Skype announced today further integrations into Microsoft’s suite of online tools, with news that access to the communications app is now available while working in Office Online and OneDrive. This is an expansion of the earlier announcement from this past October, which then introduced the ability to use Skype voice and video from Office Online and Outlook.com. Starting now, Microsoft says that you’ll be able to call or chat with friends while using its cloud storage service, OneDrive, both while viewing the contents of online folders or while editing documents directly in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
When using Skype from OneDrive, files open up in Office Online where you can begin to co-edit with Skype’s messaging interface to the right of the screen. When this feature is used, your chat history will remain connected to the document in question and will appear again each time the document is re-opened.
The larger context here is that Microsoft wants to make Skype an integral part of its productivity software, whether that’s in its desktop software, using Office online, or accessing files wherever they may be found – like OneDrive or email, for example.
The news also comes at a time when Microsoft is said to be doubling down on its investment in Skype, having mulled then passed over an $8 billion bid for Slack in favor of its own communications software. Slack has succeeded in claiming mindshare in the business world, to the tune of 2.3 million daily active users – notable growth for the startup.
However, Microsoft Office’s install base dwarfs that – the company said last fall that more than 1.2 billion people use Office, and Outlook.com has over 400 million active users. It makes sense then, that the company believes it can expand Skype’s footprint by way of this large, heavily used productivity suite.
In addition to the announcement of the OneDrive integration, Microsoft also noted that the Outlook.com Skype integration has now completed. Skype is available to all Outlook.com users as of today.
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Wednesdays With Will: Knowledge Is Power
By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
Knowledge is power. This is a saying that you’ve most likely heard at some point in your life. The reason it rings true is because knowledge allows you to maneuver through the different obstacles life throws your way. Knowing how to overcome a particular challenge allows you to keep moving toward your goal. Since we have a finite lifespan, there is only so much knowledge we can individually obtain within that time. One of the reasons we’ve been able to progress as a society has been because of collaboration and sharing knowledge with others. Instead of having to start from scratch each time, we are able to build off of what has been established by our predecessors. All of the advancements in civilization and technology would not be possible if we didn’t share our knowledge and experiences with each other and continue to build from there. The same can be said in the business setting.
Shared knowledge empowers your employees to do things above their individual capabilities. Whether their role is in sales, marketing, or customer service, having the answers they need at their fingertips makes them more efficient internally. When customer facing, having the right answers allows you to establish trust quickly and increase ease of use to do business with your clients. A big challenge for most organizations when hiring a new employee is getting them up to speed as quickly possible. Having a knowledge base available to them can help accelerate this process so they can become a valuable resource sooner than later. This also helps strengthen business continuity and allows your employees to build off of the lessons of their colleagues and predecessors.
There are many ways to go about implementing a knowledge base system within your organization but it can seem a little daunting to start. Like all data, it has very little use unless you know where to find it (stored location), how to pull the information you need from within it (search/query), and a way to properly manage it (governance/updating). It was only logical that Microsoft incorporated a knowledge base system into their Dynamics CRM platform that addresses all of these needs. The same customer relationship management (CRM) system your sales, marketing, and services team uses each day has a customized library where they can store product white sheets, industry specific articles, marketing materials, frequently asked questions (FAQ), or any other information regarding customers, partners, and/or competitors.
Creating new articles for the knowledge base and finding them when you need them has been made easy as well. Colleagues within your organization can collaborate on creating these documents and submit them to a manager for review and approval. If approved, they can then be published by the manager or sent back for revision. Once an article has been published it can then be searched by the individuals or departments within the organization with the proper permissions. Searching for what you’re looking for is very flexible as well. You can find an article by keyword, title, text from within the document or the article number if you happen to know it. Having this many options to find the answer you are looking for improves resolution time and customer engagement.
As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…
About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.
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For more than four years, BetterCloud has bi-annually surveyed thousands of IT professionals, producing some of cloud IT’s richest data. Our goal is to help you make more intelligent business decisions and better understand the landscape of business technology.
Now, we’ve decided to bring our research efforts further into focus by launching an ambitious and ongoing data project. Last month, more than 800 IT professionals and end users participated in the first-ever Trends in Cloud IT Monthly Poll. The following data is a result of that poll and has helped us explore one of the hottest topics in tech: real-time messaging.
