes to you all for a Happy New Year in 2018 for you, your friends, family, and loved ones everywhere.

Happy New Year!

  Eric Ligman

  Director – Business & Sales Operations
  Microsoft Corporation

  Follow me on: TWITTER, LinkedIn, Facebook]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/mssmallbiz/happy-holidays Mon, 25 Dec 2017 16:30:14 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mssmallbiz/?p=13375 I just wanted to wish a very Happy Holiday season to all of you, your family, friends, and loved ones this time of year. Thank you all for being followers of my blog and other social media outlets. I hope you all are having a fantastic holiday season, catching up on well deserved rest and relaxation, and enjoying the time with all of the people who mean the most to all of you, enjoying the very best the season has to offer you all.

Thank you for all that you do each and every day, and thank you for helping make others lives better through enriching their worlds through technology, including the solutions that we here at Microsoft strive to enable to help people around the world each and every day.

Happy holidays to you all,

Eric Ligman

Director, Business Intelligence & Analytics

Microsoft Corporation

Now I am incredibly excited to be taking the next step on this journey!

Recently, the decision was made to put together a centralized team in our Business & Sales Operations unit whose focus is leading our BI and analytics architecture and strategy to transform data from across the company into world-class predictive BI and analytics to deliver rich, dynamic insights to enable our teams, from senior leaders to individual contributors, to gain deep insights into and run their businesses. In addition, they will be on point to lead the partnership and integration with our MSX Insights team in driving the Global Sales Transformation (GST) execution across the company.

I am extremely honored and excited to have been given the opportunity to lead this new, high-powered team as we take on this charter and continue the journey to transform our business through delivering a dynamic, modular, inter-connected BI & Analytics platform delivered through Power BI! The team is already comprised of rock stars brought together from other teams who were focused on independent data and BI projects previously, and now I have just one more data analyst and one data architect role left to fill and the team will be complete. 

As has been a tradition in my career, with the new role and expanded charter, it’s time for a changing of the guard when it comes to the design of my computer. So for those of you who see me around, you will notice the shift in design on my Surface, moving from the CPI design alone to the reflection of the power of the integrated CPI and MSX Insights platforms coming together, continuing the journey to transform Information into Insights and Insights into Impact:

Former Design:	New Design:

Here’s to another exciting year working with incredible people to help accelerate our delivering positive impact and capabilities in working with our customer and partners everywhere, and I could not be more excited!

Eric Ligman

Director – Business & Sales Operations
Microsoft Corporation

Follow me on: TWITTER, LinkedIn, Facebook

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights 

It’s that time of year again, and today I am kicking off my annual FREE MICROSOFT EBOOK GIVEAWAY extravaganza! And this time, I’m posting MORE FREE EBOOKS in this post than I ever have in any of my previous giveaways! Based on this, you will notice something different about this year’s post… In previous years, I included images of the eBook covers next to each item; however, I would also get feedback from people on the amount of time to load all of the images. So, this year I decided to streamline the list to make it easier to get to the eBooks you want. You will now find a simple list, organized by category, with the download links in the Format column so you can choose which format you want to download.

If you have been a follower of mine in the past, you know that several years ago I tried a simple concept: Let’s try giving away a bunch of free eBooks, reference guides, Step-By-Step Guides, and other informational resources to our customers and partners around the world. Needless to say, the concept was extremely the first year (over 1,000,000 FREE eBooks downloaded), and it has grown and grown over the past few years (over 3.5 Million downloaded three years ago and we surpassed that by a lot last year!) So, how many FREE eBooks can we give away this year? That is completely up to you.

