5 Lesser-known Office 365 apps you should know about
Most businesses switching to Office 365 assume it’s just the next iteration of Microsoft’s popular line of desktop productivity products. It’s so much more than that, but many companies don’t use all the tools included in their license. Sometimes, it’s because they don’t need them, but more often it’s because they don’t even know they’re there or how they can be useful. Here are some of those lesser-known apps you might want to try out:
#1. OneNote
Granted, you’ve probably already heard of this popular note-taking app, but what you probably don’t know is how Microsoft recently reversed course to provide extended support and development for OneNote 2016, the desktop counterpart to the online app provided in Windows 10. This is an important development because the desktop version is vastly more sophisticated and feature-rich than its web-based version. It even adds a new dark mode for more comfortable operation in low-light environments.
#2. Sway
Putting together a presentation is one of those tasks that people often groan about, but it doesn’t have to take many hours using complex software. Sway is a simple web-based presentation builder designed to help you create interactive presentations in minutes through several built-in highly customizable templates. You can also pull content directly from the internet, your OneDrive folder, and storage locations. Best of all, it’s a free app and is much easier to use than PowerPoint when you just want to create a quick and simple presentation.
#3. Planner
When it comes to project management, there’s no shortage of tools out there claiming to make things easier. Unfortunately, it’s also an area where technology bloat becomes a real problem as teams find themselves using incongruous systems together to share information. Planner makes things simpler by offering a lightweight, web-based way to manage tasks and assign them to team members. It’s ideal for smaller organizations that don’t work on highly complex projects and don’t need expensive, highly specialized software.
#4. Flow
Tedious and repetitive routine tasks are the bane of employee productivity and morale. What’s more, they’re also vulnerable to human error. That’s why if something can be automated, then it generally ought to be automated. Flow lets administrators turn repetitive tasks into automated multistep workflows. For example, you can set Flow to capture contact information contained in email signatures and add it to your Dynamics CRM database.
There’s no coding involved in Flows either. You can choose from thousands of templates and customize these to your specific business processes with just a couple clicks of the mouse!
#5. PowerApps
There’s not an app for everything, despite what you might have heard to the contrary. Some businesses have very specific needs, which require them to build their own apps. That’s often expensive, since it typically requires highly specialized skills and extensive testing.
But with the PowerApps tool available to Business and Enterprise subscribers, you can build simple business apps quickly and easily, even if you don’t have an extensive background in software development. It works with Microsoft Flow and provides templates for things like budget tracking solutions, surveys, and more. You can then embed these custom tools into other Microsoft programs like SharePoint and Teams.
Office 365 is chock-full of robust applications, and incorporating them into your day-to-day can give you a serious boost. But as wonderful as these apps are, they merely scratch the surface of what Office 365 is capable of. If you want to learn more about Office 365’s hidden productivity features, just ask the experts at Red Key Solutions. We also provide support, strategy, security, and cloud services to help your business thrive.