Everyone remembers the days of AOL Instant Messenger (affectionately called AIM). In 1997, the simple text-based chat service brought real-time messaging mainstream. Fast-forward nearly 20 years and real-time messaging stands as one of the most powerful tools in business.
Real-Time Messaging Application: A unified communication tool designed to enable high volume and rapid response text-based conversation, while also encouraging enterprise collaboration through file sharing and even video conferencing.
Key Takeaways
The majority of organizations (57%) use two or more real-time messaging applications.
Nearly a quarter of respondents (22%) admit they either don’t know or don’t care whether IT has approved their real-time messaging application.
80% of Skype for Business users, 84% of Google Hangouts users, and 95% of Slack users say communication has improved because of real-time messaging.
56% of respondents believe that real-time messaging will displace email as their organization’s primary workplace communication and collaboration tool.
27% of end users and 23% of IT professionals say some employees are less productive because of real-time messaging.
71% of small-to-medium sized businesses (1-1,000 employees) will not invest in another phone system at all or will not increase their investment.
Usage
In the modern workplace, real-time messaging has become an expectation. Just 13% of our surveyed audience are not using real-time messaging for work purposes.
Contrary to what you might expect, organizations aren’t just using one application. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The majority of organizations we surveyed use two or more real-time messaging applications–regardless of employee count.
Why would an organization need to use multiple real-time messaging applications?
There are several likely reasons, the most obvious being that departments have different needs. Sales teams may need to easily chat and video conference their prospects, which makes Google Hangouts and Skype for Business quality candidates. Engineering teams may need to configure integrations and Slack bots to receive timely information in a group channel rather than clogging inboxes.
Shadow IT (where users use devices and software outside IT’s control) is another reason organizations may have multiple applications, despite each serving similar functions. End users may decide to use an unauthorized application, and over time, as more users begin adopting the application, IT may choose to embrace it instead of stomping out its organic growth.
As we uncovered in our research for our recent 2016 State of Cloud IT Report, organizations are building what we call “heterogeneous environments,” where best-in-breed cloud applications (sometimes with significant overlap) are stitched together regardless of vendor. Organizations may use Slack, Google Hangouts, and Skype for Business, all for unique and necessary purposes. It’s not uncommon (though perhaps not ideal) to pay for two similar services even if only a small minority of users (e.g., your marketing team) uses one of them.
More than 20% of large enterprises (5,001+ employees) use five or more real-time messaging applications.
As your company grows, expect the number of real-time messaging applications in your environment to grow too. This isn’t a phenomenon reserved only for real-time messaging either. We’re seeing this trend unfold in many cloud application categories, from storage and collaboration to project management.
Does an organization really need five real-time messaging applications? In some cases, yes. But no matter what, you need to find a balance between your employees’ productivity and your organization’s security–much easier said than done.
Shadow IT
IT professionals are essentially just as likely as end users to knowingly use unapproved real-time messaging applications. Roughly one in every six people we surveyed uses a real-time messaging application outside of IT’s control. And if you consider that people tend to be less forthcoming when it comes to breaking rules, shadow IT is likely more rampant than our data suggests. In fact, 7% of respondents aren’t even sure if they’re communicating outside of IT’s control. That shows a small, but apparent disconnect between IT and end users.
Just 11% of respondents who call Google Hangouts their organization’s primary real-time messaging application admit to using other unsanctioned real-time messaging applications. Slack and Skype for Business saw higher levels of shadow IT. 23% of Slack users and 24% of Skype for Business users use a secondary real-time messaging application that is unsanctioned by IT.
As an IT professional, you’re more of a target than the majority of end users–leading by example whenever possible is always a best practice.
Communication
Clearly, real-time messaging improves communication for the majority of companies that use it.
What’s most interesting here is how opinions differ between end users and IT professionals. IT professionals are nearly 12% more likely than end users to believe that real-time messaging has improved communication. This suggests that end users either lack training and are not using applications to their full potential, or IT professionals simply overestimate how effective real-time messaging is in their organization.
Surveying your end users will help you find out where they stand and how useful the tools you give them are. Do they need more training? Are they actually using real-time messaging? Is it distracting? With hard data, you can take meaningful actions to improve the end-user experience for your user population.