Before we get to this year’s list of FREE eBooks, a few answers to common questions I receive during my FREE EBOOK GIVEAWAY:

1. How many can you download?
   • ANSWER: As many as you want! This is a FREE eBook giveaway, so please download as many as interest you.
2. Wow, there are a LOT listed here. Is there a way to download all of them at once?
   • ANSWER: Yes, please see the note below on how to do this.
3. Can I share a link to your post to let others know about this giveaway?
   • ANSWER: Yes, please do share the good news with anyone you feel could benefit from this.
4. I know you said they are “Free,” but what’s the catch?
   • ANSWER: There is no catch. They really are FREE. This consider it a, “Thank you,” for being a reader of my blog and a customer or partner of Microsoft.
5. Ok, so if they are free and you’re encouraging us to share this with others, can I post a link to your post here on sites like Reddit, FatWallet, and other deal share sites to let them know, or is that asking too much?
   • ANSWER: Please do. In fact, I would encourage you to share a link to this post on any deal site you feel their users could benefit from the FREE eBooks and resources included below. Again, I WANT to give away MILLIONS of FREE eBooks!
6. Are these “time-bombed” versions of the eBooks that stop working after a certain amount of time or reads?
   • ANSWER: No, these are the full resources for you to use.

Ok, ready for some FREE eBooks? Below is the collection I am posting this year (which includes a ton of new eBooks & resources, as well as some of the favorites from previous years):

HOW TO DOWNLOAD ALL EBOOKS:

One of the popular questions I also receive is, “How can I Download All at one time?” I am sharing with you how you can “Download All” of the FREE eBooks and resources I am including in my annual giveaway. Here’s a quick FAQ/How-To to help address many of these in one place as a way to make it as easy as possible for my readers to find what they need. I hope these help you out and address questions you have regarding the post.

1. Don’t you have a zip file with all of the ebooks included or a “Download All” button so I can download them at once?

• ZIP File: No, I do not have a zip file of the docs stored somewhere for download and this is intentional for several reasons. Since the eBooks and resources themselves have been put together and are distributed by some incredible authors and publishers, ultimately, they have the rights to update, distribute, and manage their IP as they see fit.
  • Example 1: If an author finds a correction needed (think about a typo in code included in a book that needs to be updated), they can update their deliverable and put the new one up at the download site they control to ensure all future downloads have the current information.
  • Example #2: (This one has actually happened with some of the books I’ve blogged about earlier) Sometimes an author wants to distribute their book a different way (switch from a share they have to a distribution site like Lulu) to achieve scale, better metrics, whatever. As such, they have every right to have the downloads moved to that site for distribution and have the downloads come from there.
  • Example #3: The author/publisher chooses to no longer distribute the free eBook or chooses to charge at some point. Again, as the owners of the IP, they have every right to do so.
    • If I were to grab today’s versions of the books, put them in a zip file, and distribute them from my server as an example, I would now be removing the author’s or publisher’s rights to do any of the three items listed above (as well as many other examples not listed). Ultimately, I (nor anyone else) do not have the right to do this. This is why I always provide links directly to their distribution sites, wherever they are so, you can download from them. Yes, this can be a challenge at times as I need to go back and edit links from time to time as they move the resources, but it is still the right thing to do and I am happy to do so in support of the great efforts these authors and publishers have done to make these resources available to all of us for free.

• Download All button: Sort of. I don’t have a “Download All” button specifically, since that would point to a single location, which I don’t provide based on the items above; however, I am providing some options below:
  • Alternative 1: Some of the readers of my blog in the past have pinged me offline and suggested enabling the use of multiple browser download plug-ins that are available or various PowerShell options to download a list of links automatically. In order to use these options though, you would need a list of the download links to the eBooks on the site. Since this does not change the author’s/publisher’s rights to control their IP and distribution since it still enables downloads directly from their sites, I am happy to provide you with the list of links to do this.

If you right-click the icon to the right and select “Save Target As,” it will let you download a list of the links in a single .TXT file for all of the eBooks included in my latest post. The “NEW OPTION” has been added as an updated location to address the heavy traffic causing access issues.

NEW OPTION

Original

• With this list of links, you should be able to use the browser plug-ins, etc. of your choice to download the full list in an automated way.
• Alternative 2: If you use PowerShell, here is are two PowerShell scripts text you can use to Download All: (Thanks to David Crosby for the original template and to Robert Cain for the advanced template, which includes things like: Progress message, Check for existing to avoid double download on interruption, Check for file size to know to re-download if a file is interrupted mid-download, error message if file transfer fails, log file with messages option, and more.)

