Microsoft 365 is one of the most comprehensive cloud solutions on the market. It includes Office 365, Azure, and more. But it doesn’t stop there: Microsoft 365 also includes tools that aren’t as well-known as Outlook, Word, and Excel. These tools are valuable additions to your business, as they can help improve your customers’ experience or save your team time. In this post, I’ll show you how lesser-known MS365 tools can benefit your business by improving effectiveness, efficiency, and saving money in the long run!
• Viva Insights (Microsoft) complements Microsoft Teams by providing insights and analytics on employee engagement and productivity in the platform. Key benefits include the ability to identify areas for improvement for teamwork, track progress on goals, and understand how employees are using Teams.
For example, by analyzing employee data during meetings, Viva Insights could identify that some team members are not actively participating and that meetings do not appear to be effective in solving problems or achieving team goals. The recommendation could therefore be to schedule more frequent and shorter meetings to encourage active participation of all members and faster resolution of problems.
• Forms (Microsoft or Google) is used to create surveys, quizzes or collect data from employees, customers or other stakeholders. It can be used to gather feedback, measure satisfaction, or evaluate knowledge. Forms is also used to capture people’s information to create a list.
• Bookings (Microsoft) or Appointment Schedule (Google) allows you to schedule appointments or bookings directly through your organization’s website or email. It can be used to schedule appointments with employees, clients, book resources, or schedule events. At Improov, we transitioned from Calendly to Bookings with ease.
• Planner (Microsoft) allows teams to organize and assign tasks, track progress, and collaborate on projects. It can be used to create plans, organize and assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. Some also use Trello, Asana or Monday.com.
• PowerAutomate (Microsoft) or Google WorkSpace Automation is a platform for creating and automating workflows across different applications and services. It can be used to automate repetitive tasks, create custom workflows, and integrate with other applications and services. Benefits include increased productivity and efficiency, improved data accuracy and consistency, and reduced human error.
An example of an automation that could be created with Power Automate is a workflow that automatically saves email attachments to a SharePoint folder.
Now that you know some of the tools in MS365 and Google Workspace, are you ready to start using them? Otherwise, do not hesitate to reserve your place at our next training which gives an overview of Microsoft 365 in business.