Behavior
The slight majority (56%) of respondents believe that at some point, real-time messaging will overtake email as their organization’s primary workplace communication and collaboration tool. Interestingly, 5% of respondents already say their real-time messaging application has displaced email.
Still, almost half (44%) of our poll respondents believe that real-time messaging will never displace email.
Email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, regardless of whether or not it’s your organization’s primary means of communication and collaboration. At this point, real-time messaging is an enhancement to email, not a replacement.
Distraction
The benefits of real-time messaging are hard to overlook, but some not-so-positive areas need addressing–primarily distraction. Slack users most commonly spot decreased productivity, but only slightly. The advanced functionality of the Slack platform may be contributing to the loss of productivity. Users can do more like quickly send GIFs or create channels dedicated to non-work related topics, meaning there are more avenues for distraction.
But do the benefits outweigh the loss of productivity? Most likely–95% of Slack users say it has improved communication in their organization.
If real-time messaging has become a distraction, take action before things get out of hand. It may be necessary to roll out company-wide “dark” hours, meaning real-time internal communication is halted completely or restricted to only urgent messages. If the problem is less widespread, simply communicating with your users from time to time may do the trick.
Investment
The growing use of real-time messaging is one of the most significant factors contributing to the trend seen above. Companies are reigning in their phone system investments. If you plan on investing in a new phone system at some point in the future, you’re in the minority.
Real-time messaging, the rise of mobile devices, and the “bring your own device” explosion are all reducing the need for a traditional phone system. A significant portion of IT admins (68%) will either keep their phone system investment the same or will not invest in another phone system at all.
In many modern workplaces, the desk phone is dying. If you’re one of the 32% of respondents who will be rolling out another phone system at some point, don’t be surprised if it’s your company’s last.
Growth
Though we can’t say for sure which of the three real-time messaging applications is gaining the most customers and growing fastest, we can tell you the percentage of new customers for each application among our audience.
The majority of Slack users began using the application within the last year. However, of the three real-time messaging applications we studied, Slack had the smallest number of respondents in our audience.
The vast majority of Google Hangouts and Skype for Business users have been using the application for more than a year. Will Slack continue its apparent rapid growth in the enterprise? Will Google Hangouts and Skype for Business retain users who move to Google Apps and Office 365, or will customers look outside their cloud office system for their real-time messaging needs?
Customers
Hangouts and Skype for Business are nearly identical regarding their customer base distribution. The majority of their customers are small and medium-sized businesses (1-1,000 employees), with the rest split almost evenly between mid-market organizations (1,001-5,000 employees) and large enterprises (5,001+ employees).
The overwhelming majority of Slack’s customers are small and medium-sized businesses. That’s in line with the public perception of Slack. Many view Slack as the agile entrepreneur’s dream and the perfect communication tool for a young startup. However, according to our research, Slack is being used by some large enterprises.
Real-time messaging isn’t just for startups. Mid-market and large enterprises are actually more likely to use a real-time messaging application than small and medium-sized organizations.
Take The Next Trends in Cloud IT Monthly Poll
Trends in Cloud IT is a long-term research project devoted to uncovering accurate and useful information for IT professionals, CIOs, CEOs, and any professional interested in the intersection of business and technology. We promise to provide deep, unbiased analysis, while covering more topics, more often.
Skype Meeting Broadcast is a new component of Skype for Business. As part of Office 365 and Skype for Business Online, Skype Meeting Broadcast lets you produce, host, and broadcast meetings to large online audiences.
How Skype Meeting Broadcast works
You can schedule a Skype Meeting Broadcast for up to 10,000 attendees. You use the Skype Meeting Broadcast scheduling and management portal to schedule a meeting.
You use the familiar meeting experience within Skype for Business to produce a professional, engaging event for their audience. And, attendees can join from anywhere on any device, and engage in the meeting.
Skype Meeting Broadcast roles
There are several roles required for producing a Skype Meeting Broadcast. These include:
Organizer. Creates the meeting request and invites attendees. Reviews meeting reports.
Producer. Manages the meeting sources (live presentations, dial-in presentations, audio, video, and PowerPoint decks), records the event, and posts the recording to Office 365 Video.
