30 Compelling Office 365 Features In 30 Days

Category: 30 Compelling Office 365 Features in 30 Days

Day 30: Make Google fall in love with your business with an Office 365 Blog

Posted on February 18, 2011

One of the best ways to raise your rankings in the Google search results page is to produce regular relevant content around the keywords your potential clients are searching for in Google. These two factors are most significant:

Google likes new content because it demonstrates that a website has not been abandoned or become stale. Google always wants to present the best quality websites to its searchers
Google looks for web pages containing the keyword’s a user has typed into the search engine and presents the web pages it decides through its algorithm are the most relevant

Day 29: Office 365 delivers Voicemail to your Inbox

Posted on February 17, 2011

There are occasions when your response is required quickly but you are not available. A voicemail is left by an associated but you don’t receive the message until it is too late. Office 365 provides a business the facility to easily integrate their phone system with Exchange Online, so voicemail can be delivered to a user’s inbox as an email. This makes sense because so many information workers spend many hours a day in their inbox found in Microsoft Outlook.

Day 28: Give your users Microsoft Office without a license

Posted on February 16, 2011

The basic premise of cloud computing is no software. With cloud computing IT departments don’t have to install and maintain software on server’s and PC’s saving many hours of configuration, problem solving. End users also don’t have to deal with added frustration when software doesn’t work because of a hardware compatibility issue. Instead, the vendor is responsible for the maintenance of the software and upgrades. Businesses have access to the latest versions of the software as soon as it is released without the headache of upgrading.

Microsoft has released Microsoft Web Apps as part of Office 365 eliminating the need for businesses to install Microsoft Office on their PC’s. Office Web Apps is an online version of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. The user interface is the same as their desktop counterparts using the intuitive ribbon except they have a cut down version of functionality. Microsoft has included only the most commonly used features.

One of the challenges of cloud computing is offline functionality. What happens when a user does not have internet access? A file created in Office Web Apps can be opened using the desktop version of the application with the click of the button. When the user is not connected to the internet users are able to create, modify and edit Microsoft Office documents making Office 365 much more flexible than other cloud services out there. SharePoint Workspace allows users to store these documents on their local machines for offline use.

If you are using Office 365 as an extranet for your partners or clients to access, they are able to open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents even if they don’t have the software installed on their computer because Office Web Apps are built into SharePoint Online.

Office Mobile apps allow users to not only view these documents on mobile devices but also make edits while out of the office.

With Office Web Apps, Microsoft has significantly reduced the upfront and maintenance costs of using the core Microsoft Office applications for business. The Small Business version of Office 365 has Office Web Apps included, while the Enterprise version has Office Web Apps and Office Professional Plus, which includes the full suite of the desktop versions of Microsoft Office.

Read the other posts in this series “30 Compelling Office 365 Features in 30 Days”

Day 27: Find any document quickly using Enterprise Search in Office 365

Posted on February 15, 2011

Have you ever experienced the situation where you were looking for a document to review and just couldn’t find it. You knew a colleague placed the file on the company file server hidden in a folder that made perfected sense to them at the time, but when you asked them, they even struggle to remember the location. Similar situations frustrate information workers everyday wasting valuable time for all parties involved and adding an extra level of stress. SharePoint Online solves this common frustration.
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Day 26: Share your Spreadsheets with the world without exposing your calculations using Excel Services

Posted on February 14, 2011

Have you ever wanted to share an excel spreadsheet with a partner, prospect or client but hesitated because you realised how valuable the calculations behind the spreadsheet were. These calculations are often the result of years of experience and work and often make up the intellectual property (IP) of a business. Sharing this information with other businesses if often reckless and can lead to your competitors gaining access to your IP.

Day 25: Working successfully with a Remote Workforce using Office 365

Posted on February 14, 2011

The growing trend of hiring offshore or remote workers is well and truly on the rise. Business has realised the benefits of hiring staff who are not in the same geographic area as the physical office. With growing pressures to cut costs businesses are realising that employing workers who can work from home does not just make sense, but can assist in their goal of reducing costs.
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Day 24: Make your Sales People more productive with Office 365 and Online Meetings

Posted on February 14, 2011

Being an effective sales person is a challenging task. There are many pressures and obstacles in the road to success, but the good sales people know how to make sure the decision maker is at all meetings, manage their time effectively and control the cost of the sale.
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Day 23: Increase your Marketing effectiveness with Webinar functionality in Office 365 and Lync Online

Posted on February 14, 2011

Attracting new prospective clients is vital to the success of any business. Marketing departments are always looking for new techniques to attract potential customers. Lately the business world has been abuzz with social media. Many commentators are discussing the validity of such marketing initiatives: some being for and some against. All the while, a handful of businesses are just getting on with it and receiving spectacular results from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
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Day 22: Office 365 puts an end to Phone Tag with Presence

Posted on February 14, 2011

In Australia, we have a term called phone tag. It is the phenomenon of calling someone and getting his or her voicemail. They then receive the message and call you back, but you are busy at the time of the call so they leave a message on your voicemail. You receive their message and call them back, and well, you know what happens. Phone tag can go on for many more iterations before you actually make contact. The level of frustration you experience directly corresponds to the importance of the issue, requiring discussion.
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Day 21: Work from Outlook with your SharePoint data

Posted on February 9, 2011

Microsoft Outlook has become the one application information workers all over the world return to throughout their workday. They often start each day by loading up Microsoft Outlook and reviewing their inbox. During the day, new emails arrive in the inbox containing appointments, tasks, responses, requests and documents. The information contained in each email is usually reviewed, actioned or moved to another system for storage, usually a customer relationship management system, document management system, calendar or task list.