The coronavirus has completely changed our lives. Remote work has become commonplace for many businesses. At the same time, reliable technological solutions are needed to ensure the normal functioning of the company, efficient customer service and productive communications of work teams. Cloud technology during the pandemic has become a lifeline for business. Consider the capabilities of the most popular cloud service Office 365 and its application in the work.
General information
Cloud technologies have entered almost all aspects of the work of companies in the field of business services: audit, accounting, consulting, HR and more. Big Data helps to better understand the needs of customers, identifying “bottlenecks” in cooperation with them. Automated systems based on these data simplify the introduction, administration of workflows. And cloud platforms provide new ways to serve customers for closer B2B and B2C interaction.
The cloud facilitates communication processes within the organization and between companies. With cloud services such as Office 365, GSuit employees can work remotely, edit documents together, track workflows in real time, plan activities, share professional opinions, and blur the line between remote and office work. In pandemic times such solutions help companies to operate effectively despite travel restrictions.
All these “miracles” are possible due to the consolidated collection of information and its processing in services such as Office 365.
Collaboration
The main Office 365 collaboration services are Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and Microsoft Teams.
SharePoint
SharePoint is a collection of programs and functions that allows you to create web portals, manage their content, automate internal workflows, simplify the search for the necessary data. With SharePoint, you can create an internal site that allows users to collaborate. With this site you can create shared folders, files, planners, calendars and more.
Exchange Online
Thanks to this service, the organization receives a reliable and secure e-mail with flexible settings and security policies. In addition, Exchange provides access to corporate calendars, which you can also share and manage together.
The Exchange mailbox will be customizable with useful features in your arsenal, such as highlighting important emails and setting up e-mail reception rules, and an advanced search system will help you find information in the mailbox much faster and more comprehensively.
The calendar system will help you not only to schedule meetings and business, but also to organize your time more efficiently, automatically receiving notifications about events by e-mail.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a corporate messenger. A kind of viber for the organization. It allows you to create team chats, share files, schedule and create appointments and manage your calendar. In times of pandemic, Teams becomes a real virtual office.
All of these systems work together and are one with Office 365, giving you a real sense of teamwork.
File hosting service
OneDrive file hosting service is responsible for storing documents in Office 365 package. It allows you to save, edit, share any files and acts as a repository for site files on SharePoint. A feature of the service is possibility to edit files in online versions of Microsoft office programs (Word, Excel and others).
Business analytics
Microsoft Power BI is a service responsible for data analytics. This service provides interactive data visualization with business analysis capabilities, where end users can independently create reports and dashboards for them, without being dependent on IT professionals or database administrators. The system allows you to connect to a large number of data sources - from Excel files to SharePoint lists.
Process automation
Built-in SharePoint workflows and Microsoft Flow help turn routines of document approval, correspondence processing, updating Power BI reports, informing colleagues about corporate events, etc. into automated actions. They operate within the built sites and help to adjust actions in the process of document circulation. Thus, you can configure the system of approval of new incoming letters or create rules for the circulation of certain types of documents.
Microsoft Flow is a system that creates automated workflows between programs and services for both Office 365 and outside services. This allows you to receive notifications about certain actions that have been performed with files in SharePoint, synchronize documents in different file hosts, collect data and more.
Integration
All Office 365 services interact with each other. It is integration that makes Microsoft's cloud solution so popular and functional. The operation of one element of the system will be incomplete without another. Only a combination of several tools will make the use of the system effective and the work of the team more efficient.
