Like it or not Office 365 has taken the business world by storm. Yes, Google has G-Suite which is an awesome product as well. But for most professional services, Microsoft still dominates.
In this article, you will learn 3 of the best apps included with Office 365 that are rarely mentioned and can drive some real efficiencies in your day to day work tasks.
The one app we love the most, has to be Microsoft Teams – we’ll get to exactly why we love it so much further down the page.
Increase productivity in the office by looking into how Office 365 can help you.
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1. Microsoft Bookings
You’ve probably come up against this issue on a weekly if not a daily occurrence. Attempting to schedule a meeting, appointment or something else time bound with someone else.
Email 1 “Hey John – we need to meet when would be a good time?”
Email 2 “3 pm Wednesday.”
Email 3 “Sorry I can’t do that time – what else?”
Email 4 “How about 10am Monday?”
Email 5 “Can’t do then either, how about Friday 11am?”
Email 6 “Sorry I can’t.”
You know exactly how this goes – eventually, you’ll find a date, but it’s a massive time suck organising appointments, and it fills up your inbox.
This is where Microsoft Bookings can help.
Microsoft Bookings synchronises with your Outlook calendar in Office 365. You can then send your contacts a personalised web link that they can use to book time in your calendar. You’ll receive an email notification of the booking, and it will automatically be added to your calendar.
It’s a fairly flexible app where you can get really detailed on the length of bookings that can be made and when in the day a reservation can be made.
Such a simple solution to a real-world problem.
2. Microsoft Flow
Microsoft Flow is an automation tool that acts like glue between apps in both Office 365 and the other online services.
Microsoft has many out the box templates that allow you to create “flows” within 2 minutes.
Here are some examples:
Take a picture with your phone and Flow will convert any of the text in the image to an email. Get the template here.
Automatically save email attachments to OneDrive. This to me is something that should standard in Office 365 but is not! There’s a flow for it right here.
Get daily email reminders using Flow. This one’s not for everyone, but if you’re forgetful, then it may come in handy. Check it out here.
For a full list of automations, take a look at the flow template page here.
3. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is very similar to another online product called Slack. However because Teams is part of Office 365, you’ve got access to almost all other Microsoft services and Apps right out of the box.
Its main functionality is a chat facility. The chat window comes with full file integration with SharePoint.
Other great features include the ability to invite contacts outside your company to a Microsoft Team. This can be useful for customers or suppliers if you are involved in a project or are having to collaborate and exchange files.
We’ve only just scratched the surface here. We could go into great detail on what Microsoft Teams but we’re going to close with this:
If you want to find out more about any of these Microsoft Apps and how they can help your business become more efficient, then please contact us here.
