The 7 most underutilized Office 365 apps (and why you should be using them)

Microsoft Office 365 has more than 120 million business users, making it one of the most popular productivity suites on the market. But despite its popularity, many businesses aren’t taking full advantage of Office 365 and all it has to offer. It’s so much more than an email service, Word and PowerPoint!

Here are seven of the most underutilized Office 365 apps that you can access as part of your Office 365 Business Premium Subscription:

Microsoft Teams

From Slack to Facebook Workplace and more, there’s no shortage of enterprise communication and collaboration tools. But why pay extra for a service that already comes free with your Office 365 subscription?

First launched in March 2017, Microsoft Teams combines workplace chat with online meetings, collaboration and productivity. Here’s what you can do with it:

Chat, call and conference with colleagues. Microsoft Teams is a complete communication tool; you can chat with colleagues, make audio and video calls, schedule online meetings, and even host live broadcasts.

Collaborate on documents in real-time. Microsoft Teams integrates with other Office 365 apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, so you can coauthor and share files with colleagues on any device – and from anywhere in the world!
Set up third-party integrations. If you need to, you can integrate Microsoft Teams with third-party tools like Mailchimp, Wrike and Survey Monkey. See the full list of add-ins here.

Watch a demo of Microsoft Teams and you’ll realize you already have access to a powerful platform for collaboration and communication. It integrates with other Office 365 apps and third-party software, makes collaboration easy and keeps you connected to your team. Plus, you can send GIFs in Teams. Everybody loves GIFs.

Planner

Teamwork doesn’t just happen. It takes careful, ongoing planning. Enter: Microsoft Planner.

Planner allows you to create, organize and communicate with teams in your organisation. Designed to ‘take the chaos out of teamwork’, it is:

Easy to use, with boards for each plan and ‘buckets’ for groups of tasks. Tasks can be categorized, assigned and organized by simply dragging and dropping between columns;
Extremely visual and easy to understand at a glance; and
Accessible on all your devices, so you can stay on top of projects and get progress updates wherever, whenever.

And the best part? Planner comes included in your Office 365 Business Premium Subscription: (unlike other similar apps, like Trello) and integrates with Microsoft Teams. With both apps working together you can discuss tasks without switching between apps, so you’ll always know who is working on what.

MileIQ

It’s always nice to get away from your desk and visit clients, or travel to other offices. But tracking and logging your mileage is…less nice.

MileIQ – which comes with your Office 365 Business Premium subscription – automatically tracks and logs your reimbursable (or tax-deductible) miles. All you have to do is install the app on your phone; there aren’t even any stop or start buttons.

The MileIQ app uses the GPS on your phone to start tracking your mileage as soon as you start driving. A simple swipe left or right categorizes your drive as business or personal, and the system automatically adds up your reimbursement total. It’s a huge time saver for anyone who hits the road for work, and it couldn’t be easier to use.

Click here to see MileIQ in action.

Forms

How would you rate our customer service? What can we do to improve our website? Should we get pizza or tacos for lunch?

Whether you’re gathering customer feedback or canvassing the office for lunch ideas, forms, polls and surveys are crucial. And if you’ve got an Office 365 Business Premium subscription, you can create and send them using Microsoft Forms.

Microsoft Forms is an easy-to-use creation tool for surveys, quizzes and polls. You can use these to collect customer or employee feedback, organize events, or even just collate opinions about tasks and projects. They work on any web browser (meaning higher response rates!) and you can export your results to Excel, or see them visualized in charts.

Bonus feature? Forms integrates with Teams!

StaffHub

If you manage shift workers or simply need to stay on top of everyone’s schedules, then you need to get acquainted with StaffHub.

StaffHub allows you to create, manage and communicate schedules on the go. You can assign tasks and shifts to employees, discuss schedules and even share on-boarding and training resources. It’s one, centralized place for sharing shift information and job resources.

And, of course, StaffHub integrates with Microsoft Teams. What doesn’t?

Bookings

It’s normal these days to book a flight, doctor’s appointment or dinner reservation online. Why should your business be any different?

With Microsoft Bookings, your clients can self-serve and book appointments or meetings with you at a time that suits them. There’s no complicated phone or email scheduling; just select a convenient time and book.

Here’s an example of a booking page for a financial services company. Having a page like this great for businesses of any size, because:

It makes life easier and saves time. You won’t have to waste hours navigating schedules, availability and time zones over email or phone.

It gives your customers more flexibility. They’ll love the ease and convenience of being able to book their own appointments.
It decreases no-shows. Bookings sends a confirmation email and a calendar invitation to your clients after they’ve booked, and makes it easy for them to reschedule (or cancel) if they can’t make an appointment. No more missed appointments means fewer wasted billable hours!

Of course, if your clients prefer to schedule meetings the old-school way, you can manually enter their appointment details in Bookings. Simple.

Invoicing

The average payment term is 27 days in the US, and up to 92% of businesses experience late payments. Invoicing isn’t the most exciting task, but having the ability to quickly issue invoices and accept payments is critical if you want to be paid on time and maintain steady cash flow.

Microsoft Invoicing takes the pain out of creating, sending and tracking invoices so that you can get paid faster. With it, you can generate estimates and convert those estimates into branded, professional invoices that you can email to your clients in seconds. You can even add a Pay With PayPal link to invoices and accept payments via credit and debit cards.

What’s more, Microsoft Invoices reduces the amount of time you spend buried in paperwork. All your estimates, past invoices and tax information are in one centralized, searchable place.

There’s an app for that

There’s more to Office 365 than Microsoft Office, Skype and emails. There’s an app for just about every need, issue and scenario you can imagine.

Your Office 365 Business Premium subscription is your key to a whole range of productivity-enhancing and growth-boosting apps that make running a business so much easier. You’d be crazy not to use them.

If you need some help getting more out of your Office 365 subscription, reach out to us. We’re happy to help.