Note: Using an embedded video in a PowerPoint presentation is currently not supported in Skype Meeting Broadcast.
Event team member. Participates in the meeting by presenting live or dialing in from a remote location.
Attendee. Watches the event online.
System requirements
System requirements for a Skype Meeting Broadcast
Browser (attendees) - Internet Explorer 11, Chrome, Firefox, OSX Safari, iOS 8 or later, Android (KitKat)
Client - Skype for Business client for Windows (producer, presenter)
For Skype for Business 2015 clients, you must have the September Update, build 15.0.4747 or later
For Skype for Business 2016 clients, you must be using Click-to-Run, build 16.0.4227 or later. (MSI installations only support the presenter role. Producers can join through a different client, as explained in this knowledge base article.
Lync for Mac 2011 (presenter only). See this knowledge base article for more information.
Find your client version information in Skype for Business by clicking Help > About Skype for Business.
Users - On-premises and online
License - You will need one of the following licenses:
Skype for Business Online Standalone Plan 2 (or 3).
Office 365 Business Premium
Enterprise E1, E3, E4 or E5 - which contains the Skype for Business Online Standalone Plan 2 license.
Authentication - On-premises customers must have established an online tenant. You should configure directory sync to make user accounts and DL memberships available to the Skype for Business Azure Active Directory in order to enable user authentication and meeting authorization using group membership.
Skype Meeting Broadcast producers cannot be enabled for modern authentication.
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New Office 365 profiles help people get to know their coworkers
Microsoft has unveiled a new profile page for Office 365 users aimed at making it easier to collaborate at work.
The profile pages, most accessible through Microsoft's Delve product, show a large photo of the worker, along with the files shared between that person and whoever is viewing their profile. The new feature, announced Tuesday, is a way for people to get a sense of their coworkers' responsibilities, even if they don't work in the same office.
An Office 365 user's profile also shows who they work with inside an organization, allowing the viewer to get a sense for how someone else fits into the business.
The new experience replaces a somewhat unwieldy two-page profile that Microsoft currently uses in Delve. Right now, users can see the files that someone else shares with them when they open up that person's profile, but have to switch to a different tab to get contact information.
With the new profile Microsoft is rolling out, the information will be on the same page, along with a button that lets users Skype their coworkers.
When people look at their own profile, they'll see the documents they've worked on recently.
Companies that have opted to get Microsoft's First Release updates for Office 365 will get the new profiles first over the next several weeks, and everyone else can expect to see the pages by the second quarter of this year.
It's all part of Microsoft's continued emphasis on helping people collaborate at work. Office 365 is focused on not only providing standby tools like Word and Excel, but also on new collaboration services that tie them together through features like real-time co-authoring.
As Microsoft faces increased competition with Google, Facebook, Slack and other companies for the workplace productivity business, these sorts of features are increasingly important.
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Wednesdays With Will: Your Mobile Workforce
By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
Over the past 10 or so years, the mobile workforce is a term that has been heralded as the “modern” way of doing business. I always found this amusing because as long as there’s been commerce, the mobile workforce has been around in some form or another. The first example that comes to mind would probably be the door-to-door salesperson. A case can be made that the way we approach the mobile workforce has evolved though. This was typically dictated by the technology of the time.
Many of you may remember when the PalmPilot and Blackberry devices started popping up in the late 90’s. They were innovative for their day but comparing those devices to modern day smartphones makes their capabilities seem very limited. If you think about it though, it set the stage for “business productivity in real life”. No longer were you tethered to a desk or office to perform certain business tasks such as sending and receiving emails or scheduling appointments in your calendar. The technology expanded what we were capable of accomplishing outside of that setting. But it wasn’t about employees becoming more “mobile”. It was about having the ability to interact and collaborate with your colleagues and clients regardless of your location.
The performance of mobile phones in the past 5 year have surpassed these earlier devices in leaps and bounds. Tablets have expanded the mobile platform even further. As mobile devices became more prevalent and, more importantly, the preferred method of accomplishing tasks, solutions are created to accommodate this behavior.
