The buzz around Microsoft 365 is not new, but with all the new functionality and refinements Microsoft has made, and the global move towards remote working, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all the great tools it offers.
These help us work smarter, wherever we are, and whatever device we’re using, so we’ve put together this blog post to explain what all the tools are, and where they can help you in your business.
First off, here’s a little takeaway for you – all the core Microsoft 365 apps on a single page … it’s our pleasure!
You can see that we’ve split them into four core areas:
OK, you asked, so here we go. With familiar icons, links to more information, and brief descriptions from Microsoft’s website (as we can’t describe their amazing solutions better than they can):
For quick access download the Microsoft 365 icons infographic here.
Create (using a desktop or mobile app, and don’t forget Windows) |
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Excel |
Excel learns your patterns, organising your data to save you time. Easily create spreadsheets from templates or on your own and use modern formulas to perform calculations. |
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Word |
Collaborate with others across the globe in real time. Translate documents in your non-native language with just a click. Have your content read back to you and easily catch any mistakes. |
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Powerpoint |
Create well-designed, slides with impact with the help of Designer and Ideas in PowerPoint. Easily ink onto a slide, then convert handwritten notes into text and make hand-drawn shapes perfect in seconds. |
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Visio |
The ultimate tool for diagramming! Transform the way you use and visualise data so you can bring your best ideas to life. With dozens of ready-to-use templates and thousands of customisable shapes, Visio makes it easy — and fun — to create powerful visuals. |
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Access |
Create your own database apps easily in formats that serve your business best. PC only. |
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Publisher |
Create polished, professional layouts without the hassle. Easily design unique, specialised materials for any purpose – everything from simple greeting cards and labels to professional newsletters and marketing materials using the Publisher’s wide range of pre-designed templates. |
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Collaborate |
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Teams |
Whether it's chat, calls, or video, anyone can engage at any time, bringing everyone closer. Your docs, photos, videos, chat history, and meeting notes are always there, so it’s easier to work together. Set up your team’s space with all the apps you need so you can stay in just one place instead of jumping around. |
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SharePoint |
Your mobile, intelligent intranet. Share and manage content, knowledge, and applications to empower teamwork, quickly find information, and seamlessly collaborate across the organisation. |
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OneDrive |
OneDrive cloud storage and file sharing for business. Designed for business access, sharing, and collaboration on all your files from anywhere. |
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Lists |
Track information. Organise work. Customise for your team. Stay on top of it all with Lists, your smart information tracking app in Microsoft 365. Work with anyone, anywhere. Configure your lists to better organise events, issues, assets, and more. |
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Planner |
Organise teamwork with intuitive, collaborative, visual task management. Get more work done with Planner. Create Kanban boards using content-rich tasks with features including files, checklists, and labels. Collaborate in Planner and Microsoft Teams and check visual status charts |
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To Do |
Focus, from work to play with the best to-do list app. Set yourself up for success with My Day, intelligent and personalised suggestions to update your daily or weekly to-do list. |
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Project |
Meet the simple, powerful, reimagined Project for everyone. Stay organised, focused, and in charge. Tackle anything from small projects to large initiatives. You may or may not be a project manager, but now you can be the boss of any project with a powerful, easy-to-use app. |
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OneNote |
Your digital notebook! One cross-functional notebook for all your notetaking needs. Bring content and conversations together in a single, portable experience that’s always up to date. |
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Whiteboard |
The collaborative digital canvas in Microsoft 365 for effective meetings and engaging learning. Bring content and conversations together in a single, portable experience that’s always up-to-date. |
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Stream |
Drive engagement and productivity with video. Deliver live and on-demand events, enhancing communications, company meetings, and training with events for up to 10,000 attendees, whether at home, work, or on the go. |
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Forms |
Collect better data and make better decisions. Get feedback effortlessly with surveys, polls, and quizzes. |
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Outlook & Calendar |
Connect, organise, and get things done with email and a calendar. Everything you need to be your most productive and connected self–at home, on the go, and everywhere in between. |
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Exchange |
Work smarter with business-class email and calendaring. Exchange helps you collaborate on your critical documents and gives you a focused inbox that prioritises important messages and adapts to your work style so that you can get more done–faster. |
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Bookings |
A simpler way to organise schedules and manage appointments. Save time when scheduling with Microsoft Bookings. Customise appointment details, and booking requirements, and specify service providers to streamline the booking experience for you and your customers. |
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Viva Insights |
Improve productivity and well-being with data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations. Create a culture where people and businesses can thrive. |
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Delve |
Use Delve to manage your Microsoft 365 profile, and to discover and organise the information that's likely to be most interesting to you right now – across Microsoft 365. |
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Yammer |
Connect and engage across your organization. Easily create and host town halls, company meetings, and training. |
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Kaizala |
Simple and secure work management and mobile messaging app. You can engage securely with your networks, including partners, suppliers, customers, citizens, etc. |
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Sway |
