Uniting workforces with Microsoft Office

Through its many suites Microsoft has provided a variety of ways that you can keep in touch with your colleagues.

One of the most popular applications is its MS Outlook, which is integrated into several products offered by the company.

This programme allows you to organise your messages into files so you can quickly find and respond to relevant emails. For example, you may have put all correspondence relating to the sales figures of your company into recognisable sections via Colour Categories.

In addition, you can use the software's Instant Search function to call up messages that contain keywords, such as 'sales figures August'. MS Outlook allows you to keep correspondence with your colleagues flowing and important information can be quickly relayed to the relevant people.

Another product that forms part of some MS Office suites is the SharePoint Server. This is often combined with MS Outlook in order to provide a central location for data that you wish to bring to the attention of your fellow workers.

For example, if you are leading a team and wish them to know when you will not be available, you can upload information held in Outlook's calendar regarding your booked holidays or other events.

SharePoint Servers can also feature a host of different information, such as spreadsheets, which can help to update workers on current projects. Passwords can be integrated into servers in order to boost security so sensitive data is safeguarded.

MS Access is another programme that can help to unite your workforce and share information about your company.

This comprehensive programme is a great product that sees you adding many different types of data, such as databases, spreadsheets, photos, and text, which you wish to keep together for either your own purposes or for publication to servers such as SharePoint.

Another product that makes up several MS Office 2007 suites is OneNote. This application is ideal for you if you quickly need to bring emails and content to the attention of your colleagues.

Instead of messages being sent into Outlook inboxes, or published on an intranet server via SharePoint, you can instead create a OneNote document.

This programme can help boost collaboration and communication among teams as important data and information is sent to a dedicated document rather than ending up on a large server or busy inbox, which may lengthen the time that colleagues respond to, or pick up, messages.

Instead, this software sees you creating a shared notebook in which you can place important announcements and data that can impact your business.

If you have already created a personal notebook you will find that the shared kind is used in a similar fashion. However, this dedicated space gives your colleagues the opportunity to catch-up on recent news and respond quickly to developments.

You can make the files as in-depth or as simple as you wish, depending on how much information you would like to be held on the OneNote document.

For instance, it is possible to create a welcome page complete with a rundown of the contents of the files, so workers can easily locate messages.

As well as reading uploaded content, your colleagues will also be able to add and adjustment information on the files if necessary.

This programme can also utilise the SharePoint Server, so any data that you place on OneNote documents is easily relayed to those in your company.