UCT Microsoft 365: A cheat sheet

Microsoft 365 is the de facto productivity suite for many enterprises, and it is the suite UCT adopted for its students’ productivity needs. So as a UCT student, it’s in your best interest to know everything about Microsoft 365 to be more productive in your academic journey. We are undoubtedly in the Tech-age and these skills gained will go a long way in assisting you in life. To help you achieve that goal, UCT Zimsoc compiled the most important details and related resources on Microsoft 365 into this “cheat sheet” guide.

Executive summary

• What is Microsoft 365? Microsoft 365 provides users with the basic productivity applications necessary to get work done in the modern enterprise. It includes applications like Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, and OneDrive, just to name a few.
• Why does Microsoft 365 matter? As the standard for productivity suites, competing products are generally measured against applications from the Office 365 suite.
• Who does Microsoft 365 affect? In the modern mobile-centric enterprise, Microsoft 365 provides the tools used to get work done. This makes Microsoft 365 important to just about every working individual.
• How do you get Microsoft 365? go to https://office.com and login with your UCT details. UCT has a subscription for all students to access these apps.

What is Microsoft 365?

Microsoft 365 is a subscription service that provides users with the basic productivity applications necessary to get work done in the modern enterprise. Productivity applications include, but are not limited to, a word processor, a spreadsheet, an email client, a calendar, and a presentation application. In fact, because of Microsoft 365’s cloud-based structure, the suite of productivity applications is constantly being updated and improved. You can also download the apps onto your laptop / mobile phone – up to 5 devices.

• Word: This app sets the standard for word processors and is available with Microsoft 365 for both Business and Premium. If users in your enterprise need to create documents, this is the tool they will use.
• Excel: The spreadsheet has been the workhorse for basic data analysis since its invention back in the previous century. Excel is the current standard-bearer and comes with Microsoft 365 for Business and Premium.
• Outlook: Microsoft 365’s solution for managing email and an appointment calendar is called Outlook. The app has been around for many years and its busy interface tends to be either loved or hated by users. It’s available with both the Business and Premium subscriptions.
• PowerPoint: Communicating information to a group of individuals at a meeting often involves a presentation. Microsoft 365’s PowerPoint allows users to create, display, and disseminate information in formats ranging from the basic slide to animation to video.
• Publisher: Sometimes communicating information to a broader audience requires something more permanent and more formal than a presentation at a meeting. The Publisher app in Microsoft 365 provides users with the tools they need to publish professional-looking newsletters, brochures, and booklets.
• OneNote: As the workforce has become more mobile, the need to capture information on the go has become increasingly important. Applications like OneNote allow users to take notes on any device and then retrieve those notes from any other device. It’s your basic productivity cloud app.
• OneDrive: The other basic and fundamental cloud-based application is storage. With each Microsoft 365 Business subscription, Microsoft provides users with up to 1 TB of cloud storage in the form of an application called OneDrive for Business.
• SharePoint: A subscription to Microsoft 365 Business Premium also provides an enterprise with a few applications for backend infrastructure management. SharePoint, for example, can be used to host intranet websites for the enterprise. It also can be used to host smaller sites designed for smaller teams or divisions. The permissions for these sites can be designated by the users themselves or by appointed administrators.
• Exchange: Each Microsoft 365 for Business subscription includes an Exchange Server, which handles all the email management duties. By default, each user is granted 50 GB of storage for email. Maintenance of the Exchange Server is generally handled at the administrator level.
• Microsoft Teams: Younger members of the modern enterprise workforce are very familiar and comfortable with chat applications. To satisfy the needs of those employees, Microsoft 365 now includes Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace that integrates people, content, and tools into a single platform.
• License scope: One licensed subscription to Microsoft 365 covers five phones, five tablets, and five PCs or Macs per user.
• Support: Each Microsoft 365 subscription includes full 24/7 web and phone support.
• Collaboration tools: Along with the typical productivity applications, Microsoft 365 includes many collaboration tools like Delve, Yammer, and Sway. These tools allow users to communicate, brainstorm ideas, share documents, and have video meetings while on the go.
• Power BI: One of the most powerful tools any enterprise can have, regardless of size, is reliable business intelligence (BI) gathering applications. Microsoft 365 for Business, through its Power BI application, provides enterprises with a set of tools for collecting, sorting, and presenting business intelligence data.
• Infrastructure: All Microsoft 365 subscriptions include a reliability guarantee of 99.9% uptime. In addition, permissions for internal access control are handled by administrators designated by the enterprise using tools supplied by Active Directory. Each Microsoft 365 subscription includes five layers of security and proactive monitoring to help safeguard your data.
• Kaizala: Mobile communications is vital to many organizations, and Kaizala adds a secure mobile messaging and workflow app that can be deployed both internally and externally. Employees, customers, and vendors can all communicate and coordinate with each other in a secure environment.
• Flow: Managing workflow in a dynamic business and across various applications can consume precious time and resources. Flow provides a simple system to manage notifications within Microsoft 365 across all of the applications you use.
• To-Do: An update to Microsoft 365 has added the To-Do app to the productivity suite. No longer an afterthought piggybacking on the Calendar app, To-Do is now a feature-rich standalone application that integrates with the rest of Microsoft 365.
• PowerApps: For those situations when your organization needs a specific app to do a specific job, there is PowerApps. Using simplified development techniques, businesses can create sophisticated applications using features, procedures, and processes found in Microsoft 365.

As you can see, there is definitely something new to learn and utilize from what UCT offers us. These tools are enablers for more productivity, for students to focus more on what matters, their core business at UCT – their academic journey. I hope you found this article useful and helpful. If you have or questions, you comment below.

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