Much of doing remote work correctly is picking the right tools. And now more than ever, we’ve a galaxy of options. Still, Microsoft 365 stands out as a remote worker’s Swiss Army knife. Here are 12 reasons why.
Real time document co-authoring
See collaborators’ changes in real time when working in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Everything saves to OneDrive or Sharepoint and version control lets everyone see who made which changes and when.
Within app Teams chat
Complementing the above is the ability to use 365’s collaboration tool - Microsoft Teams - for chatting within your document. Video call, message and share your screen without leaving your document’s application.
To Do
Combined with Teams, this is great for keeping projects on track. It has a vibe and interface similar to Trello and is great for creating to do lists.
Superior video calling
A special note must be made about Teams' video calling. With features such as hosting up to 80 people, blurring your home office background and the option to record/transcribe the meeting, it’s a long way from the old and clunky Skype experience.
OneNote
This neat little app lets team members share their notes easily and keeps them organised. Anything written offline will immediately update as soon as connection is restored.
Mobile Device Manager
Employees accessing company resources from anywhere can be a security risk. 365’s mobile device manager allow's an organisation's IT team to wipe any data if a device gets into the wrong hands or becomes infected with malware. Speaking of security…
Advanced Threat Protection
Covid-19 opportunist scammers are on the prowl. Thankfully, 365’s Advanced Threat Protection is a powerful cloud based email filtering service that provides an extra layer of security for email based attacks.
Multi-Factor Authentication
365 can be set up to ask for both a password and biometric data like a fingerprint scan. Twice the hurdle for hackers.
Office Lens
In our ever paperless world, scanners are becoming rarer. As part of the iOS and Android versions of OneNote, Office Lens serves to turn your phone into a mobile scanner. Ideal for design teams and whiteboarding sessions.
Outlook and Calendar
A full email management system, Outlook also lets you see everyone’s calendar so you can set meetings and view everyone’s availability at a glance. More importantly, it neatly integrates with Teams, allowing for meetings to be broadcast directly into co-workers’ calendars and started with a few clicks.
Work within email
As with Teams, Outlook also lets you access and edit a file directly from your Outlook window. This document will save and update in real time as you and your co-workers make changes. Using SharePoint you can even enable notifications to shout whenever anyone edits a file.
Planner
If you want something a little deeper for managing projects than To Do, Planner lets a project manager create plans, set due dates, organise and assign tasks etc. using email notifications and visual dashboards. It’s basically the project manager’s command centre.
One commonality you might observe is how each feature thrives off its relationship with the rest of Microsoft 365. It’s more than the sum of its parts. So one might say the 13th reason is the cohesion it can provide. All the more important with a distributed workforce.
Speak to a member of the Pensar team today to discover how Microsoft 365 can boost remote work productivity in your business.
