Microsoft 365: 9 Ways Which Can Help you Improve Workplace Productivity

Microsoft 365 is a subscription based package which includes Business productivity tools, Exchange Email services, Cloud Storage, and Teams for Collaboration.

With the Internet making business faster and more efficient, team collaboration, communication, and decision making have become much easier.  Work should be done in a way that reduces the time and effort put together, thus increasing the efficiency and effectiveness.

Below are few mentioned ways in which Microsoft 365 will help you improve your productivity-

1. Real Time Collaboration with Online Office Tools: Microsoft 365 offers Online office tools, like  Word,  Excel, PPT through which you can collaborate in a real time environment, for example, you are working on any document in which you need inputs from other team members. Instead of reaching out personally for the inputs, or mailing them, you can just share the document and get the work done in the easiest possible manner. You can also check the version history for any changes made and restore the version in case the changes made are not upto your expectations. While sharing the document, the control resides in your hand, where you can set an expiration date of the document, set a password, and allow editing to few members. In circumstances where people need to be ready to work from anywhere, this comes in as a feature much required.

2. Online Office Tools Which Get Automatically Saved: In Microsoft 365 Online office tools, the documents get automatically saved in your drive storage, in case the internet connection gets interrupted. That is a very important feature, which saves a lot of time which may otherwise be invested in trying to recover the documents or starting from scratch.

3. Mobile Applications of Features: Microsoft offers Mobile application of outlook, word, excel, PPT, Teams, Sharepoint, Yammer, and Microsoft 365 admin, hence making it easier to work from even Mobile devices. You can control all the users as well, from a mobile application.

4. Cloud Based Shared Storage with Sharepoint: Sharepoint in Microsoft can be well used as a document management system, where you can arrange your documents and keep them in a well structured format. You can create Intranet sites which can be accessed by the people of your organisation, and they can get access to documents, which results in less dependency on other team members and also reducing any delays due to those dependencies.

5. Team Collaboration through Microsoft Teams: When a group of people is working on a project together, they can effectively collaborate in Microsoft Teams. In Teams you can create Teams and also channels within Teams. Channels help to create sub Teams within a particular Team. Teams is a hub for teamwork where you can have one to one chat, discussion within Teams, share relevant documents, conduct meetings with a maximum of 250 people joining together. You can even record meetings.

6. Data on Cloud: Microsoft 365 offers 1 TB of One drive Cloud storage in basic plans, where you can keep your documents, and access those from anywhere. With Exchange email services, your mails are on cloud and you can access them from anywhere, hence enabling you to stay in touch with your business partners, customers, colleagues, and vendors through mails even when you are travelling or you are out of office. Also, you get 50 GB of active mailbox and 50 GB of Archive storage for your mails, which if is exhausted, you can upgrade the plan or add additional archival storage. Also, you can easily navigate through, or search any mails through advanced search and customize your mail flow at user end from Online Outlook Setting.

7. Integrate Teams with Other Applications: Microsoft Teams allows you to integrate other third party applications present in the market with your Teams. App integration enables you to be on a single platform and access all the resources at one place, eradicating the need of toggling between platforms and apps. 

8. Security Offered from Microsoft: Your email is protected against spam, malware, and known threats with Exchange Online Protection hence, helping you to work without worrying about any type of data breach and theft. You Control who and when someone has access to your business information with security groups and custom permissions. Admin can also Create password policies that require users to reset their passwords after a specified number of days. 

9. Plan your Team Workflow with Planner, To Do: Through Planner and To Do, you can automate workflow within a Team by assigning tasks to team members and get the work done by setting up timelines.

There are other benefits of having Microsoft 365 as a mailing and collaboration platform for your organization apart from mentioned above depending upon the plan, which will enable you to work more efficiently and will help you to be more productive at your workplace, just at a subscription cost of Monthly or Annual. It reminds me of the saying  “ If you have proper tools, the work becomes much easier “.