Randy Dean walks through Microsoft 365's nine core apps, from Outlook to Copilot, explaining what each does and how they connect. The suite links cloud storage, shared workspaces, chat, task management, and AI into one system designed to cut through the overwhelm most users feel.
Chapters
Hi everybody, I'm Randy Dean, popularly known as the Email Sanity Expert and also the author of the recent Amazon bestseller, Taming the Email Beast. Um, I wanted to ask a question. Uh, do you use Microsoft 365 and are you feeling overwhelmed simply by the sheer amount of new apps and programs that Microsoft has been releasing as part of the 365 suite and put at your disposal. There's been so many apps and so many tools released to us in such a short time. Many of them can be really helpful, greatly increase not only your personal productivity but also your team's coordination and collaboration on projects, activities, and events. But who has the time to figure out how to use all these This video learning system will get you there. Here's what you're going to learn. First, you're going to learn what they do. Each of those different programs: OneNote, OneDrive, Teams, of course, Microsoft Outlook. We're going to talk about Planner and To Do, a little bit about SharePoint and Loop. And you're going to learn what these programs do as well as how they can help you be more productive, focused, organized, and less distracted. You can also see how they can help your team be more coordinated and collaborative and how they all work together. It's truly a revolutionary architecture that Microsoft has put together here, a revolutionary collection of programs really designed to enhance personal and team productivity. Let's take a quick look at the structure of the 365 suite. Of course, Microsoft Outlook, which is your email, your calendar, your contacts, and if you use them, your tasks. I have been teaching Outlook for 20+ years. I found that a lot of people are underutilizing the task capabilities in Outlook, uh, but they're quite good. And if you are still using Classic Outlook, you probably still have a very simple notepad at your disposal. But all of you that are using the new and web versions of Outlook They're now expecting you to use the OneNote app instead. Outlook was really designed for your productivity, and initially it was created at a time when truly collaborative cloud-based tools were just a dream in some programmer's mind. Thus, sharing capabilities are very limited and cursory. Many organizations figured out how to get calendar shared between people as needed, and you could send task requests and contact exports via email, but the sharing was really limited. Microsoft's cloud efforts really began in about 2010 with the release of OneDrive. Yep, OneDrive has been around for 15 years now, but the true capabilities have just in the last few years really taken off with the other tools in the former Office 365 suite, now called Microsoft 365. Thus, OneDrive will act as your online dual redundancy e-document media file cabinet, but it will also give you the ability to share and collaborate with others on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, as well as share other types of files like PDFs and media files with other approved users. It is actually the little brother to SharePoint, which has actually been around a bit longer. SharePoint actually launched all the way back in 2001, but not as a cloud service per se, but as the shared intranet and storage platform for many organizations using Microsoft on Exchange. Things really, uh, started changing with SharePoint in about 2011 when Office 365 was finally launched. Now it could also be used like the community file cabinet for the organization. The perfect place for company files like policy manuals, crisis plans, benefit plan documents, and more. It also has capabilities for building a company intranet, not internet, intranet. Think for things like new employee onboarding, the company community calendar, perhaps some collaborative project management applications, and the host location for new tools in 365 that we're about to come come online.
So you have OneDrive for your documents, files, and media, and SharePoint as your community file cabinet and intranet. Now, the OneNote app is nearly as old as SharePoint, announced in 2002 and made available on a limited basis in 2003, but it really didn't do much for about a decade. Then, after Office 365 was released, it started taking off a bit, although mostly as a personal notepad more than a collaborative tool. It is far more than just a little notepad, though. It can be a very powerful collaborative tool for supervisors and their direct reports, as well as workgroups and teams with the ability to attach and insert documents and files, photos, audio and video, and more. With some creativity, it can even greatly reduce internal emails while enhancing real-time project team and individual collaboration and coordination. Going even beyond that is Microsoft Teams, a potential super tool for team collaboration and productivity, which became widely available in 2017. Now you have not only a platform for team chat and audio and video meetings, but also an evolving platform for the creation of work group and project teams that can allow a one-stop shop for everything related to a specific project activity, or event. One of the very cool features within these Teams is the ability to even access other Microsoft tools and apps, from Word to Excel to OneNote to even third-party tools like Asana, Trello, Salesforce, and— HowSpace. Yes, with the launch of Teams, Microsoft finally realized that some organizations actually use certain third-party tools that they prefer, and Teams allowed for this by allowing workgroups and project teams to be able to use Teams as their centralized hub for all things related to that project, client, or activity. One tool that is rapidly increasing in popularity due to its seamless integration with Teams is Microsoft Planner, which will actually take the place of Microsoft Project's web version starting in 2025. Planner has been around since 2018, but has greatly increased in popularity in the last couple of years as it became the bridge for individual and team tasks from Outlook all the way over to Teams, coordinating with Microsoft To Do. Now you have the ability to see project and task plans with several different views, share and assign tasks, and see your To Do interface in your Outlook.
And you can share your plans within Planner with other team members to enhance coordination. It is actually now the default task manager when you create a team within Teams. And now one of the newest tools in the suite, Loop, provides the opportunity to create unified workspaces for all members of a team to brainstorm, plan, and collaborate in real time. And yes, Loop is one of those Microsoft tools that is also available to open inside of your Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Teams.
So consider this evolving set of tools and apps: Outlook for your email, calendar, tasks, and contacts; OneDrive for your cloud-redundant document and file storage with sharing capabilities; SharePoint for your organization's shared files and information, as well as possibly your company intranet; and OneNote, which is far more than just a little note app. Yes, it can help you get more organized and store and save ideas and lists, like any other note app, but it also has the capabilities to be used as a potential tool for enhanced supervisor and employee communication, collaboration, and coordination, as well as enhanced project team and event management and coordination. And then you can take that even one step higher with Microsoft Teams for fully integrated team meetings, chat, shared notes and plans, document documents, files, tasks, and projects via Planner and To Do, and fully integrated team workspaces in Loop. And of course, now you also may have access to Microsoft Copilot, either the free version through your browser or the pro version that integrates with many of these tools, as well as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, to possibly save you time in so many ways. So now that you understand the structure of what I consider the 365 powerful personal and professional productivity suite— say that 3 times fast— let's talk about what these individual programs in my Microsoft Mastery video series will cover. Microsoft Outlook.
