Boost productivity, save time, and improve customer experience

Do you find yourself repeating the same actions, over and over and over again? Power Automate can automate these tasks for you, saving you time and reducing errors.

We always say that people should do what people are good at; solving complex problems, interpreting situations and thinking about the issue, rather than trying to do what machines are good at – those repetitive, monotonous tasks which they do as fast as possible without making any mistakes.

Power Automate connects to most of the other applications in the Microsoft 365 family. It creates workflows using the actions you use most. It can also tell other apps of the changes you’ve made, synchronise files or even post chat messages to Teams when a new task is created in Planner.

Because it’s automated, your employees will be happier – they don’t have to repeat the same task over and over again and the chance of human error is removed.

There is a wealth of planning applications available: Asana, Trell, Basecamp, Monday to name a few. For us though, Planner stands out.

It’s easy to use and understand, but is still a comprehensive planning tool. You can use it to create plans and manage entire projects.

For each project you create a team, create to-do lists and then assign tasks to members.

It even creates charts so you can see how far along each project is and when it is likely to be completed.

With the close coupling and integration with the other Microsoft 365 Apps, it allows direct file sharing and for tasks to be added to your and your team’s calendars.

SharePoint is an effective intranet for your business, it’s a great way to share resources, webpages and news across your entire organisatoin.

It’s customisable, so you can make it look exactly how you want to, including your company logo and colour scheme.

SharePoint is a little like Teams, but it doesn’t have a focus on project work or teamwork. However, both apps, SharePoint and Teams can work together to make keeping everyone up to date even easier.

Yammer is a bit like Facebook for business, it’s a great internal communication platform.

It’s similar to Slack and Discord, but with a Facebook-style feed, so it feels familiar and is easier to use. It can be closely integrated with Teams, so your staff can dip in and out of conversations easily. But it’s really designed to be a company-wide sharing platform.

You can create polls, provide news updates and start discussions, it’s great for building community in your workplace. And for larger organisations, or organisations that have several offices, this is more important than ever.

Sway is close to a combination of PowerPoint and Canva, with Sway you can create presentations, documents and newsletters quickly and easily, and then share them within your business.

The best thing about Sway is you can bring content in from any online source, and whatever you products looks professional without having to spend loads of time on it.

It’s best used for presentations that the user guides themselves through, rather than the more traditional presentation style, so you could use it for company newsletters, brochures and reports.

And it works great on mobile too!

Clarity is a fairly new offering from Microsoft in their Microsoft 365 portfolio, helping you understand how people are using your website.

If you know what they are clicking on and more importantly, what they are not engaged with, you can update your website so it performs even better!

That’s what Clarity helps you do, it creates heat maps of the pages and sections where people spend the most time, it can even replay videos of what people did on your website.

This information is invaluable, especially when your website is usually the first impression of your company that you give to prospective customers.

To Do (formerly Wunderlist) is a fantastic task organisation tool, it allows you to create lists, track and prioritise tasks, and organise different areas of your business.

You can see quickly what has been done, what needs to be done (and by whom).

You can add notes to help move tasks along to completion, or add information about certain actions and add attachments. You can of course also share your lists with anyone you need to.

It works great with a lot of other Microsoft 365 apps for easier information sharing and updates. And It’s got both a desktop and mobile app so you can keep your lists updated on the go.

Stream is your business’s answer to YouTube, it’s an internal video sharing platform where you can upload, share and create videos.

You can organise the content into different channels, share it easily and there’s also lots of storage space.

It works well with Yammer, SharePoint and Teams (to name the most popular places it gets used), to make your content even more accessible and relevant.

Power Apps is the leader in the no-code revolution that is happening right now. It gives your staff, even those with no coding experience, the tools they need to create apps that improve their working lives.

Power Apps can remove the need for the manual entry of data and actually push out updates to people’s smartphones, so they can stay updated wherever they are.

It’s quite like PowerAutomate but more involved. You can implement the logic and workflows created in PowerAutomate, create your own templates or build it entirely yourself. You can use it on the web, on mobiles or even embed it in Teams or SharePoint.

You can also use this to create an app for your business without having to hire a developer. Almost anyone in your business can use this easily.

If you make appointments or schedule meetings with your team, clients or other contacts? If so, then you should really take a look at Bookings.

It allows you to schedule appointments with anyone. Send invites where the recipient can select a time and date that suits them best and customise the booking. Then it’s automatically added to your outlook calendar.

You can also use Bookings to add Teams meeting links. Embed it on your website so prospective clients can access the live calendars of you and your sales team to find a time that suits them.

So there we have it, our top 10 favourite hidden gems in Microsoft 365. Some of these are included in your subscription already, some are free and some you’ll have to pay for. But don’t worry, you can usually get a free trial before you need to make a commitment. And if you use the apps like they’re designed to be used, you should find they’re an investment rather than a cost.