Office 365 becomes Microsoft 365 – even more productive and secure working environment supporting your business anywhere, anytime
On April 21, Office 365 – Microsoft’s set of office productivity tools, officially changed its name to Microsoft 365. The change was driven by the company’s desire to give its users even more productive and secure environment in which they can work independently or team up and share information securely, no matter if they work from home, at the office or on the go.
The name change affects both individual user packages and business plans alike. At the same time, it goes hand in hand with the addition of new features that further enrich the product, making it, in Microsoft’s words, much more than what users used to understand by Office until now. However, these changes will not affect the pricing plans of Office 365.
Much more than just an Office app
Although many users still associate the Microsoft Office suite only with the basic applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, it actually includes a number of other smart and innovative services such as Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Exchange, Yammer, Forms, Stream and other, which facilitate sharing of information, teamwork and increase the overall efficiency of the company. Here is a little more about some of them.
Microsoft Teams
Teams is a comprehensive communication optimization service that Microsoft has been successfully developing in recent years. Teams suddenly become hugely popular as a service in the current isolation and forced remote work. According to the company, over 44 million users use the app on daily basis to communicate. Teams not only supports online meetings, conference calls and presentations, but also greatly facilitates and organizes internal communication.
Available on all devices, Teams greatly facilitates:
- Collaboration
- The solution allows the creation of channels on various topics, departments or projects, in which teams can work together, schedule and hold meetings, share ideas, opinions, news and documents. Team members can co-author shared documents or attach comments and remarks to them.
- Communication anywhere, any time – with Teams you can easily:
- conduct individual or group chats
- turn chats into video conferences with just one click, no matter where the participants are
- hold audio, video and web meetings, conferences and other events with people inside or outside the organization without the need for them to install Teams on their devices. In parallel, the presenters rely on all the necessary tools such as screen sharing, recording events, chatting with participants, creating and sharing notes and much more.
- Daily tasks
- Teams allows integration with numerous Microsoft or external applications the team needs for their day-to-day work
- Makes it easier to access the files you need
- Helps organize and keep track of your daily tasks by synchronizing with your Outlook calendar, reflecting upcoming appointments and events, and scheduling appointments with a few mouse clicks
OneDrive
OneDrive is a secure cloud space for storing documents, multimedia and other files, ensuring that:
- Your files are safe
- You can have anything you need, when you need it
- Share files securely inside and outside your organization with features such as document history tracking, transfer data encryption, setting passwords for shared documents, blocking further sharing, setting access times and more.
No wonder that, according to Microsoft, 85% of Fortune 500 companies rely on OneDrive in their daily work.
SharePoint
SharePoint is your organization’s mobile intranet that makes it easier to:
- share and cooperate with colleagues and partners inside and outside the organization on various topics and projects
- share news, information and useful resources that increase the team’s efficiency and help in its daily work
- discover data or expert opinion that will help in taking the right decision at any time
- automate and facilitate everything from routine tasks to complex business processes, which leads to increased productivity and better results for the company
These and many other applications make Microsoft 365 the go-to solution for modern business helping companies meet the challenges they face. The situation with the Covid-19 pandemic has clearly shown that the way businesses operate is about to change radically. And cloud solutions and services will continue to have a key role in this process.
Want to learn more about Office 365 and how it can boost your team’s productivity?