Ever feel like you could moonlight as a juggler with all the tasks you do each day as a business owner or manager? Scheduling meetings, sending emails, giving access, making calls, tracking progress… the list goes on and on. Thankfully, the world has digital tools to assist. And the extra good news is that many of these tools can connect seamlessly with systems and programs you already have in place.  

Microsoft 365 — the software suite formerly known as Office 365 — offers businesses a helpful hand with a host of apps designed to help you stay organized (and hopefully sane). Chances are, you’ve used at least some Microsoft services before  — think Word and Excel — but have you taken the time to explore all the tools a Microsoft 365 subscription has to offer? 

That’s what we’re here for, and we want to talk about three little-known ones in particular.

Telephony, Bookings, and Intune are all Microsoft 365 apps that can help business owners and operators save time and manage the day-to-day, yet we find lots of professionals have either never heard of them or never given them a try. We’re here to tell you — they can be incredibly helpful for streamlining your processes and protecting your business and data. As a tech management company, we’re all about processes and data.

It might have been easy to overlook these tools in the past, but we’re big believers in using your Microsoft-given powers to their full extent, so let’s talk about how these apps can benefit you and your business. 

  

3 Lesser-Known Microsoft 365 Apps For Your Business

App #1: Telephony 

Telephony (aka, Teams Calling) lets a business forgo the complications and expenditures of other enterprise phone systems, and instead allows users to send and receive calls via this 365 app.

With Telephony, your staff has the ability to call to and from landlines and mobile phones, and you’ll be able to transfer, mute, or unmute calls just like you would on a normal phone. Pretty slick, right? But what makes Telephony different from other phone systems is its ability to give you a lot more control over your business’s communication system. You can set up extensions and unique phone numbers, create custom hold greetings, and — if there’s ever any audio or device trouble — the app will detect it and alert the caller of the issue.  

Telephony is also a cloud-based phone system, meaning it offers safety and tracking for both your employee and customer information. It also means that a business can use the same system across all office locations (including remote or work-from-home locations), which can lead to more flexibility and improved control when communicating with your workforce.

And the price? Give us a call to talk about details. Current Microsoft 365 subscribers (and Tekmanagement clients) may be eligible for free Telephony service for the remainder of 2021. 

App #2: Bookings 

Bookings is another little-known Microsoft 365 app, but we’re thinking you can probably guess what it’s all about. Similar to Calendly’s service, Bookings helps you and your customers/patients/clients to easily book appointments and reminders, and keep track of important dates in your calendar.  

The bonus though, is that it can integrate with your other 365 apps and services.

Virtual Bookings meetings are held in Microsoft Teams (another robust 365 app), and can be set up to send reminders and links to your meetings to help you stay on track and on time. Each meeting automatically generates a unique link, so no need to copy and paste or track links behind the scenes. The integration also helps to avoid double-bookings in your calendar, so you can spend less time thinking about scheduling and more time meeting. 

Bookings isn’t only beneficial to your team, but to your customers as well. Meeting members who book appointments online can easily reschedule or cancel themselves, keeping everyone in sync. On the flip side, if you prefer to book appointments yourself, all you have to do is enter the details in Bookings, and your guest will receive automated confirmations and reminders.

Did we mention it integrates with your Facebook Business page, too? You can have your main call-to-action button link directly to your calendar, inviting followers to make an appointment without ever leaving the site.

App #3: Intune

Let’s say your employees are working from home on a company-provided laptop, tablet, or mobile phone (maybe not too uncommon during the last year of quarantining, right?). If your policy is for employees to use those devices for work purposes only, there’s an app for that. 

Intune is designed to let you have control over your company devices, allowing you to monitor both use and time. Intune also allows you to configure specific controls on each device, like preventing emails from being sent to people outside your organization, for example. You can set password and PIN requirements, create a VPN connection, and set up threat protection to ensure the safety of your private data.  

Even if your employees are using their personal devices, the Intune app has an option to only monitor certain parts of a device that are connected to your business, such as email or Telephony. This allows for employee privacy, while also giving you the option to monitor the work that pertains to your business.   

How Tekmanagement Can Help 

Ready to jump all in? Tiptoe? At Tekmanagement, we can help you combine these apps with your existing 365 plan to help your business tech run better, faster and easier than ever. We can custom-tailor a support package for you based on your business size, operations and existing software. We’re full of recommendations, too — we’re tech people, it’s what we do.

Another option for getting started: try out our free 30-day demo, or sign up for one of our free Customer Immersion Experiences. We can help you see for yourself if and how the Microsoft suite of business apps can save you time and money before signing on with a Managed Support Provider (MSP) like Tekmanagement.