Microsoft Office has long been held as the world’s standard when it comes to desktop productivity apps. It was first released in 1990 and was annually updated with numerous bug fixes and enhanced with the latest features.

Despite being officially renamed as Office 365 in 2011, Microsoft continued to release new versions under the “Microsoft Office” name until 2019. To add to this change, Microsoft’s application suite shifted from its one-time purchase model to a subscription scheme.

While everybody is familiar with apps like Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, Office 365 contains lesser-known but equally powerful collaboration tools in its suite. These apps are best suited for businesses who want to take advantage of cloud computing technology.

To give you a good idea, here are three apps within Office 365 that can change the way you collaborate for work.

1. Outlook

Outlook is Office 365’s designated email client, but it does so much more than just let you read, write, and send emails. This particular application has many built-in features that may seem minuscule on their own. However, when utilised all together, it makes communicating with other members of your organisation more accessible than ever!

One of Outlook’s small but incredibly useful features is its ability to warn you that you may have forgotten to include an attachment. The feature’s implementation is so simple that it’s a wonder why it hasn’t been implemented by other email clients yet!

It detects the word “attach” in your email’s body and immediately warns you if you have indeed forgotten to attach any files. This saves you the embarrassment of having to send another email just to send the file, or even worse, cause miscommunication and delays for failing to send out a much-needed report or document!

2. Teams

Microsoft Teams is an all-in-one collaboration and video conferencing software. It has the functionality to create channels for collaboration across different departments, but it can also set up 1:1 chat sessions as well. Aside from this, it also has file-sharing capabilities that allow for quick and easy collaboration between members. To make things even simpler, Teams also has a built-in video conferencing function that enables a user to host meetings and conference calls automatically.

These features make this video conferencing application a robust tool that your team can use within the Office 365 family of apps.

3. OneDrive + Sharepoint

If used alone, OneDrive serves as Microsoft’s cloud storage utility. However, when used with Sharepoint, you can actually use it to collaborate seamlessly with your team and other members of your organization.

As part of the Office 365 ecosystem, OneDrive seamlessly functions in the background of your Windows computer. Outwardly, it can look just like any other folder in your system, giving you the option to make files available online, while simultaneously saving your changes to the cloud.

However, when used with Sharepoint, you are able to collaborate directly with teammates from anywhere in the world. This particular application enables you and your teammates to work together on the same Word document or Excel spreadsheet at the same time!

Conclusion

Strictly speaking, Office 365 is new to the game when it comes to collaboration functionality. Other names, like Slack, Trello, and Zoom, have been providing services in this space for years.

However, Office 365 excels in the fact that it does everything that the other services do in one place. Its apps work together to make collaboration seamless, making you work much more efficiently with your fellow colleagues!

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