4 Office 365 Apps You Can Utilize Today

Microsoft continues to gain market share with their core product set.  This is mostly due to companies making the pilgrimage from on-premises Exchange to Exchange Online.  The combination of Microsoft Exchange and Office licensing migrating to the cloud, the Microsoft rebirth in the cloud is exploding.

At the same time, many companies that have moved to Office365 may not have realized there are several features that MAY be included in their subscription which they could leverage.  Unknown to many of you out there is this O365 resource, which provides a laundry list of included features.  I recommend referring to this page to see which features Microsoft offers, that you can make use of.

Here are some features that you likely have access to, but are not using:

• PowerApps – Detailed in a blog post I wrote earlier this year, PowerApps is a low-code/no-code solution.  It allows businesses to create web and mobile apps to streamline business processes.  While it does require some amount software development understanding, its nothing that someone can learn over a couple of cups of coffee.
• Teams – Microsoft recently announced a long migration from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/faq-journey.  Teams is a Slack competitor and its reported that Microsoft made a bid to Slack for several billions of dollars that was rejected.  In typical Microsoft fashion, they decided to build internally.  Teams is a group chat client that been sorely missing from the Microsoft portfolio.  Group chat can be very powerful if your organization and culture can truly embrace it. There are a number of benefits your team can take advantage of that I discuss in my blog post that goes more in depth regarding Teams.
• Stream – Microsoft had offered a tool called Office365 Video which was really a video library within Sharepoint Online.  Microsoft recently rebranded and enhanced the tool, now called Stream.  It offers business the ability to make videos in almost any format and then upload to the web.  From a training perspective, this can be extremely useful.  Thrive uses in internally for, among other topics, sales training.
• Azure Multi-Factor Authentication – I’m cheating by slipping in a security recommendation into this post.  Azure MFA isn’t actually an app but rather a control for Office365 services.  It allows you to setup a second factor on user logins.  With the rise of Office365 credential phishing attacks, it’s a crucial step in protecting your users.  This control is included in all versions of Office365.

Contact Thrive to learn more.