An easy-to-use digital storytelling app for creating interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more. Its built-in design engine helps you create professional designs in minutes. |
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Viva Connections |
A curated, company-branded experience that brings together relevant news, conversations, and resources in the apps and devices you use every day. Inform, engage, and empower - inspire people to bring their best selves to work, wherever they are. |
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Automate & Report |
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Power Automate |
Take care of what's important; automate the rest. Streamline repetitive tasks and paperless processes with Microsoft Power Automate, so you can focus your attention where it’s needed most. |
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Power BI |
Find clarity when you need it most. Empower team members to discover insights hidden in your data. Enable everyone at every level of your organisation to make confident decisions using up-to-the-minute analytics. |
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Power Apps |
Create better solutions to increase productivity. Enable your users to create the solutions they need, when they need them. Create rich, interactive forms in SharePoint. |
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Power Virtual Agents |
Empower everyone to easily build intelligent chatbots. Respond rapidly to your customer and employee needs – at scale – using intelligent chatbots. No coding is required! |
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Dataverse |
Create and run thousands of applications, flow, and intelligent agents with a smart, secure, and scalable low-code data platform. |
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Secure & Comply |
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Security: |
In our world of cyber risks, knowing you have a solution which covers all aspects of security is a huge comfort. Microsoft has you covered. |
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Defender |
Microsoft 365 Defender - Stop attacks with automated, cross-domain security and built-in AI. Stop attacks before they happen, detect and automate across domains, and hunt across all your data |
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Defender for Office 365 |
Protect all of Office 365 against advanced threats like business email compromise and credential phishing. Automatically investigate and remediate attacks. |
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Defender for Identity |
Help security operations teams protect on-premises identities and correlate signals with Microsoft 365. Identify and resolve vulnerabilities, assess threats efficiently, and focus on real threats. |
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Defender for Endpoint |
A complete endpoint security solution: endpoint protection, detection and response, vulnerability management, and mobile threat defence. No additional deployment or infrastructure, always up to date, built on the industry’s deepest threat optics and intelligence, and automated security. |
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Cloud App Security |
Elevate your security posture by taking control of your cloud environment. Identify and combat cyber threats across all your cloud services. Discover and manage your apps, govern access to apps and resources, and check your cloud apps’ compliance. |
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Azure Information Protection |
Better protect your sensitive information – whenever, wherever. Control and help secure email, documents and sensitive data that you share outside your company. From easy classification to embedded labels and permissions, enhance data protection at all times, regardless of where it’s stored or who it’s shared with. |
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Secure Score |
Use intelligent insights and guidance to strengthen your organisation’s security posture. Assess your current security posture and identify potential improvements across all your Microsoft 365 workloads with centralised visibility from Secure Score. |
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Azure Active Directory |
Protect your business with a universal platform to manage and secure identities – the most trusted identity and access management solution in the market that helps you safeguard user credentials and connect people securely to the apps they need. |
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Users |
Add users and assign licenses at the same time. The people on your team each need a user account before they can sign in and access Microsoft 365. You can then easily update as required. |
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Groups |
Microsoft 365 Groups is the foundational membership service that drives all teamwork across Microsoft 365. With Microsoft 365 Groups, you can give a group of people access to a collection of shared resources. These include the applications outlined in this article. |
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Roles & Administration |
Maps your admin users to common business functions and gives people in your organisation permission to do specific tasks in the admin centres – no more, no less. |
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Conditional Access |
Keep your workforce secure and productive by enforcing granular access control with real-time adaptive policies. Configure and fine-tune policies with contextual factors such as user, device, location, and real-time risk information to control what a specific user can access, how, and when. |
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Endpoint Manager |
Secure, deploy, and manage all users, apps, and devices without disrupting existing processes. Get endpoint security, device management, and intelligent cloud actions in a unified management platform with Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager. |
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Compliance |
Assess compliance and respond to legal and regulatory requirements. Get intuitive end-to-end compliance management from easy onboarding to control implementation and reduce risk with intelligent automation. |
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Passwordless Authentication |
Forget passwords, go Passwordless. End users no longer need to create, store or remember passwords. Sign in with one look or tap. |
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Insights |
Not strictly security and compliance, but the key to the health of your business. Help teams balance productivity and well-being by generating valuable insights into the impact of work patterns on employee well-being and business outcomes. Built-in safeguards protect personal privacy. |
There is, but the great news is that all these tools complement each other, and you can plan their roll-out in a phased way to suit your business. Whatever your size, however, you currently work, and no matter your ambitions, these tools WILL help improve your business.
With so many tools available to you, many with the licences you already have, it’s hard to know where to start. This is where Numata’s services and experience can help you to benefit from all Microsoft 365 has to offer. With clear pricing and timescales, we can help you with:
If you’d like to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact us.