As one of the leading business solutions, Microsoft 365 contains a number of products that have proven to be essential for supporting remote work.
Remote work used to be considered quite unusual. Then, the pandemic happened, and it was considered to be the ‘new normal’. At this point, though, remote work is now just considered to be as normal as working in the office. So, what does this mean for businesses? Primarily, it means that they need to ensure that any remote workers that are part of their organisation are equipped with the right resources to participate in the business to the same degree as everyone else.
Technology & Remote Work
All around the world, remote work has become increasingly common. For example, many London IT support companies have been receiving a lot of demand for new business solutions that support remote and hybrid work. We spoke to one such company, TechQuarters, who told us about their experience using Microsoft 365 to support their remote workers – in truth, they are an entirely remote company themselves; and therefore a true example of the effectiveness of M365 for remote working. But which products in the Microsoft 365 suite are most useful for remote working?
1. Video Calling
As most professionals will have their own experience of by now, video calling has become crucial to business. When many businesses were forced to go remote, they had to turn to using products like Zoom or Skype. Now, however, many businesses have invested in a business solution for video calling. In Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams is the answer. TechQuarters use Teams not only for internal communication, but to communicate with clients when providing IT support services in London. A business that wants to implement remote working practices needs to have a video calling solution that is designed for business – as this will be the primary way in which remote workers get the face-to-face communication that is often so crucial to business.
2. Direct Messaging
When working from home, in-person communication is not only substituted with video calling, but also with direct messaging / instant messaging. There are times when it is inefficient to wait for someone to join a video call, and you simply need to convey some information right away. This is precisely why instant messaging is useful, as it is an easy, fast way to stay connected with colleagues when working from home. There are many business-oriented instant messaging products, but for an Office 365 company, Microsoft Teams provides all the functionality one needs. Microsoft Teams chat supports direct and group chats with multi-media posts (pictures, voice recordings, video recordings, polls, etc.), as well as rich text messaging, which includes creating lists and tables, adding headings to posts, and much more.
3. File Sharing / Co-authoring
Collaboration is a huge part of business, and when some individuals in a business are working remotely, additional solutions need to be implemented to ensure that collaboration is still seamless. A big part of remote collaboration is ensuring that colleagues in different locations can quickly and securely share files, as well as co-author documents.
In terms of co-authoring, it is very easy in Microsoft 365 to collaborate on a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, because once a file has been shared with two or more people – as long as the file is stored in the cloud – all authorised users can open the same file at the same time, and all work on it at once. In terms of file sharing, once again, the cloud facilitates seamless file sharing that doesn’t put data at risk. Both of these practices are supported in Microsoft SharePoint – which is designed for shared cloud storage.