The ability for your Sales, Marketing and Services teams to effectively communicate in real time is imperative for business today. More and more business owners are asking for ways to improve operational transparency. A great way to accomplish this is to leverage a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It’s a great platform for collaboration in the office but more importantly, it’s optimized for mobile use (smartphone, tablet, etc.) when on the go. Two examples would be a salesperson that spends most of their time out of the office talking with potential clients or your professional services team that is usually at a job site. As we discussed earlier, the mobile workforce isn’t a new concept. The most important part is how you empower your employees when they are outside of the office.
As always, I encourage you to reach out to me to discuss these topics in deeper detail. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…
About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
For information on deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM in your organization, please call us at 800-257-0691.
To distinguish Grant Thornton International Ltd (GTIL) from its larger competitors, its member firms must maintain closer relationships with—and deliver personalized attention to—their clients. The independent member firms of GTIL are deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM to facilitate collaboration around sales, marketing, and customer service. The solution has driven an increase in the number and size of sales wins, while helping the firms offer better value to clients and maintain consistency in a complex environment.
In an industry that has long been dominated by the Big Four, the Grant Thornton organization is under constant pressure to differentiate itself from its larger, better-known competitors. To do this, Grant Thornton member firms, which operate in more than 130 countries, offer their clients something the competition cannot: personalized service and closer relationships.
“We are not, nor do we want to be, the biggest accounting organization,” explains Rick Stow, head of Client Relationship Management. “We compete with four much larger firms, so we differentiate by having closer relationships to earn credibility and increase value. We choose to be much more connected to our clients. We need to have a good presence in our local markets if we're going to compete.”
Grant Thornton LLP, which operates in more than 56 offices in the United States, maintained various customer management solutions (including SalesLogix); they lacked visibility into contacts, accounts, and influencers across all employees and practice areas. This sometimes led to duplication of effort and missed opportunities. Further, because account teams were not aware of all interactions with a specific customer, it was difficult to gauge the strength or extent of the relationship. With no way to identify opportunities for cross-selling services, the member firms’ ability to grow the business was limited.
With a single standardized solution, Grant Thornton LLP aims to ensure that the firm—rather than individual employees—maintains the relationship with each contact.
Going mobile
Grant Thornton member firms in the United States, Canada, and Germany currently use Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and on-premises for sales force automation, marketing management, and comprehensive account planning functionality built using the xRM extensibility capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics. In addition, two add-on solutions augment Grant Thornton LLP’s account and customer data with third-party research, including data from InsideView and LinkedIn. Future plans include adding social listening capabilities that will capture additional information from public sources.
The upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 will also allow Grant Thornton LLP to fully exploit the mobile capabilities of the Microsoft Dynamics solution. Today, a handful of people access the system on Windows 8 Surface devices, but because most employees spend a majority of their time outside the office, making functionality available on virtually any device or platform will be key to successful, widespread adoption.
“More and more people are asking for a true ‘app’ experience,” explains Stow. “One of the most appealing aspects of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is the ability to deliver the same experience across multiple platforms. Whether you’re opening a form from within Outlook, from a browser, or on a mobile device, you have access to the information and full functionality.”
Fostering collaboration
Finding ways to foster collaboration among accounting and advisory professionals is key to Grant Thornton LLP’s continued success. “Relationships are everything,” says Stow. “So people are very protective of their relationships. But to understand the full scope of a client relationship, we need to overcome that individual mindset and find ways to collaborate effectively.”
In addition to establishing Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a standardized solution for CRM, Grant Thornton LLP has found that other technologies have been key to helping employees share information and work better together across member firms. A large-scale SharePoint deployment includes more than 50,000 unique sites where employees share documents and collaborate on accounts and initiatives. Communications and enterprise social media tools, including Lync and Yammer, provide voice, instant messaging and conferencing capabilities — and connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to facilitate communication around client and account activities.
As a result, the employees in Grant Thornton LLP can depend on one another and deliver more comprehensive service to clients. “It’s not just about using the technology,” says Stow. “Our workforce today is more connected — and more productive. People see the interactions and work more efficiently, and that ultimately allows us to serve our clients better.”
Enhancing sales processes
Microsoft Dynamics provides Grant Thornton LLP with a process-driven CRM solution that accommodates different sales processes and regional requirements. For existing accounts, the connection capabilities of the solution allow each member firm to build virtual account teams that include all employees and partners involved in a particular relationship, who can collaborate on a plan to nurture and proactively drive the relationship forward.
