The year 2020 began just like every other year, but it is not going on like any other year that we have witnessed before. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world to a pause. It has compelled us, humans, to stay at home and mostly disconnected us from the outer world. Many countries are facing economic losses, while every industry is affected.
For corporates, it has slowed down the pace at which employees, all over the world, worked every day to achieve their targets and accomplish their goals. Millions of employees all over the world are now working from home. Since many have not done it before, they are facing difficulties in managing their work and coordinating and collaborating with their peers.
Though this has happened due to a very unfortunate reason, by adopting the right tools and technologies, remote working can be a great way to work. These tools support employees to work efficiently when they work from home. This is where Microsoft’s Office 365 suite serves as a one-stop solution for remote work requirements.
Let’s get familiar with the suite and see how a remote work environment setup using Office 365 makes your work easier:
Stay connected with peers on Teams
Teams can be your main tool when you work remotely. It’s a depository where you can keep all important files and documents which can be accessed by a team working in coordination. You can create workspaces using Teams for every project. You can connect via audio and video calls with Teams while it also helps you to share files easily. Teams also contain a calendar function and you can chat with individuals, create group chats as well as extend it with different applications. You can also make a Wiki or document repository using Teams. It is basically a one-stop solution for managing work when working remotely.
Pool resources with Word/Excel/PowerPoint in the cloud
Word, Excel and PowerPoint are the core of Office 365. You can use them with Office 365 and supplement some useful tools for remotely working team members. Say, for example, you can create one Word document or Excel sheet that can be accessed by all the team members and they can make edits and save changes as well. This reduces the task of emailing the same file again and again while OneDrive maintains a massive version history of each change made.
Communicate easily with the Outlook
Emailing is one of the main requirements of any business operation. Mostly everyone is familiar with Outlook, which is accessible via the web and you can also download its mobile application. It is a very useful tool for email management and comes with a built-in calendar that helps you to schedule meetings and send invites to your colleagues whom you want to include in the meeting. It even sends meetings reminders to the invitees. These are basic features of Outlook, but as part of the Office 365 suite, its cloud accessibility is second to none.
Manage tasks with ToDo
ToDo is a very good task management system. It synchronizes throughout all devices and allows you to create various lists and share it with peers. It helps you to manage your day-to-day tasks. You can make a task list, take notes, record collections, plan an event, or set reminders on ToDo. This helps you to prioritize your tasks and increase your productivity. It also gives a little buzzer when you finish a task and mark it as complete. You can combine this with Teams and efficiently manage all the steps in a project.
Share files with OneDrive
When you work remotely, it becomes difficult to share files and folders. OneDrive makes it easy for you to share files with anyone back and forth right from the cloud. It gives you one TB storage space to keep your files. It can be accessed from anywhere on the web and you can also install its application on your computer.
The final say
Preparing a team to work remotely is a bit challenging, especially when we have not practiced it much before. Every organization has its unique processes and hence this challenge is different for every organization. The tools mentioned above are just a few that can help you to work efficiently when you work remotely. They give you the flexibility to work wherever you wish, may it be a desktop, laptop, or mobile app. Get in touch with us to know more about how Microsoft Azure is important to manage remote workplace and what are the best ways to implement office 365 in your organization.
