Microsoft’s latest move to the cloud has seen all of its Office programs make their way online. The software giants are also offering a not inconsiderable discount for students attending and going into university. This means that it will soon be in your interest to upgrade to Office 365, if you haven’t already, as your workforce begins to expect it.
This shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing however. This new offering comes with some very useful features and benefits that you can harness to your company’s advantage. First and foremost, the fact that Office is now running in the cloud means that Microsoft is now taking a lot of the burden for maintaining that software and, more importantly, security. This frees up your IT staff to do other, more essential, work and gives your administrators a deeper understanding of exactly what is going on with the software.
A quick warning, if you’re running Windows XP (and if you are, you need to think about updating), then you won’t be able to install the local files for Office 365 (Office 2013) and will have to rely on the web-based service.
Keep it simple
Simplicity has been put at the top of the bill. Microsoft has made it clear that it wants to improve the productivity of Office users, and for Microsoft, that means making Office easier to use. This loops back to the cloud again, as cloud integration means that each piece of software plays nicely with all the other pieces, as well as being accessible to users across multiple devices.
Access from any device is another big deal for modern businesses, especially with the rise of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives. If company software and information is stored in the cloud, then there’s no need to worry about whether an employee’s device can handle that software. All they need is an internet connection and they will be able to access Office 365 from any device with a browser.
Lost in the cloud
For those who might be concerned that this latest iteration of Office may have discarded some of their features, there’s little to worry about. The software has seen very little obvious change from its predecessor, other than the new (and very useful) addition of cloud connectivity.
However, it has been noted that leaping directly only to cloud can sometimes be more of a hindrance than you’d think. If you’re a medium or large sized company, then suddenly uploading every one of your employees’ information to the cloud could cause chaos if they don’t know where to look and how to sort their own work from that of their colleagues.
For this reason, it might be wise to instead implement a hybrid adoption of Office 365, where you use the cloud for important files that everyone needs access to as well as any new files that are being added. By keeping older, less essential files on-site then you reduce confusion and ensure that your staff has time to acclimatise to the new system before completely adopting Microsoft’s cloud storage as your go-to system.
Tricks and Tips
365 has come with all sorts of useful features which, if you educate your employees adequately, can increase efficiency within your business. Quite often these are organisational, using cloud integration to make more information visible to those who need it, but there are benefits for the individual worker as well:
Sharepoint
This program is really what Office 365 revolves around. It serves as the infrastructure for information sharing. If you are not using Sharepoint, then you aren’t using 365 correctly. Fortunately, 365 is designed in such a way that it is almost impossible not to use it once you start saving your work to the cloud and sharing it.
Instant Messaging in Outlook
IM within Outlook now means that your employees can now quickly shoot each other questions that don’t necessarily warrant an email of their own. This means that quick questions that only need a quick answer aren’t buried beneath more important emails. Instead your staff can fire off quick answers to one another in no time at all.
Share Calendars
This is a very handy feature, as employees are able to share their calendars and timetables with one another, making it so much simpler for each employee to plan their day. Even if they are unable to get in touch with one another directly, an employee using 365 can compare their calendar to that of the person they want to meet and then create a booking which works for both of them.
Scheduling Assistant
Leading on from the previous tip, this button in Outlook allows you to look up the people you want to meet and compare availability. This feature is invaluable in planning meetings with more than one person and should save employees a huge amount of time.
Recover Deleted Items
Sometimes accidents happen in the workplace and files are lost or deleted. Office 365 has a couple of systems in place to make recovery of those files easier.
There’s a lot to love about Office 365, and for a company looking to begin moving its business to the cloud, might well serve as an excellent starting point, as well as an invaluable organisation tool for everyone in the company, from entry level roles right through to management. The recent news that 365 will be available on iPad has made the software that much more desirable for Apple fans too, and it’s likely that this will deter many from shelling out for a Surface tablet once they have the opportunity to use Office on iPad.