Microsoft Office 365: More apps that can make a difference

Following on from our recent look at the sheer range of applications for business within the Microsoft 365 environment, we are going to finish by looking at some of the household names. The apps that everyone will be familiar with, along with one or two of the fascinating supporting cast. The little known ones you might not know as well, but which can definitely help your business perform at its best.

Office staple apps

Word and Excel combined to form the backbone of most people’s needs when it comes to Microsoft Office. They are familiar, comfortable and intuitive to use. However, they can still surprise us occasionally.

A lot of users don’t realise that Word can be a powerhouse tool for collaboration. The Co-Authoring feature allows users to work on documents stored in SharePoint or Onedrive with anyone, anywhere. Simply by clicking on the share icon and adding the email addresses of the people they want to work with, users can collaborate on documents in real-time.

Without doubt, Excel is the ‘go-to’ app for anyone working with spreadsheets. The ‘smart lookup’ function is just one of its (often overlooked) powerful features.

Right-clicking a cell in Excel and selecting the smart lookup function launches Bing to search the internet for information on whatever the cell contains. Useful for researching everything from financial data to rates of inflation.

Communication apps

Relied on by so many people every day to talk, plan tasks, arrange or confirm meetings and anything else you can think of, Outlook has everything we need to do business. For those who like to stay organised though, this can often involve an array of open tabs and windows as files are downloaded, calendars updated and contacts contacted.

Fortunately, that can all be done from your inbox, simply by selecting the drop-down menu in the Outlook inbox. From there contacts can be added, calendar entries pencilled-in and emails assigned to certain days just by dragging them onto the calendar icon.

Yammer is for many, the ideal way to add private, secure social media to their business. Users can connect, engage and share thoughts and ideas across their business, staying informed and creating a sense of community as well as sharing resources or simply saying thanks.

Think of it as similar to your business’ own private Twitter network.

Discovery

Delve is accessed through a browser, it’s a cloud-based platform ideal for remote working across an array of devices and forms a useful hub for users and their colleagues. Invaluable for files, for collaboration or even enterprise networking.

Delve fills the user’s own personal space with things they might find useful, or if preferred, users can search and choose their own content. Delve keeps those things private by default, only sharing the content and resources that are chosen.

Tracking user data and overseeing efficiency and productivity are vital parts of a successful team. MyAnalytics gives a detailed overview of the time spent performing different tasks, hours worked and things such as attending meetings or working late.

Reports and dashboards give important insights into business processes, team configurations and business productivity with a powerful automation tool helping to place focus right where it’s needed.

Presentations

Teaching, making compelling proposals and pitching ideas are all possible with PowerPoint, with rich presentations that look great with little need for expertise or specialised knowledge. Users even have the potential to add audio to slides, such as voiceovers, effects or soundtracks.

Sway is a niche app for many, but it allows users to create content-rich, visually appealing designs for things such as reports, web pages and newsletters. Content can be dragged in from a range of sources and users can even add forms, slideshows or image stacks for viewers to click through like a retro photo pile.

Sharing video content safely and securely, for tasks such as learning, presenting and meetings is easy with Stream. It has the potential to become an organisation’s very own video hub, at a time when so many rely on remote solutions, Stream is one of the most useful.

To discover more about how we use Microsoft 365 to support our clients, why not book a slot for a free discussion with me here.

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