What happens in real life gets reflected in the ways we conduct business. Microsoft makes the virtual office ultra-efficient for Office 365 subscribers.

To some extent we all make use of a virtual office. Tech advances and the ways we’re now used to living partly online means it couldn’t be any other way. Distant people are made close via smartphone apps and social media, with the barriers of cost and accessibility coming down all the time.

Skype for Business

Conference calls used to be complicated to set up and expensive to run. They relied on third party conferencing systems and the need for attendees to get to a place where they could access the system. Add in overseas attendees and organising a conference call could be expensive and complicated.

Skype for Business with Office 365 has swept away all the complication and expense. It provides advanced calling features and high quality video and sound. It’s also accessible on all devices from desktop PCs to the phone in your pocket. Colleagues and co-workers can meet via Skype for Business from anywhere there’s an Internet connection. It also allows for more flexible working options, which look set to become more in demand in the near future.

Office 365 Profiles

Every user of Office 365 has a profile, which offers much more than static identity information. From wherever staff are in the multi-workspace environment of Office 365, they can pull up a colleagues’ profile and take multiple actions from right on the page:

• Start a Skype chat.
• Send an email.
• Check if they’re in the office, on holiday or out on location somewhere.
• Check what they’re working on.
• Look up qualifications and skills or education.

It’s also easy for individuals to update their own profiles providing they have the necessary permissions to access and make changes

People Cards

These are like contact cards that those familiar with Outlook already know and understand. Except they now go further, creating an experience similar to that offered by Delve. People cards appear across Office 365 apps, adding extra value to SharePoint online and OneDrive for Business.

Hovering a mouse cursor over a people card will pop up information such as position in the company and what they’ve worked on recently. The same information is available across SharePoint and OneDrive mobile apps, creating a virtual office experience whether staff members are in the building or not.

Using Delve

The more an organisation makes use of the power of Delve, the more useful it becomes. You can:

• Find people.
• Discover what they’re working on.
• Find someone who can help via searches for skills, recent projects or education.
• Set up ‘favourites’ for most important or most often used documents or boards.
• Easily get back to recent projects or documents.

Delve will show documents in many different formats and applications, such as:

• SharePoint
• OneNote
• Word, PowerPoint and Excel

It will also show images or PDF documents, email attachments and videos.

Personalised to individual users, privacy is maintained by excluding documents. Delve’s usefulness grows exponentially the more it’s used by building up networks of contacts. Office Graph powers the magic. This collects information depending on signals such as email contact, collaboration on documents and management hierarchies.

Office 365 offers myriad ways for staff to stay in touch and collaborate, regardless of their physical location. The virtual office is here to stay, and at Eitex we can help you get the most out of it.

We’re available for either advice or to set up practical solutions for businesses across Yorkshire and beyond. If you want to mobilise your virtual office, get in touch today.