office 365 – Page 2 – STL

Formerly named Business Productivity Online Suite, Office 365 sees the introduction of a host of cool features that have the potential to increase your company’s productivity.

With the ability to take your Office suite and put it onto the cloud, there’s huge scope for businesses to work more efficiently. Your Office can be accessed anywhere on a number of devices, including tablets and smartphones.

So, without further ado, here are 36.5 amazing features that’ll help you get the most from your Office 365 subscription:

1. Security

Working on the cloud can be a concern for security conscious businesses. With Exchange server hosting, it continually scans for viruses and malware. Now, you can sleep safe at night in the knowledge that your email will not be compromised.

2. Cost

Office 365 offers a range of packages, designed to fit around your business needs. With everything included, it won’t cost you more than £15 per user, per month (£150 per year). You’ll probably spend more than that on biscuits for the office.

3. Everything Included

Included in your £15 per user, per month, you’ll get access to pretty much everything you’d want, including: Subscription to the Office Suite across 5 devices, Office Web Apps, Office Mobile Apps, Hosted Email, Web Conferencing, Public Website, Spam & Malware Protection, and guaranteed 99.9% Uptime.

4. Work with the tools that you know

That’s right: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher and Lync are all available as web apps.

5. Compatibility

Regardless of whether your employees prefer using devices running Windows 7 or later, or Mac OS X, they’ll be able to run Office 365.

6. Cleaner, standardised navigation

Say goodbye to clutter and hello to a smooth user experience. With web apps mirroring much of the desktop application’s functionality, integration is seamless.

7. Access your suite anywhere, on any device

Although late to the tablet scene and with a relatively small portion of the smartphone market, Microsoft recognises the need for its products to be available and fully functioning on a number of devices. Yes, that includes iPhone, Samsung Galaxy Note, iPad, Surface Tab and many more. Optimised for touch, a number of cool navigation tools are available to tablet & smartphone users.

8. Great for small businesses

Office 365 offers 5 packages to suit your personal and business needs: Home Premium, Small Business Premium, Pro Plus, Enterprise & University. With up to 50 users able to be registered, small businesses can save money on unlimited packages such as Pro Plus and Enterprise and only pay for the services they need.

9. Money back guarantee

As mentioned in #3, Microsoft guarantee 99.9% uptime, but if by some miracle, there is a problem with the server which causes more than 0.1% downtime over the course of the year, it’s refund time.

10. On cloud nine

With no clunky servers taking up space in your office, you can trust Microsoft to safely store the majority of your data on the cloud.

11. Service Status dashboard

Your IT manager will have access to a service status dashboard, showing them the performance of your services. If anything goes awry, they’ll be the first to know and can hopefully sort things before catastrophe strikes.

12. On & Offline Working

Sync your content in SharePoint and save it to your desktop with SkyDrive Pro. With your documents just a few clicks away, you can work both on and offline. Your files will be updated soon as you have an internet connection.

13. It’s the professional choice

Regardless of the device that your recipient is viewing your content, it’s guaranteed to render beautifully.

14. 24 / 7 IT support

It’s all in the name really, Office 365. But not confined to Office hours, highly trained support staff are on hand in community forums to answer any questions that you may have.

15. Quickly schedule meetings

It’s never been easier to schedule meetings with the latest updates to Outlook. Save time not asking everyone to check their calendars and increase office productivity.

16. IM, Video & Demonstrations

Lync offers a Google+ hangout style service, enjoy instant messaging & even give demonstrations showing your desktop.

17. “Lync” up with more than your colleagues

Invite business contacts via email and start sealing deals with the simplicity of Lync.

18. Change your presence status with Lync

Much like Skype, but not Skype, you can let your colleagues know whether you’re available for contact. After all, there’s little more frustrating than being interrupted every two minutes when you’re working on a project.

19. Personalise your profile photo

More than just a profile picture, your Lync display photo is the face of you, your company and all that it stands for. You can synchronise this with a variety of social networks, online or choose an image from your desktop.

20. Record a chat session on Lync

A special feature of Lync is the ability to record conversations. Perfect for reviewing a meeting or taking additional notes later on.

21. Keep tabs on employees with Lync

Twinned with Lync, Outlook offers the ability to check the availability of colleagues and instantly connect with them with Lync integration.

22. More ways to stay in touch

Aside from Lync, Outlook is a great way to communicate online, especially with the integration of social networks.

23. Create a team alias

In the Outlook web app, select Home > Options > Groups. Click New under Public Groups I Own. Then under Display Name enter an alias for your team. Add new members by selecting Membership > Add > Select Members.

24. Rich Outlook functionality

Mirroring the desktop version, the web application offers many of the same features, including right click access to a number of functions.

25. SharePoint: share your stuff

Upload and publish content to SharePoint and easily share it with colleagues and business partners via a number of channels.

26. Stay on top of projects

Utilise SharePoint, Outlook and MS Project to the max and ensure that projects are kept in line and that deadlines are met.

27. Powerful admin page allow support staff to manage SharePoint, Lync & Exchange users

Administrators are able to configure SharePoint online in a number of ways. Giving permissions for external clients to access your account is a great feature.

28. Sophisticated sharing

Save and Send navigation gives you the option to email, save to web, save to SharePoint, send by IM or (for MS Word) publish as a blog post.

29. Stay connected with team site

Set up a new team site in minute s and collate your team email, documents, meeting notes and more.

30. Create a wiki

Capture and share information in one handy place, your team site. With your whole team’s knowledge in one place, productivity is sure to improve.

31. Build aesthetically pleasing sites

Whether it’s an intranet or an internet site, there’s a set of handy design tools available within team site to help you build great websites.

32. Smartphone security

Putting security first with mobile devices, IT managers can create passwords and control some hardware features for added security. No need to worry when a colleague misplaces their tablet.

