In this insight, we look at a dozen Microsoft products / apps that you may not know much about but could be helpful to your business.
1. MS Dynamics CRM. Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 is a flexible, customisable pay as you use CRM which has 5 million+ users. The benefits include that it seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products, has a familiar and intuitive user interface and offers some powerful built-in tools, eg: LinkedIn Sales Navigator and assistant to improve productivity and efficiency.
2. Stream. This secure video sharing service allows businesses to upload and share videos, eg: meetings and training sessions. With Stream, users can comment on videos and tag descriptions or timecodes to any point in a video that they want to discuss.
3. Delve. This is an app that is used to help manage your Microsoft 365 profile and to discover and organise the information that may be particularly interesting to you right now across Microsoft 365.Delve shows you a mix of content, both your own documents and documents your colleagues are working on from across Microsoft 365. Ie: documents stored in OneDrive for work or school or SharePoint in Microsoft 365 or that have been shared with you as attachments in emails. Use it by selecting ‘Delve’ in the app launcher in Microsoft 365 or open delve.office.com.
4. Power Apps. This is a suite of apps, services and connectors as well as a data platform. This no-code app building tool provides a rapid development environments for business and enterprise users to build custom apps.
5. Whiteboard. This cloud-based, real-time collaborative digital canvas app in Microsoft 365 integrates with Microsoft Teams and helps with brainstorming or explaining ideas and information. Users can use their keyboards or touch-screen pens to create drawings and for example, sticky notes or images can also be added.
6. Bookings. This Business and Enterprise app integrates with Microsoft 365 or Office 365 calendar and provides a fast and easy way to organise schedules and manage appointments.
7. Sway. This app provides a fast and easy way to create great designs and arrange content in an engaging way, eg: presentations, newsletters, story and blog post writing.
8. To Do. This to-do list app (formerly Wunderlist) allows you to make collaborative, assignable and interactive lists which sync across devices and can be integrated with Team and other apps.
9. Power Automate. This app (previously Microsoft Flow) is an automation tool that integrates with other 365 apps and helps you to build automated processes with flows and streamline repetitive tasks and paperless processes. Power Automate uses low-code, drag-and-drop tools and hundreds of pre-built connectors that automate repetitive, mundane tasks.
10. SharePoint. Although the name may be familiar, you may not have tried this browser-based way to create sites and share documents and information with colleagues, partners, and customers.
11. Viva (Engage). Launched this year, Viva is an “employee experience platform” – a workplace communication social media platform which includes news feeds, profiles, lets you post images and videos, and allows storylines and stories to connect colleagues and enable them to air their thoughts, and share their knowledge, and experience.
12. Forms. This app allows you to build forms, polls, and quizzes, and to send them to anyone inside or outside your organisation.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
Microsoft has many different apps and products which integrate with its other more popular and widely used products. Often, we stick to a selection of apps that enable day-to-day work or the approved apps of the business. Also, many of us may not have the time to search through all the possible Microsoft apps and products available so it’s often good to see a summary of apps and what they do.
It may be the case that one or more of these apps could solve a specific problem for you, may be something you’d like to look more into, and if adopted could help improve productivity.
By Mike Knight