If you right-click the icon to the right and select “Save Target As,” it will let you download the text for the PowerShell script to allow you to Download All of the eBooks above. The “NEW OPTION” has been added as an updated location to address the heavy traffic causing access issues.

ADVANCED TEMPLATE

NEW OPTION

Original

2. Are these time-bombed versions of the books?

• No, the free versions of the resources are full-version and do not have a time-out feature in them, so you can continue to use them for as long as you choose.

3. “I work for a library, resource desk, etc. and would like to share these with others. Is it ok to share your links to these?” (or some flavor of this with different variations)

• Absolutely. Please feel free to share the links to these resources; however, please read #1 above on why you can share the links, but don’t distribute the actual works themselves as an offline resource. Please help support these fantastic authors and publishers by downloading the latest versions directly from them.

4. Download experiences seem to vary based on the resource I am downloading. Why is this?

• As noted in #1 above, I always link to the site where the author/publisher is making the work available for download. Some of these are here on the Microsoft TechNet or MSDN sites, some are from blogs, etc. Depending on where they come from, your download experience may vary.

5. “I tried to download an eBook or resource and it didn’t work.”

• Some of these eBooks come from a variety of places, and sometimes there is very heavy traffic to some of them. Wait a few moments and try again. You can also try right-clicking on the download link and selecting “Open in New Tab” or “Save Target As” to try initiating the download that way as well.

Thank you again for being a reader of my Blog and I hope you find this year’s collection of FREE eBooks and other resources to be very helpful to you, your colleagues, friends, or family.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman - Follow me on TWITTER, LinkedIn, and Facebook
Director – Sales Excellence
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights 

Here we are, just a couple weeks from my favorite week of the year, our annual Microsoft partner conference, now known as Inspire. Over the course of my career at Microsoft, I have had the extreme pleasure to work with so many amazing Partners, both individuals at these partners and the organizations themselves. A couple of years ago, I put up my “

Over the years at Worldwide Partner Conference, there have been so many fun times, such as:

• The annual contest to see who would be the Top 5 live teeters covering the WPC keynotes and conference
• Hanging out and connecting with all of the press and influencers while covering the WPC keynotes from the WPC press box
• Hosting the MPN Live shows talking with partners from around the world
• Annual tweet-ups, connecting partners and partner influentials
• Virtual scavenger hunts I’ve run using social media and/or my Microsoft Partner mobile app
• All of the partner receptions and meet ups
• And much more…

As this year’s Partner conference approaches, now known as Inspire instead of Worldwide Partner Conference, I’ve been talking with several partners and received some comments and questions such as:

• “We need to make sure we grab our annual pic this year”
• “Looking forward to being part of the Fantastic People this year”
• “Are you changing the name of your Fantastic People of WPC now that the conference is renamed?”

You know what they say, “All good things eventually come to an end,” and this year brings with it the end of an era. With the transition of WPC to Inspire this year, I can still say that I have been to every single Worldwide Partner Conference Microsoft has ever held; however, for the first time since the turn of the century, this is the very first Microsoft annual partner conference I will not be attending.

So why won’t I be attending this year? You may recall the “Cloud Partner Insights (CPI): Information –> Insights –> Impact” post I put up here on the blog about the Cloud Partner Insights project I was leading, which was an entirely new way to drive partner impact and insights across our business that we leveraged across the U.S. business. Well since that time, the platform has grown beyond its initial set of products to many more, beyond sales to include consumption, beyond the partner business to partner and customer, and beyond our SMS&P segment to include our EPG and Pub Sec segments as well. Given the expansion, the platform went through an initial rebranding from “Cloud Partner Insights,” to “Cloud Performance Insights” to better reflect the broader scope. Then as it continued to grow and expand, it transformed from a reporting suite into a data and analytics Business Insights backend platform bringing together dozens of master data sets from across Microsoft to power and enable in-depth and custom insights capabilities delivered through Power BI across Microsoft, which led to it becoming known as simply the “CPI” platform.

