Microsoft has consistently turned out collaboration software of all kinds, but some are more effective than others. We’ll try to single out some of the best and brightest solutions for collaboration in the business world.

OneDrive for Business
Even though OneDrive for Business shows its worth much better when used in concert with Microsoft Teams, it doesn’t need Teams in order to be effective. OneDrive allows for file sharing in programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. If you have the application opened up, click Share in the upper right-hand corner. You’ll open up a box that provides you with your options. You can enter a name or email address, or you can get a copy of the link to share it in other ways. If you try to share the document with users outside of your organization, you’ll need to select Specific People from a dropdown menu at the top of the box. Once you’ve done this, as long as you select Allow Editing, anyone who has access to the file can edit it in real time. However, this only works for documents stored in OneDrive.

Outlook Email
It’s obvious that email helps with collaboration, but now that Microsoft Outlook 2016 has been improved with Office 365’s Groups feature, it’s better than ever before. Outlook is now capable of creating a shared space for your team to get more done through collaboration. Outlook Groups can be used for access to a shared calendar, team inbox, and document library. This gives groups a space that can be used to have conversations, schedule meetings, and store documents that might be important for the project they’re working on. As long as your organization’s IT department has enabled the option for Groups, it’s fairly simple to implement.

• Click the Home tab in the navigation ribbon.
• Under Groups, select New Group
• Choose a name for your new group. The group will be given a suggested email address. Keep in mind that your group name cannot be changed.
• Enter a brief mission statement for the group in the Description field. Keep in mind that this will be included in every welcome email that you send to new group members.
• Set a Classification from the options provided by your organization.
• Change your group’s Privacy level. While it defaults to private, where content can only be viewed by approved group members, there is also a public option that allows anyone to see it.
• You can have all of the group’s conversations and events sent to all members’ email inboxes. They can then change the setting to their personal preference.
• Once you’ve clicked Create, you’re all set.

Skype for Business
Skype for Business is extremely helpful for communicating and collaborating in the workplace, but one of its key features includes integration with Microsoft Outlook, as well as the option to see who is available at any given time, just by looking at the calendar. This is particularly helpful to schedule a meeting and post an agenda for said meeting.

To get started with these great communication solutions, reach out to us today at (760) 466-1200.