33. Easy to get started

Designed with business in mind, you’ll find no complicated set up processes which means that your team can get to work straight away.

34. Work together simultaneously on Web Apps

Get things done, quick smart, with multiple users able to access and simultaneously edit using web apps. Great for Excel & PowerPoint documents, where each user can clearly see where another has made changes.

35. It’s the complete package

With everything included in your subscription price, you need not worry about having to download further applications such as Google Drive, Dropbox or Skype.

36. Upgrade deals

Some upgrade offers are available for those that have purchased previous versions within certain time frames.

Whether you’re familiar with the Microsoft Office suite or not, Office 365 boasts a number of benefits to your company, from simultaneous editing in web apps to 24 / 7 IT support, you’re in safe hands storing your data on the cloud.

36.5 Support 365.25 days of the year

Plus, half a reason to join the Office 365 bandwagon is that its subscription runs for the calendar year, great for leap years – you’ll get an extra day’s productivity.

What’s your favourite feature of Office 365?

Want to use Word, PowerPoint or Excel like a pro? Attend one of STL’s training courses available London and UK wide. To see ms+office+version+differences, take a little look at our infographic, What’s In & What’s Out in Office 2013.

We’re constantly looking for ways to increase productivity. The normal 9-5 no longer exists and you find yourself constantly managing content on the move outside of your ‘regular’ working hours. Of course the ability to save documents on a flash drive or locally on your laptop hard drive has been an effective, and mobile, way to edit your content on the move. However its now commercially evident that cloud-based services are growing stronger and becoming more trusted by the day, as seen by Nasuni’s 2013 infographic.

In this article I am going to look at Microsoft’s Office Web Apps and whether or not they are a suitable alternative to editing locally.

Functionality

When on the move the last thing you want is a frustrating interface that makes you want to hurl your expensive tablet down the aisle of the train. So let’s take a look at the interface of Microsoft’s Web Apps.

For those who are sharing a document that needs to be regularly updated, the web app feature that SkyDrive offers is a fantastic solution for those invested in Microsoft’s ecosystem. For example, if you are composing a report at home on your desktop machine using Word 2013 you can easily upload the file directly to SkyDrive. However on the way to work the next day you realise it needs to be updated to take into account an email you received in the morning. By simply logging into your SkyDrive account you are able to open your file and amend it immediately in any browser.

If you have uploaded an Office produced file you can also input data on the move, which automatically saves for any shared parties to view immediately. The only slight downside however is it’s navigation layout compared to its desktop counterpart. Functionality seems to be completely ignored from SkyDrive’s iOS and Android applications. Although you are able to view and upload content through the application it doesn’t allow users to edit the content directly. You can use the browser in your mobile device, however trying to add data into a tiny field on a small screen is extremely frustrating.

You have the ability to upload and view content but not to edit.

So let’s consider the other side of the coin, using Office desktop software. With netbooks and compact laptops users are taking their home machines with them to work. This allows much more functionality when it comes to using software such as Office 2013. Not only do the desktop versions allow easier navigation but they also allow the user to access more formatting features. There has always been an argument in the digital community as to whether producing content on the move is practical, an example of which can be seen in an interview with the late Steve Jobs on All Things Digital. So I am not entirely convinced many people actually prefer to generate content on the move, as opposed to creating content in their office or at home on the desktop version Office 2013.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0AZLPqjpkg&start=2840]

Connectivity

How easy is it for a group of people, your colleagues or friends, to edit one single document on a variety of devices? And more importantly do you have to already posses a advanced level of technical knowhow to operate its software or web app interface?

To answer the first question, very. It’s clear that Microsoft have taken the user interface and need for interconnected services very seriously. If you’ve read my previous article on cloud based storage you would have picked up on the Apple’s rival service iCloud’s ability to automatically sync documents to the cloud. When users are operating Office 2013 they clearly have the ability to not only upload their files to SkyDrive but to SharePoint also. This seamless connectivity between desktop and cloud based software blurs the line between any preference most people have between using either or.

To answer the second, no. Immediately SkyDrive’s interface is bold, clear and customisable to the user’s preference. Its simple click and edit system doesn’t cause its users to sit around and wait for his/hers PC to boot up the software. Even with a mediocre ADSL connection the web apps load almost instantaneously, it is worth noting however this is variable depending on your file size you are trying to load.

How much of a priority is it though for those working in a commercial environment to work from web apps alone?

This is quite a difficult question to answer as most people will have a varying experience using cloud based software such as Office Web Apps. However let’s go back to the point I made previously about the ‘regular’ working hours of a 9-5, does that even exist anymore? Being continuously connected to online services can be both a blessing and a curse, it will allow you to be able to complete you job in less time but also bring with it the stress of expectation. And by that I mean your boss may, I’m not saying will, expect you to be able to respond to emails and work on documents remotely at any given time. So you can argue that actually yes, being able to utilize the Office Web Apps is extremely important in our professional lives but may come at a cost…

Not only do we have to consider the need to be connected at all times but also the need to work collaboratively on the cloud. From my experience I have often used SkyDrive to upload an Excel file, where others are able to input data for me to check on a daily basis. From copy writing it also provides sub-editors the ability to look directly at a document and adjust any grammatical or syntax errors much quicker than it would be to contact the author directly. These are just a few examples of the requirement to have a collaborative platform, however how this works on a much larger commercial scale is something we would love to hear from you about.

Do you solely rely on using web apps and the cloud to share and edit your content? Or do you think that you can achieve the same results by working directly on the desktop version?

Want to use Word, PowerPoint or Excel like a pro? Attend one of STL’s training courses available London and UK wide.

Tag: office 365

36.5 Office 365 Features That Will Boost Your Productivity