Using the collected data in the CRM solution, account managers see strengths, weaknesses, and threats related to a particular relationship or opportunity. They identify competitors that might be serving the client — in addition to potential partners in other advisory roles who might influence sales — and collaboratively develop a plan to pursue the opportunity.
Since deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Grant Thornton LLP has experienced a 450 percent jump in the number of opportunities it is tracking, a 36 percent increase in average win value, and a 700 percent rise in the number of contacts in the system. In addition, by tracking employee behaviors in the system, Grant Thornton LLP correlates factors such as sales activities and frequency of client contacts to win rate and revenue generation so as to further refine the sales process through insights.
Delivering better client service
Stow is quick to point out that the benefits of the CRM solution extend beyond sales. “Our goal for the solution is not to push additional services on our clients, but to better serve our clients,” he says. “The enhanced planning and collaboration tools enable us to respond to clients more effectively and in a more timely fashion.”
In particular, he points to the ability to conduct proactive planning using custom account plans developed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The tool helps Grant Thornton LLP identify priority accounts and includes a complete history of account activity and plans for nurture or contact efforts. Connections to partners and other service providers enable Grant Thornton LLP to identify partners who might enhance the value proposition through collaboration.
Using data to drive value
The value proposition of Grant Thornton LLP is also enhanced by the analytical capabilities of the CRM solution. Using CRM in conjunction with business intelligence tools such as Power BI, Grant Thornton LLP can identify trends or issues affecting a particular class or segment of clients and then reach out proactively to other clients in that segment to address these issues.
The development of new services is also driven by analytics, which provide insights into client demand based on service line, service type, revenue, and other factors — which makes their very smart people even smarter from a sales, marketing, and business development standpoint.
“The solution enables us to be much more focused,” says Stow. “We can use data to make data-driven decisions and communicate to our teams using actual data. Everyone here is very smart, but the additional insights — based on a single shared version of the truth — make us all smarter.”
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
5 Things to Learn in Office 365 for Back to School
Whether you’re an eager student, a busy teacher, or an on-the-go parent, Office 365 has tools that can help make the transition back to school easier. Many children and adults have already begun their school years, but it’s still beneficial to take a few moments to brush up on some of these skills. Read on for tips with time management, presentation creation, and more.
Download and install the full versions of Office 2013 apps
If your version of Office 365 comes with full 2013 installation, you’ll definitely want to take advantage of it. Some plans come with up to five installs so you can use Word, PowerPoint, Excel and more across all your devices. While using Office Online is sufficient for many students, being able to use the familiar and full-featured 2013 versions of the Office suite applications can be beneficial.
Create to do lists in OneNote to manage your work
Creating checklists is a built-in capability of OneNote that you can use for all sorts of different things. Perhaps the most obvious use is a to do list, and in fact, the checkbox is actually called a To Do tag in OneNote. You can use this tag throughout a OneNote page; it doesn’t have to be used only in a line-by-line list format. For example, you may take lecture notes and use the To Do tag to flag and track pieces of information to follow up on.
Master the art of the PowerPoint
It can be challenging and intimidating to create a PowerPoint presentation that is informative, effective, and attractive. But you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create beautiful PowerPoint slides as long as you keep in mind a few key tips. You’re sure to encounter a situation where you need to create an effective presentation as the school year kicks into gear. Click the link above to visit our post containing a plethora of PPT pointers.
Get comfortable with Word collaboration
One of the most significant components of the evolution of the Microsoft Office Suite in recent history is the inclusion of collaboration and co-authoring in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel (Online versions, specifically). Working together in these programs is a large part of many academic projects. Check out the video above and the linked post for more on collaborating in Word Online for essays, lab reports, and more.
Back up your files in OneDrive for Business
If you’re using Office 365, you should be syncing your files with OneDrive for Business. Not only does it allow you to access and work on documents from anywhere, it’s also a backup method. Most of your files will be synced manually once the ODfB sync client is installed, but you can check out the video above to learn how to perform a manual sync if necessary, and navigate to find your OneDrive for Business files on a PC.
