Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 from IT Planning

We’re very happy to endorse Office 365 (now known as Microsoft 365), not only because it’s the go-to suite of office-based applications for most businesses worldwide, but also because it’s simply the best.

No longer are you faced with the need for regular capital investment on new software every few years. Microsoft 365 is a cloud subscription service, meaning you get to pay by regular, manageable monthly payments, and your software is always updated to the most regular version.

Microsoft 365 for Business gives you full, installed Office Applications on your desktop, as well as access to Office Web Apps, enabling you to work wherever you have connection to the internet.

Microsoft 365 for Business comes in a variety of flavours with options to suit every need and every budget.

Microsoft 365 Features can Include:

• Full, installed Office applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and OneNote
• Office on tablets and phones for the full, installed Office experience on the go
• Online versions of Office including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• File storage and sharing with 1 TB storage/user with OneDrive
• Business class email, calendar, and contacts with a 50 GB inbox
• Unlimited online meetings with Teams Which is officially the best thing since sliced bread. With jam on top. And a little umbrella!

Many more features are available depending on the level of subscription you require. And if all that weren’t enough, it’s reliable and secure as well.

There’s frankly too much to include here, so why not contact us and we’ll happily go through all the many, many options available to you.

Want all of this on a Mac? Then you can have it on a Mac, you wild, crazy rebel, you.

OneDrive vs SharePoint – What Exactly is the Difference?

That, my friend, is a very good question.

As Microsoft moves more and more towards cross-platform integration, so there is a blurring of lines between some different products.

For instance, OneDrive is a highly adaptable online storage solution for a company’s employees. You can store, sync and share work-files, pictures, videos and so on. You can set different access permissions for different folders and access your files either in the office, on the road, or at home.

SharePoint is essentially a team product, used by businesses that want to create internal websites and share documents and information with colleagues, partners, and customers on specific projects. You can use it as a secure place to store, organise, share, and access business information from almost any device. You can control ownership and permissions of sites or individual documents across a wide collection of people.

Whaddya mean, that doesn’t really answer the question?

Well, give us a call or drop us a line via our contact form and we’ll guide you through the complex maze of options and find out which is the best one for you.

Great thing is, if you want Microsoft 365 with SharePoint, you can have it at a remarkably affordable monthly cost.

Want them as standalone products? Well, you can have that as well.

Gosh, but we do aim to please.

A Word About Teams

Teams has come a long way since its launch in 2016. For a number of years, it co-existed somewhat confusingly with Skype for Business until the latter’s retirement in July 2021.

Teams has now developed into a unified collaboration platform, offering chat, voice, messaging, file sharing and much more.

Teams also offers video conferencing for up to 250 users per session with plans to increase that limit in the offing.

Channels can be created for specific topics or specific groups of users and comprehensive permissions can be set.

Teams now also offers ‘Phone System’, which offers a complete replacement for internal Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) as well as connecting to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for external calls. Which means you can ditch your old phone system and simply use Teams instead. All the familiar features of traditional telephony are there including Auto Attendant, Call Queues, Voice Mail and so forth.

In many cases, using Phone System for Teams can significantly reduce call costs for SMEs so if you’d like to know more, just contact us and we can talk you through which of the many available plans and solutions might be correct for you.