Even if you are using Outlook in Office 365, you may not be taking full advantage of it. Your inbox, calendar, contacts and tasks will be the same across all your computers and mobile devices with Exchange. You only need to handle things once, no matter where you are. No more deleting emails on your work PC and still having them on your mobile or home PC. Exchange also lets you share your email, calendar and contacts with other members of your team. New functionalities like Conversations, Filter and Focused are just a few of the options that can change the way you manage email.
OneDrive is your personal storage in the cloud. It can and will replace your personal drive on your company network. It is seamlessly integrated with Office, and using the sync feature allows you to work offline. OneDrive is your space, and using the share feature will allow you to have complete control over who you share and collaborate with both inside and outside your company.
While OneDrive is your personal storage, SharePoint is the company’s internal storage platform. It’s a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information from any device. SharePoint can also be used as a traditional file share but offers many more features like permissions, version control, and co-authoring that are not available in traditional storage. SharePoint can also provide a place to automate business processes and be customized as your company’s intranet.
Groups allow you to collaborate with certain team members on specific projects. While it does serve as a group email distribution list, it is much, much more. Groups functionality enables options such as group conversations, file sharing (including versioning), a dedicated shared calendar, a team notebook (OneNote), a SharePoint site, and a planner.
Microsoft Teams can be either strictly internal or setup to allow external users to allow the team to communicate using chat-based features that rival a similar application called Slack. Channels help organize the team’s conversations, files, and other collaboration. You can join multiple teams across your company and enjoy chatting, co-authoring and collaborating on files, and even scheduling and joining meetings with or without video features.
Skype for Business gives Office 365 users the ability to chat individually or as a group within your company. The users can also schedule and meet with other users internally and externally while using video features. Skype’s features are also integrated with Microsoft Teams. Skype for Business gives an Office 365 user the ability to video conference with other users inside and outside of Office 365. You can use it for webinars, team meetings and conferences. It will soon be integrated into the Teams apps as well.
Planner is a quick, light project management tool. It helps teams organize their work with the ability to create new plans, organize and assign tasks, set due dates and update the status. It can replace or integrate with Trello. Planner’s visual dashboards and email notifications help keep managers informed on the overall progress your team is making, or not making, with their assigned work.
Yammer is a private social network that serves as a collaboration tool that helps you connect and engage across your company. You can start conversations, share knowledge, and build communities.
Microsoft created Flow as a user-based productivity tool. Users and developers alike can automate daily tasks or combine multiple Office 365 apps into a seamless user experience.
Power BI is a business analytics tool to analyze data and share insights. It is the easiest way to graph and visualize data. It enables you to monitor your business and get answers quickly with rich dashboards available on every device.