NE NOTE LISTS LIS TO DO LISTS PLANNER The Microsoft 365 Apps FORMS You May Not Know About STREAM ONE NOTE DELVE BOOKINGS TO DO TO LISTS LISTS PLANNER PLA FORMS FO STREAM STREA ONE NOTE ONE DELVE DELV BOOKINGS BOO 1 PLANNER PLANN Table of Contents Introduction 3 Planner 5 To Do 6 Lists 7 Forms 8 Bookings 9 Stream 10 Delve 11 Introduction Since its release on 28th June 2011, Microsoft 365 – the popular suite of cloud-based business applications formerly known as Office 365 – has revolutionised the way SME’s structure their IT operations and interact with the world. Whilst initially slow to adopt Microsoft 365 as a true end-to-end service, IT support companies have come to rely on the platform to deliver everything from email services to mobile device management (MDM) and secure document storage. Office 365 was built around a group of core applications – known as the ‘Office Suite’ – that were already household names in the world of IT: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Access. Many SMEs still use these applications on a daily basis to deliver a service to their customers. Following on from this, Microsoft 365 has a core set of applications and services that includes the following software titles: Word OneNote Excel OneDrive PowerPoint SharePoint Outlook Teams Over the last decade, Microsoft 365 has grown to This guide will shine a light on these secondary include many smaller, lesser-known applications applications, along with some features of the core that add a considerable amount of value to a apps, and help you get the most bang for your Microsoft 365 subscription. buck out of your licensing agreement. 3 1. OneNote Minimum subscription: Microsoft 365 Business Basic First released in 2003, OneNote is Microsoft 365’s note taking application and multi-user collaboration platform. OneNote is part of core application set, but is often overlooked in favour of traditional word processing platforms such as Microsoft Word or Notepad. OneNote notebooks can be shared within your organisation, or to external users via the Internet, to promote collaboration and act as a central repository for information on meetings, conferences and ongoing projects. Microsoft also provides a web-based version of the application, as part of OneDrive or Office Online. OneNote is a lot more than a collaborative word processor. The application provides the user with a sandbox in which they can add audio clips, images, text or embedded content from other Microsoft 365 applications such as Excel spreadsheets. OneNote’s colour-coded, tabulated approach to As of 2015, Microsoft removed the paywall that organising notebooks offers a pleasing aesthetic. limited OneNote’s compatibility with other 365 The overall design is intuitive and remarkably applications. Users now benefit from features simple to use, with each notebook broken down such as SharePoint integration, notebook version into user-defined tabs, and each tab having its history and Outlook plug-ins that import data own set of pages). from email clients directly into a notebook. 4 2. Planner Minimum subscription: Microsoft 365 Business Basic Released on June 16th 2016, Microsoft Planner is a planning/task management application that allows teams to collaborate and share files on tasks and various business functions. Planner models itself around the use of ‘Kanban’ (Japanese for signboard) boards – a highly-visual workflow management method where tasks resembling sticky notes are moved between columns on a board, usually labelled with key indicators such as ‘Waiting’, ‘To-do’, ‘In-progress’ and ‘Completed’. Planner uses task cards, which contain information Planner’s main competitors are large project about an individual task (e.g. due date, custom tags, management applications such as Trello and Asana, files etc.), which you can then assign to members of and it’s fair to say that its main user base are smaller your team for collaboration and completion. organisations that don’t have a large project management budget. The application benefits from Planner comes into its own with its cross-platform an intuitive interface and a fast, easy setup process functionality (mobile devices, iOS, Android etc.) and that will get you working faster and smarter within 365 integration, and features a growing amount of a few hours. integration from within Teams – Microsoft’s highly- lauded communications platform. 