For many years, Microsoft has had a number of core programs it included in it’s Office suite. The main ones for home and business users are Word (word processor), Excel (spreadsheet) and Powerpoint (presentation) Later, Outlook (email and calendar) joined the business packages, so what is also available for Microsoft 365?
Key:
Included in home version
Included in business version
Online version
Windows only
Access
Access is a database program that is available only for PCs. Access
There is no online, mobile or Mac version of Access.
Azure Information Protection
Azure Information Protection (AIP) is a cloud service that allows you to control access to files and folders using a tag system rather than the traditional file permissions of user and groups.
Tagging is much easier to do, assign a tag to a group of files, then assign that tag to the users of those files.
Calendar (part of Outlook)
Calendar is a powerful tool for task and event management with schedule assistant, a feature that allows you to find gaps in your schedule to make it easier to fit someone in.
Calendar links with analytics and CRM so that you can track performance as well as calendar events related to your customers easily.
Cortex
Cortex is an AI data mining tool that replaces Delve bookmarking tool.
Cortex enables a user to bookmark and work on data that spans across files on SharePoint.
Delve was also business social media tool, in the form of Delve Blogs but Microsoft shuttered the blogs because they weren’t being used. Perhaps because they weren’t advertised very well so nobody knew about them or how to use them properly.
Dynamics
Dynamics is a set of intelligent business applications that bring the benefits of CRM (Customer Relationship Management – Everything you do with customers) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning – Track business resources like stock; payroll; etc)
It is like having your own Office admin staff in a program that keeps an eye on every part of your business at the same time.
Excel
Excel is a spreadsheet application that displays data in a column and row grid that can have formulas interact with that data.
You can create charts from the data in a spreadsheet.
Excel also has a macro language that allows for automation, such as flagging up duplication or duplicating data across spreadsheets.
Exchange
Exchange is an email, contacts and calendaring server application that stores everything in a database.
Exchange is provided as a service for Microsoft 365 which allows you to manage your email and related services online. There is also a version for Windows Server which allows for clustering (a collection of servers that operate as one) and high availability (a collection of servers that if one fails will take over seamlessly)
Forms
You can create forms that your customers can fill out, you can create polls and quizzes and have the results entered into an Excel spreadsheet.
Intune
Intune is an endpoint manager tool that enables a company to manage how their employees use their cloud services. This can be with in-premises or BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) to grant or deny access to specific content your employees need across the company.
OneDrive
OneDrive is a cloud storage system that allows the user to store everything that is on their computer into the cloud. OneDrive allows for files to be accessed on every computer the OneDrive account is added to, as well as through the Microsoft account on the web. A document can be edited in a web browser just as it can on a computer.
Additionally, specific files or folders can be shared with other users.
OneNote
OneNote is your digital notepad. You can type, draw or write on OneNote and the files can be stored on OneDrive so they can be accessed by any device.
Outlook
Outlook is personal information manager as it handles email as well as calendars.
People
People is your contacts manager, you can use it to keep track of all the details about friends, family and co-workers.
People can also be used to keep track of teams.
Planner
Planner is a project management tool that creates Kanban boards for team members. It is similar to Trello, but is integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem.
The scaling of project management is:
- ToDo – For small tasks with limited complexity and one or two people.
- Teams – For small tasks with more complexity and few people.
- Planner – For bigger tasks with a team of people.
- Project for Desktop – For much larger teams and much more complex tasks.
- Project for Web – For huge teams and very complex tasks.
Planner cannot create Gantt charts for example, because Gantt charts have a specific purpose in tracking where a project is, and the people involved in that project.
Power BI
Power BI (Business Intelligence) is a data interpretation tool for business analytics. It can take in data from a wide range of sources and connect to Excel to provide real time charts on live data for business directors.
Sales and marketing departments use different programs that Power BI can extract data from and use AI to process that data into a meaningful form. The AI could be used to feed back to the sales team to target customers in a more specific way and for specific customer needs in order to increase sales.
PowerApps
PowerApps is an application builder. You can build your own mobile and web apps either from scratch or using the templates provided.
PowerPoint
PowerPoint is a presentation package designed so that slides can be created from images and text as well as charts and other data from Excel and other programs to present to users.
Stream
Touted as Microsoft’s answer to YouTube for their corporate clients. Stream offers a video hosting platform that allows users to upload, embed and share video content around your team.
Sway
Sway is a modern version of Microsoft Publisher that enables the user to create reports; training material; presentations; newsletters and more. Web content can be easily embedded to create professional looking content.
Teams
Teams replaces Skype for business as the go-to VoIP and video conference app. Teams users can interact with Skype users on a one-to-one basis and Teams can interact with Skype for business server if a company has one installed. Teams does have some extra features, such as seamless integration with PowerPoint Live (a new feature coming out this year)
When used in Webinar mode, where users can’t talk at the same time, Skype was limited to 250 users. Teams is limited to 10,000 users.
Although Skype is not being phased out, Teams for Home has recently been released.
To Do
To Do is a an online daily planner. You list out your tasks and give them a completion date and priority. You can also add notes; access them on mobile devices and in Outlook.
Word
Word is Microsoft’s document creation and word processor. It has DTP (Desktop Publishing) features built in and saves files to the OneDrive by default.
Yammer
Yammer is Microsoft’s corporate social media network. You can share updates and commen on other people’s updates and have private conversation with them. It allows a business to create communities within an organisation where ideas can be shred along with social aspects within a company.
