IT for business

Microsoft 365 is like a treasure chest, full of delights waiting to be discovered. Most businesses get it just to access Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams. Then, they find out there are so many other apps included. Find the right ones and you can save time, increase productivity and motivation, and create a smoother workflow for everyone in your business. But finding the right apps to suit your business isn’t always easy. There are hundreds from which to choose.

Here are the 10 Microsoft 365 apps we think every business should look closely at.

Planner: There are lots of project planning apps available. Think Asana, Trello, Monday, Basecamp etc. But for us, Planner stands out. It’s easy to use and comprehensive. You can use it to make plans and manage whole projects.

For each task, you create a team, create to-do lists and assign tasks to members. And it integrates with other apps to allow direct file sharing and add tasks to your calendars, too.

Bookings: Do you make appointments or schedule meetings with your team, clients or other contacts? If so, look at Bookings. It allows you to schedule appointments with anyone. Send invites where the recipient can select a time and date that suits them best and customize the booking. Then it’s automatically added to your Outlook calendar. You can also use Bookings to add Teams meeting links, and even embed it into your website so that prospects can access the live calendars of you and your sales team.

Power Automate: Ever find yourself repeating the same actions over and over again? Power Automate can automate these tasks for you, saving you loads of time. Power Automate connects to lots of the other Microsoft 365 apps you might be using. It creates workflows using the actions you use most often. It can also inform other apps of changes you’ve made, sync files, and even post messages to Teams when a new task is created in Planner.

Power Apps: This has been hailed as the leader in the no-code revolution. It gives your people the tools they need to create apps that improve their working lives.

Power Apps can take away the manual entry of data and push out updates to your team’s smartphones, so they stay updated wherever they are.

You can implement the logic and workflows created in Power Automate, create your templates, or build it yourself. And you can use it on the web, on mobiles and even embed it in Teams or SharePoint. Almost anyone in your business could use this easily.

SharePoint: SharePoint is essentially an intranet for your business. It’s a trendy way to share resources, web pages and news on a large scale. It’s completely customizable, so you can use your company logo and color scheme and make it look exactly as you want it.

Yammer: Essentially, this is Facebook for business. It’s an internal communication platform.  It’s like Slack and Discord, yet it has more of a Facebook-style feed, so it feels more familiar to use. It can be integrated with Teams, meaning your people can dip in and out of conversations quickly. But it’s more of a company-wide sharing platform. You can use it to create polls, give news updates and start discussions. It’s excellent for building a community feel in your workplace.

Sway: This one is a PowerPoint-lite, with a bit of Canva thrown in for good measure. With Sway, you can create presentations, newsletters and other documents quickly and efficiently, then share them within the business. It’s best used for presentations that viewers guide themselves through, rather than those that you would present. So, it could be used for company newsletters, brochures and reports.

Stream: As the name may suggest, Stream is your business’s answer to YouTube. It’s an internal video-sharing platform where you can upload, share and create videos.

To Do: Who doesn’t love an excellent organized to-do list? To-Do (formerly Wunderlist) allows you to create lists, track and prioritize tasks and organize different areas of your business. You can see immediately what’s been completed and what still needs to be done (and by whom). You can add notes to give someone a nudge or to add information about specific actions and attachments. And, of course, share your lists with anyone you need to.

Clarity: It’s helpful if you know how people are using your website. If you know what they’re clicking on, and more importantly, what they’re not engaging with, you can change your website so it performs even better. QCBN

By Theo Soumilas

For additional information or to schedule an appointment to assist your business, call 928-719-7724 or visit northernazit.com

Theo Soumilas is the owner of Northern Arizona IT servicing Arizona.