Microsoft 365 has established itself as a popular subscription service that includes a set of familiar Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. What many of its users don’t know is that Microsoft 365 also offers a wide range of lesser-known tools beyond these well-known apps.
The top underrated apps and software features from Microsoft 365 can help your organization improve productivity and streamline business processes without putting any additional strain on your IT budget.
Microsoft Stream – Enterprise Video Platform
Microsoft Stream is an enterprise video platform built on SharePoint. The platform can be used to record video presentations, onboarding material, or any other type of content. Thanks to the built-in editing tools that are included with it, it’s easy to add text, drawings, and effects to make videos more personalized and eye-catching. With a few simple clicks, Stream can generate automatic captions and video transcripts. Because Stream is part of the Microsoft 365 family of products, accessing and sharing recorded videos is as effortless as you would expect it to be.
Download
DoD Contractor’s Guide to CMMC 2.0 Compliance
Microsoft Sway – Web-Based Presentation Tool
Released in 2015, Microsoft Sway is a web-based presentation tool that can be accessed from any web browser (a native desktop app is also available). Unlike PowerPoint, Microsoft’s much more famous and older presentation program, Sway is designed to create presentations that display well on all digital devices, from smartphones to desktop computers, and not just on a projector. Because the tool doesn’t have nearly as many features as PowerPoint, it takes very little effort to get started with it, and the presentations it can produce can be truly impressive.
Microsoft Planner – Kanban-Style Task Management Software
Microsoft Planner is a task management software application that follows the Kanban project management methodology. This methodology is used to break down a project’s workflow into actionable pieces that are visualized as cards that move across columns from left to right as work progresses. As such, it competes directly with popular apps like Trello and Wrike. Like them, Planner supports file attachments, checklists, labels, due dates, and more, but it has the advantage of working well together with other Microsoft 365 apps, such as Teams, SharePoint, and Power Automate.
Microsoft Power Automate – Business Process Automation Tool
Microsoft Power Automate is a business process automation tool whose purpose is to help organizations streamline repetitive tasks and business processes by creating custom workflows called “flows.” For example, Power Automate can be used to automatically send emails to customers, create records in a database, or copy files to a backup location. No coding skills are required to use the tool, and the included AI Builder helps find insights by building tailored AI models within Power Automate.
Microsoft Bookings – Bookings and Appointment Scheduling Solution
Microsoft Bookings is an excellent solution for small and medium-sized businesses that would like to create improve how they schedule and manage appointments. Bookings users can quickly create a customer-facing, web-based appointment calendar for customers to comfortably book appointments, which can be customized to fit the needs of any business. For more information on how businesses across different industries have implemented Bookings, we recommend you explore Microsoft’s case studies.
Microsoft Whiteboard – Collaborative Digital Canvas
Modern teams need modern solutions that enable them to brainstorm, collaborate, and ideate in real-time even when they are not present in the same physical location. Microsoft Whiteboard is a collaborative digital canvas that’s available as a web and mobile app. Designed with hybrid work and learning in mind, Whiteboard allows users to easily draw processes with different shapes and colors, add text, images, sticky notes, and more. At the end of a brainstorming session, users can save Whiteboard content as a file for future use and sharing with those who couldn’t attend.
Conclusion on Microsoft 365 Apps
The Microsoft 365 suite of digital tools has become so vast that it contains multiple hidden gems that are still waiting to be discovered by many of its users.
In this article, we’ve introduced our favorite underrated apps from Microsoft 365, and now it’s up to you to put them to good use. If you have any questions about them, don’t hesitate to schedule an appointment with us.