Microsoft 365 is an entire cornucopia of different cloud productivity applications. But many offices miss out and only get a small taste of just what the platform can do.

They may use the core Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook), OneDrive, and maybe Teams, but aren’t getting the full benefit of their subscription.

Not only does Microsoft 365 include multiple other cloud solutions, its core tools get updated often with new features and assets that not all users are aware of.

Knowing what else you can do with your cloud tools can boost your team productivity, make workflows more efficient, and save you from having to purchase another app subscription.

Here are some of the best tools and tips inside Microsoft 365 that you can explore.

Create Forms & Surveys Quickly

All those with a Microsoft 365 account have access to a handy form and survey creation tool called Microsoft Forms.

It’s an online form creation tool that makes it incredibly easy to put together a customer survey, employee security awareness quiz, and much more.

Features of Forms includes:

• Several templates to get you started
• Very easy to use to build out forms, quizzes, and surveys
• Send out forms via link, QR code, or social media
• All form responses show up instantly in your online interface
• You can export results to Excel with a click
• No emailing file attachments or having to collate results

Use Data Types for Geographical Info in Excel

Microsoft began introducing data types in Excel a few years back. One of the most helpful if you’re doing any type of research on geographical areas is the data type for geography.

When you designate a row of data as the geography data type, you can then have details fill in automatically for you, such as population and area. This can save someone tons of research time.

How to Use Data Types in Excel:

• Type your row of data (such as city names)
• Highlight the data and click the Data tab
• Under Data Types, click Geography
• With your rows highlighted, click the small icon that appears at the top-right of the field
• Choose your desired information (Area, Latitude, etc.)
• The information fills into the next available column to the right for all highlighted city names

Use Teams for a VoIP Phone System

Microsoft Teams is a full featured team collaboration application that includes team chat, voice and video conferencing, file sharing, and more. But it wasn’t a full unified communications platform, until now.

With the addition of Microsoft 365 Business Voice add-on, you can now use Teams as a full VoIP business phone system. This means you can make calls to and receive them from landlines and mobile devices from within the app.

This streamlines your workflow, because your team can keep all communications in a single platform and easily transition from a voice phone call to a video conference with screensharing features.

Get Free Stock Photos and Icons in the Office Programs

In the past, MS Office might not have been known for having great stock images that you could use for your business, but we’re in the 2020’s now!

About the same time that Office 365 was changed to Microsoft 365, Microsoft added thousands of modern, high-quality stock photos and icons that you can use from within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.

To access these from Word, just go to the Insert menu and click the dropdown under Pictures. Choose Stock Images.

You can then search from a large database of images, many of them business focused.

Use OneNote as a Catchall Organisational Tool

Another additional app that comes along with your Microsoft 365 subscription is OneNote. This is a powerful organiser for all types of notes, images, meeting audio, and much more.

Some of the advantages of using OneNote:

• You can forward emails to OneNote easily to get them out of your inbox
• It can be accessed from any device
• You can share OneNote notebooks with others and collaborate online
• OneNote allows you to use formatting to keep things organised (bold, bullets, template colors, etc.)
• You can connect meetings in Outlook to a OneNote page and then click to automatically record meeting audio while taking notes

Use Resume Assistant in Word to Shortcut Job Postings

One handy tool Microsoft added to Word is in partnership with LinkedIn. It’s called Resume Assistant, and while you can use it for help writing or updating a resume, you can also use it to save time writing job postings or creating job duties lists for new positions.

When in Word, go to the Review tab. To the far right is Resume Assistant. Click to open a panel. Then you can input the pertinent job role and (if desired) industry.

Click to see examples, and you’ll immediately be connected to LinkedIn profiles related to your input position/industry that come up in that same pane. This allows you to get ideas for typical job duties to include in your posting.

Looking to Get the Most Out of Your Microsoft 365 Subscription?

NMX IT Solutions can help your Thames Valley area business get the most out of your Microsoft 365 subscription so you aren’t leaving any productivity-boosting tools on the table.

Contact us today to schedule your consultation! Call 01628 232300 or reach out online.