As this project continued to expand and morph, so has my role and the scope of my role. In fact, at the beginning of our Fiscal Year 2017, my role moved from our US SMS&P Partner team over to our US National Sales Excellence Team, focused across the entire US business including customer and partner, in addition to partnering with our Microsoft Worldwide teams on data analytics and insights. Because of this, for the first time in my Microsoft career, my role is no longer technically a “partner role,” which means I am not one of the individuals who will be attending our annual Microsoft partner conference.

Now even though I won’t be there in person, I’ll be following along through social media and online, like all of our partners around the world who are unable to attend in person are invited and encouraged to do. Also, even though I will not be running my “Fantastic People of” collection of photos this year (since I won’t be there), Please feel free to send over and share your photos from Inspire 2017 with me via social media as I would love to see them!

Here’s wishing you all an amazing Microsoft Inspire Conference!

Eric Ligman Director – Sales Excellence Microsoft Corporation Follow me on: TWITTER, LinkedIn, Facebook

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights 

Every year I like to take a quick moment to step back and share my thanks and gratitude with all of the amazing people I have the honor and privilege to meet, work with, and interact with around the globe here at Microsoft and with our customers and partners everywhere year in and year out. This year is no different and I continue to be thankful each and every day to you all for all you do and the impact you make day in and day out.

 While in my current role I spend more time behind the scenes vs. being the public face/voice I have in previous roles, my dedication and drive to deliver the highest value and impact for our partners and customers around the world here at Microsoft has never waivered. Thank you for all of the wonderful feedback you all have shared with me on the:

“FREE! That’s Right, I’m Giving Away MILLIONS of FREE Microsoft eBooks again! Including: Windows 10, Office 365, Office 2016, Power BI, Azure, Windows 8.1, Office 2013, SharePoint 2016, SharePoint 2013, Dynamics CRM, PowerShell, Exchange Server, System Center, Cloud, SQL Server and more!” post from this past year and the ongoing feedback you all continue to share with me from my, “How to recover that un-saved Microsoft Office Excel, Word, or PowerPoint file you closed before saving” post, and I am very happy to hear that it has helped so many of you recover your work and save you time.

 I hope that in some way I am able to give back to this wonderful community that has been such a pleasure to work with and be a part of throughout the years and again I offer my sincerest wishes to you all for a Happy New Year in 2017 for you, your friends, family, and loved ones everywhere.

 Happy New Year, 2017!

Eric Ligman

Director – Sales Excellence
Microsoft Corporation

Follow me on: TWITTER, LinkedIn, Facebook

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights 

Live from New York, it’s… Oh, wait, that’s a different show. Regardless, the rumor is that there is a live Microsoft briefing going on today in New York that will have some very exciting news in it, and we’re bringing it to you live! Anyone heard that?

Now for what you are really interested in… Here are the details on how you can join us live (virtually) for the excitement, wherever you are.

• When: The briefing starts today at 10:00 am Eastern, 7:00 am Pacific
• Where: Live event is in New York, but you can attend from anywhere
• How: CLICK HERE to watch the event streaming live online

Be sure to tune in an hear for yourself and enjoy the show!

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman Director – Sales Excellence Microsoft Corporation Follow me on: - TWITTER - LinkedIn - Facebook

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights 

Thank you again to all of the amazing Microsoft Partners from around the entire world who joined us in Toronto for Worldwide Partner Conference 2016! As always, one of the biggest highlights of the entire event for me is being able to see and connect with you, our Microsoft partners and influencers from all corners of the globe, whether I knew you before or if this was my first time meeting you. In addition to having the opportunity to meet you, I love hearing the incredible stories you all share with me about yourselves, your companies, your successes and your plans for the future are inspiring and exciting at the same time.

