Microsoft Office 365 is a constantly evolving platform. In this update we touch on some of the powerful features available to you as an Office 365 subscriber that you may not be aware of, but can make a significant impact on your productivity.
Getting the most from Office 365
March, 2016 Update
What is Office 365?
Umbrella brand with a range of products & services
Confusingly includes both Consumer and Business ranges
In this presentation we’re just going to focus on a few of the products and services available
Skype for Business
Saving contacts in groups helps keep organised
You can easily engage with people outside your organisation
Various ways of engaging with someone.
Start with chat
Escalate to Voice, Video, etc
It will be possible to replace your entire voice system just with Skype for Business
Video calls let us experience body language, micro expressions, etc
Multiple participants
Schedule a Skype Meeting through Outlook
“Meeting Options” button lets you fine tune your meeting
Options to Present Desktop, Programs, etc
Don’t forget the ‘More…’ selection
Great for engaging participants, particularly in larger meetings
Yammer can be a great tool to improve internal communication and team satisfaction
OneNote is just like a paper notepad with sections and pages
Numerous content types including ‘ink’ for handwriting and drawing
Shareable with real-time updates
All content is fully searchable
OneNote supports OCR of photos or attached images
Office Web Apps are great for quick adhoc editing and collaboration sessions
Office Mobile Apps provide on-the-go access
iPhone, Android & Windows Mobile
Who uses Outlook?
What for?
Power user?
Outlook Web App is useful when not near your own computer
Some extra features such as ‘Sweep’ which creates rules to help keep folders tidy
Sweep creates automatic rules for keeping the chosen folder tidy
Auto Responders are a powerful way of keeping others informed when you won’t be responding to email as usual
Rules – EG: forward specific emails to a co-worked for action in your absence
Outlook Rules can do some amazing stuff to help streamline and automate parts of your workflow
Basic rules can move emails between folders based on simple criteria
More advanced rules can be triggered by a wide range of conditions
Once triggered a rule can execute a number of actions
Idea:- Play the Darth Vader theme song when you receive an email from your boss
Idea:- Print all attachments from an email then file the email automatically
Define any exceptions to the rule
The new way of adding attachments to an email automatically shows the last few documents that you have worked with
Quick Steps can provide a super useful way of executing frequently used actions, such as moving an email to another folder
Clutter provides an artificial intelligence engine that learns what emails you want to see first, and which can be automatically moved to the Clutter folder for later.
Clutter must be enabled/disabled via Outlook Web App, but integrates perfectly with Outlook 2016 on your computer.
Outlook Mobile App has long provided similar functionality to clutter, although here it’s called your Focused Inbox.
Tell Me is a quick way to access features you need, but can’t quite remember where to find them.
Smart Lookup does an internet search on words that you have highlighted.
Sharing documents via the cloud is a great way to avoid version conflicts when working on a document with others.
One possible scenario
Organise a Skype for Business Meeting to work on a report
Everyone joins the meeting via video
Share the document and co-author
Whiteboard ideas & mind maps
Someone joins remotely via a mobile device
Someone else can join via the web apps from the airport lounge