Office 365 has brought about a dramatic change with the way Microsoft manages the development of its business applications. Gone are the days of major version upgrades, where every two to three years would mark a major change of the software. The modern approach is incremental monthly updates – including security updates, bug fixes and new features. Sometimes it also includes new applications.

Whilst this is fantastic news for anyone with an Office 365 subscription it does present a number of challenges. The main one being simply keeping up to date with what there is for you to use and what it can do for your business.

So we thought we would help by bringing you a Pro Drive round up of the features you should be considering:

Sway

Sway is a fantastic new way of presenting your ideas through an interactive storyboard. It is a completely new Microsoft Office application and we are really just starting to see ways in which it can be used. Pro Drive are already starting to employ it for one to one presentations using tablets but there are many other ideas we have where we think it can help us communicate our ideas. If you have not already done so please read our recent article on Sway to find out more. The best thing about Sway? It is completely free to use even without an Office 365 license.

Yammer

Whilst I somewhat wryly refer to Yammer as Facebook for businesses, it does very much resemble it in appearance and functionality. However its use very much differs. Yammer is a tool designed to help people within your business connect, collaborate and share ideas. It is particularly useful for organisations spread over multiple offices or even more so, differing time zones. Allowing your employees to connect and interact where contacting each other in real time is not practical. Practical applications include knowledge dissipation, user groups, sharing company news and arranging events.

Delve

Delve is the new way to find out what is going on in Office 365 across your business. Delve selects information that you have worked on or viewed recently, as well as what your colleagues are working on and how it is related to you – allowing you to stay connected with your business at the touch of a button. Delve is one of those applications that sounds a bit pointless on paper – but is simply genius once you start using it. The only way to find out is to try it out – if you have Office 365 we advise you try it now!

Video

A new addition to the Office 365 family the Video app is designed for securely storing and sharing video amongst your work colleagues. In the same way that Yammer is a ‘Facebook for your own business’, Video is very much like a ‘YouTube for your business’. Likely applications include sharing training videos, corporate communications (such as annual reports) and health and safety videos. Expect more functionality on Video to appear soon.

OneNote

Microsoft’s note taking application is much improved and is now considered more than a match for the market leading Evernote. If you are still using a pen and paper to take notes you should really try moving to a digital app – lost notes will be a thing of the past and it will transform the way you organise your work and personal life! Read our previous article ‘Taking notes on the go‘ to learn more

OneDrive

OneDrive is essentially Microsoft’s answer to DropBox – an on-line file storage app that can save up to 1TB of documents. As well as storing documents, OneDrive will allow you to share them with colleagues, business partners and customers as well as accessing and editing them from any cloud connected device such as mobiles and tablets. With auditing and version control also included, we see OneDrive becoming a cloud based replacement for the traditional ‘My Documents’ folder.

Of course all these are in addition to the core Office 365 applications we most of us now know and many of us use including hosted email, Skype for Business (formally Lync), SharePoint and of course the traditional Office applications.

If you would like to know more about Office 365 please contact our Sales Team on 0330 124 3599.