5 3. To Do Minimum subscription: Microsoft 365 Business Basic A similar task management on offer from Microsoft 365 is To Do – a cloud based task management platform that was formerly Wunderlist. Microsoft acquired Wunderlist in 2015 from Berlin-based startup 6 Wunderkinder and discontinued it in favour of To Do in 2017, built by the staff at 6 Wunderkinder to fully integrate with Office 365 in the cloud. Partially adhering to the look and feel of Outlook’s task list, To Do allows users to compartmentalise their day into easily digestible tasks, forward plan tasks for future completion and assign tasks to other team members for collaboration and completion. To Do also offers full integration with Outlook in the form of flagged emails. Users are able to right-click emails in their inbox and flag them for inclusion in their To Do list, as well as a corresponding task list in Outlook. To Do solves the familiar problem of employees operating from physical sticky notes plastered all over their desk, or standalone, local lists made on Notepad or Word. As with all other Microsoft 365 applications, To Do features an instantly recognisable and intuitive user interface that is extremely easy to get to grips with. 6 4. Lists Minimum subscription: Microsoft 365 Business Basic Similar in scope to both Planner and To Do is Lists – Microsoft 365’s information and work tracking application. Whereas Planner is conceived as a project management tool, and To Do is garnered towards individual use, Lists provides simple task allocation functionality for multiple team members and is a major upgrade from SharePoint lists, with which business owners may be familiar. Think SharePoint lists, but more modern. The entrance into the marketplace of applications such as Wrike and Asana forced Microsoft’s hand to provide users with a contemporary set of productivity applications, of which Lists became a major constituent part. Most of the differences between SharePoint and Lists are in the user interface. Microsoft provide several out of the box templates to get you started and it’s relatively easy to become conversant with the software with just a few days of regular use. Lists are saved either to an existing SharePoint site, or if it’s a personal list, to OneDrive for Business. Microsoft is keen to promote functionality with Teams, and there are many integration options between the two applications. Lists can be added to your company’s various Teams channels for ease of access. 7 5. Forms Minimum subscription: Microsoft 365 Business Basic Forms (formerly known as Office Forms) is a enough for users to be able to send professional cloud-based survey/questionnaire platform first looking forms upon first use. Another neat feature released in June 2016. Similar in scope to Google is the inclusion of QR codes to help users share Forms, Microsoft Forms enables users to create their forms – a particularly useful aspect for all manner of question-based scenarios, from mobile or tablet users, and provides the platform surveys to quizzes. with a distinctly modern feel. Forms features the ability to share forms with Forms also offers integration with Microsoft other users – all you need is an active Microsoft Excel, pending an active Office subscription, so ID (your identity on the Microsoft 365 platform) – that companies can analyse the all-important although a paid subscription is required to restrict data that they extract by way of responses and forms access to designated external users. demographics. Forms is also accessible via a variety of 365 applications and media platforms, It doesn’t have the most comprehensive including OneDrive for Business, ExcelOnline and of templates available out of the box, but OneNote Online. nevertheless, Forms default layouts are more than 8 6. Bookings Minimum subscription: Microsoft 365 Business Standard Microsoft Bookings is Microsoft’s meeting and to distribute external requests amongst team appointment scheduling application available members. to all users of 365 Business. Positioning itself against free platforms such as Calendly, Microsoft Alongside this, Teams allows users to meet with Bookings allows businesses to create custom their customers who have used Bookings to booking pages that their customers can access to schedule an appointment, negating the need to confirm appointments, meetings and telephone involve 3rd party meeting platforms, such as calls, as part of an end-to-end scheduling service. Zoom. Bookings allows businesses to customise the The platform works based on customisable platform for sector-specific booking processes calendars, each with a unique look and feel, and across industries such as healthcare, financial variable back-end functionality. Within each services and education. calendar, companies can alter auto-responses, assign different team members as resources, As with most of its collaborative applications, adjust the parameters of how a customer books Microsoft Bookings offers full integration with its an appointment and customise how the booking flagship communications platform, Teams, making portal appears to external users. itself available as a separate app within Teams 9 7. Stream Minimum subscription: Microsoft 365 Business Basic Released in June 2017, Microsoft Stream is a commercial video sharing service that replaces Office 365 video – a private video sharing service for subscribers of Office 365 Academic or Enterprise. Office 365 video was primarily a hosting platform for corporate training and promotional videos, for those companies who do not possess intranet capabilities. Companies are provided with a basic amount of storage with which to host videos.