Continuing the annual tradition that began several years ago as just an experiment (Connecting with others – A HUGE value of #WPC10 (Look who I found), I am very happy to bring you the collection of pictures from the Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference 2016. For those not familiar with The Fantastic People of WPC concept, it is quite simple. Since building connections is such a huge value of WPC and for me, being fortunate enough to get to spend time with all of the partners from around the world, I offer to capture pictures with partners at WPC that I meet and share them here on my blog to thank them for being there and to help build virtual connections. This is a virtual introduction of these partners and WPC attendees to you and you to them and my “Thank you” to all of you for not only being at WPC, but also for being one of our highly valued Microsoft Partners and Worldwide Partner Conference attendees..

You can click any picture below to see it in larger size:

With Mary Jo Foley (@MaryJoFoley) of ZDNet	With Paul Thurrott (@Thurrott) of Windows Weekly/Thurrott.com	With Matt Scherocman (@Scherocman) from Interlink Cloud Advisors
With Michelle Caldwell (@shellecaldwell) of Avanade	With Chetan Malavia (@Cloud9I) of Cloud 9 Infosystems	With Kurt Sippel (@AppliedTech) of Applied Tech
With Mike Taylor (@Innovise) of Innovise	With Guy Gregory (@GuyGregory) of The Final Step	With Rick Eason (@channelmktg) of Extra Mile Marketing
With Steve Luper (@Lupes)	With John Krikke (@JohnKrikke) of Onward Computer Systems, David Gersten (@dsgersten) of Bond Consulting Services, Jon Rivers (@jon_rivers) from Marketing Monarchs, and Dave Seibert of IT Innovators	With Tiffany Wallace (@TiffanyWI) of New Horizons
With Matthew Hughes (@KinetalMedia) of Kinetal	With David Rosenthal (@Atidan) of Atidan and Mychal Jackson of Microsoft	With Rick Claus (@RicksterCDN) and the famous Rick’s Tilley Hat (@RicksTilleyHat)
With Naomi Moneypenny (@NMoneypenny) of ManyWorlds, Inc.	With Kelvin Kirby (@KJKirby) of Technology Associates, Ltd.	With Tim Wallis (@TimWallis) of Content and Code
With Garth Luke (@GarthLuke) & Elon Aizenstros (@ElonAizenstros) of RecordPoint Software	With Jeff Hilton (@KnowledgeCircl) from Alliance For Channel Success and Tony Dillon of SMB Partners LTD	With Kevin McMillen (@RyanTechKevin) from RyanTech and Chasie Womack (@AgentGals) of RyanTech
With Susanne Dombrowski (@Blank) of 12:34 MicroTechnologies, Inc., Alejandro Rosado, Jr. of 12:34 MicroTechnologies, Inc. (@1234Micro), Carl Mazzanti (@cmazzanti) of eMazzanti  , and Mark Clawson of eMazzanti Technologies	With Jeff Shuey (@jshuey) and Bill Hersh (@whersh011)	With Michael Panciroli (@mpanciroli), Jeff Shuey (@jshuey), Kerstin Deppe, and Bill Hersh (@whersh011)
With MJ Shoer (@MShoer) of Internet & Telephone,LLC	With Dan Bergeron of Sky Terra Technologies	With Pat Turney (@JMark_Support) of JMark Business Solutions
With Marco Morgenstern & Ralf Schafer of Trans4mation IT GmbH

Thank you again to you all, our Microsoft Partners and influencers from around the world, for everything you do each and every day to transform our world through enabling others to achieve and exceed their goals through the adoption and use of Microsoft technologies! Also, thank you again for taking the time out of the busy WPC week to stop by, come up, and grab a picture as part of the Fantastic People of WPC16 Collection. I am looking forward to seeing you all again at Worldwide Partner Conference 2017 next year and meeting even more of you, our Fantastic People of Worldwide Partner Conference. Until then, here’s wishing you all the very best as you continue helping our customers everywhere understand, acquire, deploy, and consume the benefits of technology to ensure they all have incredible success, translating into the same for each and every one of you!

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman Director – Sales Excellence Microsoft Corporation Follow me on: - TWITTER - LinkedIn - Facebook

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights