Things You Should know about Office 365 | DSM

With 1.5 billion users, Microsoft Office is one of the most widely used software suites in the world. Almost everyone who has used a computer in the last thirty years has used Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, or has sent an email using Outlook or Skype. The suite’s features are used by millions of modern businesses to interact, generate documents, and keep track of their finances. But, especially since the debut of Microsoft Office 365, there’s a lot more to Office than most users understand.

What is Office 365?

Office 365 is a subscription-based and cloud-based version of Microsoft’s popular productivity suite Microsoft Office, which was first launched in 2001. Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote are all included in Office 365, as with other programs and services including Publisher, OneDrive, Planner, Exchange, Access, SharePoint, Yammer, Skype, and Microsoft Teams, depending on the plan selected.

When it comes to Office 365 licenses, there are options for personal use, multi-user households, students, enterprises, organizations, and educational institutions, among others.

Office Internet, a mobile-only and online version of Office, allows users to receive free access to feature-limited versions of Office programs.

How is Office Different From Previous Versions?

Office 365 is a subscription-based service, which means that instead of purchasing an outright copy of the suite for a one-time charge, customers pay a monthly subscription fee to use the program at their desired level.

As the platform is updated at Microsoft’s end, customers of Office 365 always have access to the most recent version, whereas permanent, on-premise users would have to buy a new copy of the most recent edition to use new features.

Although desktop versions of Office 365 programs are available with specific subscriptions, it is meant to be used online. Microsoft’s servers house all of Office 365’s apps, services, and data.

Users do not need to install any software or keep any hardware up to date in order to use it. Office 365 also includes email hosting and cloud storage space, allowing customers to host their files online and access them from any device that can connect to the internet.

Because it is cloud-based, Office 365 has a number of capabilities that were not accessible in prior, permanent editions.

How can it assist Businesses Grow?

Great productivity tools enable everyone in a company to be more productive, communicate more effectively, and complete more tasks. The Office 365 suite enables important activities like discovering information, sharing knowledge, connecting with colleagues, processing data, and planning and organization easier and faster, freeing up time for organizations to develop, innovate, and move forward.

Apps recently added to Office 365 give business users even additional tools to help them expand, such as:

• Microsoft Connections, a customer interaction platform and an email marketing solution for small businesses.
• Microsoft Listings, a service that allows businesses to manage their information on social media sites such as Facebook, Google, Bing, and Yelp.
• Microsoft Invoicing, a mobile application that allows you to create and send professional invoices to clients while also accepting payments.
• Outlook Customer Manager, a basic intelligent customer management add-on for companies who don’t need a full-fledged CRM system yet.
• Microsoft Bookings, a program that helps users to keep track of customer appointments and timetables.
• MileIQ, a mileage tracking system that identifies and files business trips automatically.
• Business Center, a common access point for all Office 365 business apps where users may manage KPIs such as email subscriptions, outstanding bills, and bookings.

The use of a cloud-hosted productivity suite can also help a company’s bottom line. Subscription-based services are often more cost-effective and adaptable as the company needs change, and Microsoft Office 365 does not require any hardware expenditures. All infrastructure is handled by Microsoft, decreasing the requirement for in-house IT knowledge and potentially lowering IT spending.

Is Office 365 Secure?

Many new and potential users will have concerns about security and privacy because Office 365 is a cloud-hosted product. Data is a company’s most important asset, and the implications of failing to appropriately safeguard corporate data, as we’ve seen in countless high-profile data breach incidents in recent years, are severe.

Microsoft’s public cloud allows users to benefit from the company’s massive security initiatives while no cloud service can guarantee security, storing corporate data and infrastructure. Data from Microsoft Office 365 is stored in Microsoft’s worldwide data centers, where specialized threat management teams continuously anticipate, prevent, and mitigate unauthorized access 24/7; a degree of security that almost no firm can match in-house.

Antivirus, anti-spam, and anti-malware are all included by default in Office 365. Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is used to check all conversations, and email is SSL/TLS secured at rest and in transit. Users may send encrypted emails to anybody using Office 365’s Message Encryption feature, regardless of whatever email provider recipients use.

Individual users can be granted file-level access with Azure Rights Management, ensuring that only individuals with the appropriate user credentials have access to critical data, and multi-factor authentication protects access to the service.