Boost productivity, save time and improve your customer experience
Most of the time businesses have Microsoft 365 to make use of the well-known tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams. But did you know your M365 account includes a whole lot more?
We’re going to run through 10 apps that are part of M365 that you may not be aware of. You may even find that they are just what you need to save you some time or improve customer experience. Let’s take a look…
Planner
There are so many project planning apps the choice can be overwhelming. But you have one already… Planner.
Easy to use and not lacking in features, you can make plans and manage entire projects. Create your task, then create your team for that task along with to do lists. Then you can assign individual tasks to your team members. Planner will even show you your progress by means of a chart so you can see how close you are to completion. There is also direct file sharing by means of integration with other apps. Perfect.
Bookings
It does exactly what it says on the tin. It allows you to make appointments or schedule meetings. This is not just for your internal team but for your clients or potential clients too. Send the link, they select a time and date that suits them, then its added to your Outlook calendar for you.
Bookings can also be embedded into your website for prospects to book a meeting or appointment.
Power Automate
Save yourself time from the repetitive tasks you do over and over again by automating those processes. Power Automate connects to your other Microsoft 365 apps and allows you to create workflows. It can connect your various M365 applications that you use, allowing them to communicate with one another.
These workflows can be quickly and easily created and allow for automation such as:
- Remind users of daily, weekly or quarterly actions
- Archive and organise documents
- Automatically save email attachments to a OneDrive folder
- Post a message to teams when a new task is created in Planner
And much, much more.
These automations free up time and remove the risk of human error.
Power Apps
Power Apps gives people the tools they need to create mobile apps for internal business use without the need for code.
It can be used to:
- Take away the mundane manual entry of data
- Improve customer experience by pushing out alerts to them
- Create a “one drop” app to share files across multiple platforms in one go
- Provide image processing functionality
- Create an interactive helpdesk for users to submit their tickets
And again, much more.
SharePoint
A collaborative tool that allows you to create websites for your business (a bit like an intranet) where you can securely store, organise and share information. Its customisable so you can add your company logo and colour scheme and make it yours.
Yammer
A social networking tool for within your organization. Great for building a workplace community, it can be used to create polls, share news and updates and start discussions. It can also be integrated with Teams.
It can help employees get answers to their questions quickly when they don’t know specifically who to ask. It’s great for informal employee training and it allows for teams to showcase their achievements.
Sway
A bit like PowerPoint, Sway allows you to create presentations, interactive reports, newsletters and more. Although not as flexible when it comes to design, this makes it easier to produce professional looking presentations and documents in a short amount of time. Content can also be pulled from other sources. Best used for presentations that the user guides themselves through, rather than one that is presented to an audience.
Stream
Your business’s internal YouTube where you can upload, create and share videos. It could be recordings of meetings, presentations or training sessions to name just a few. You can restrict who can view those videos, for example by department.
To Do
We all need a to do list. So Microsoft have provided a tool for you to create one. Write your list, prioritise your tasks and break down tasks into simple steps. Add notes and information to each task along with due dates and reminders. See what’s to be completed and what’s already done. Share your list with others.
It works well with many of the other Microsoft 365 apps and is available on mobile and desktop.
Clarity
Clarity provides useful insights into how people are using your website. Heatmaps and session recordings allow you to see exactly where people are spending time on your website. See what people are clicking, what they are ignoring and how far they scroll. Clarity will help you improve your website for the benefit of your business and your visitors.
These are our 10 favourite hidden apps that are part of Microsoft 365. Some of these already included as part of your subscription and some an additional cost. Used though as a way of time saving, boosting productivity, improving customer experience or enhancing sales they should be seen as an investment.
If you would like to see how you can make better use of the Microsoft 365 apps available, get in touch with us.
