For most of us Office 365 is a subscription plan which consists of access to Office applications and other productivity services which are permitted over the Internet. These include cloud services like Exchange Online hosted email for business, additional online storage with OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business web conferencing. With cloud services being put on offer, Office 365 has turned out to be so much more, always updated and bringing enterprise-grade services to organizations of all sizes. These services comprise sharing documents, business-class emails and online meetings.
Many of the Office 365 plans also consist of desktop version of the newest Office application which can be easily installed by the users across various computers and devices like Android, tablets, iPad, Macs, Android phones and iPhone. The applications which are fully installed are Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access.
The Office 365 plans which are available online make a good choice for various business needs and they are also compatible with desktop versions of Office 2013, Office 2010 and Office 2007, Office 2016 for Mac, Office 2011 for Mac and Office 2008 for Mac. Ideally, you have made efforts to read and learn all about Office 365 but there is a lot more to Office 365.
Office 365 Mail Usage Patterns
What Tools does Office 365 offer?
Office graph: Office graph is a back-end cloud based tool offered by Microsoft Office 365 Suite which enables search across combined applications and also applies machine learning to content use and organizational interactions. It tracks content interaction by using machine learning to draw connections between people, content and activity and that also within an organization. Delve is a tool which benefits office graph by predicting the files you may be searching for and find them before you even search for them.
Office 365 groups: Office 365 groups are common work places where group members can get things done jointly. When you create a group in Office 365 groups it generates a shared inbox, a separate place to share and save files & group notes, group calendar and planning tools. The Office 365 Groups also provides an access to other services like Dynamic CRM and Power BI. The themes which are based on the Group’s image primary color are also available in the Outlook Groups mobile app and your favorite browser. So, when you create a group Office 365 products will be automatically attributed to that group and you as a team can pick and choose the products which suit your needs. You might initially start with few products but may also add more products later.
Office: You are already familiar with the typical Office Suite which allows you to open and edit documents you want to work on. The Office client is also included by Office 365 plans in the subscription
Outlook: Outlook provides an optimized email and collaboration experience. As you step forward in the process of Office 365 it gets necessary to split the functionality of mail and calendar into two.
SharePoint: It is usually used to build Extranets, Intranets and to collaborate Team Sites for people to work together smartly. In case of planned Enterprise Content Management (ECM) deployments, the SharePoint also consist of Workflows and many more features.
OneNote: OneNote Online allows you to take notes online in OneNote notebook which can be added from anywhere and can be easily shared with other members of the organization. All the Office 365 users in the organization can view and edit the note to some extent using Office Online. This tool also enables you to work as a team within a notebook, saving a lot of your time.
Skype for Business: Commonly known as Lync, Skype for Business is a tool within the Microsoft Office 365 suite which allows instant messaging and online audio/video meetings. It allows you to chat with your colleagues or clients across the office or country. The Skype for Business also consist of a broadcast feature which allows up to 10,000 attendees to view the feed.
One Drive for Business: One Drive for Business permits you to work with your files with a personal document library for storing all your files. Apart from this, it also enables an individual to have a look at all the new Group Files from a single location. Even when you do not have an internet connection, the Sync Office Tool allows you to continue your work.
Yammer: Yammer is an organization’s private social network which helps the employee of your organization to collaborate on files, start conversations and organize projects saving a lot of time. With Yammer, teams can set up meeting appointments by using Outlook and can also access OneDrive for Business to create a collaborative document.
Delve: It is intended to enable Personal Search and Discovery of content for Office 365 users. Delve helps users to find relevant information across Microsoft products which are associated to Delve via Office 365. Providing individuals an easy-to-use interface to tell stories, Delve is in proximity to the Office 365 Blogging feature. The user can also see colleague’s profile and suggested- content feed using this tool.
Power BI: It converts the data of your company into rich visuals so that you can collect and organize the data instantly and can focus on what matters the most for your organization. The Power BI organizes your data whether you have it in SharePoint, SQL or even in an Excel file.
Planner: Planner offers an organization a simple and visuals enabled way to organize teamwork. With planner, an organization can share files, create new plans, organize and assign tasks, chat and can also get the latest updates. Planner helps in organizing your team more effectively. Being a card based task manager, it allows you to organize your tasks into cards and show their progress by moving them into appropriate columns from left to right.
Power Apps: With Power Apps you can create workflow on your content stored in different data sources even if the sources are OneDrive for Business and SharePoint. You can also create mobile apps which not only connect and talk to SharePoint but also with other Office 365 products.
Video portal: It allows an organization to store all the video content and stream it on devices and browsers automatically. You just need to create channels and upload the video, rest you can leave to the Video Portal as it leverages Media Services to do all the difficult part. You can also record your videos with mobile apps and send them directly to the right channel.
Calendar: With outlook calendar, you can organize events and meetings and keep a record of all of them.
For an organization that has a unique mix of email requirements, IT staff and technical expertise, the updated version of Office 365 is definitely a plus. The newly added tools make your work, communication and sharing much easier. Although, with several new products arriving in the Office 365 suite every quarter, understanding this powerful suite in its entirety can become a bit overwhelming. However, a certain idea about each one can help you unveil the potential of all these powerful tools that you have at your disposal.