Microsoft has a wide range of applications in its Microsoft 365 suite. You most likely know about Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. How about the other applications? Here is a rundown of 5 Microsoft application tools you didn’t know existed.
Here is a rundown of 5 Microsoft application tools you didn’t know existed, including the powerful capabilities of RDS remote desktop.
Microsoft PowerApps
The ever-increasing digital speed of change is compelling businesses to adapt fast or risk going out of business. It means they have to hire technical talent to keep up with this pace of change. Even with the manpower, it is still near impossible to keep up.
This is where low-code applications come in. Microsoft PowerApps is a low code development platform that helps you develop apps to automate and improve your business processes. To build your app, you start first by connecting Microsoft PowerApps to your database; SharePoint, Excel, Oracle, Workforce, or other data sources you have.
From there, it will automatically standardize the data and you can start developing your app. Alternatively, you can start from scratch and use the pre-built templates and build as you go.
To increase the functionality of your apps, we recommend adding advanced features like analytics, AI, chatbots, directive maps, mixed reality, IoT; the possibilities are endless. Sounds too complicated? An experienced Powerapps consultancy like Valto can help ease things for you and speed up your app development process.
Microsoft Power Automate
How do you eliminate busy work and have more time to do the work that moves the needle? One of the easiest ways to tackle this is through automation. Microsoft Power Automate helps you to digitize repetitive manual tasks.
To do this, you can create a cloud flow, desktop flow, or business process flow. You can create automation for things like email and social media.
The desktop flows automate tasks you do on your desktop or web. For example, organizing files and folders and extracting data from websites. The business process flows streamline business processes and create efficiency in an organization.
Microsoft Bookings
Microsoft Bookings is a scheduling application that helps customers schedule appointments with businesses. The customer chooses the service they want and the time they want the service, and Microsoft bookings will schedule an appointment on behalf of the customer.
To set up Microsoft Bookings to take bookings for your business, you’ll need to input your business information. It will include your business name, type of service offered, phone number, email, address, price, terms, and conditions of service, your business logo, duration of service, and business hours.
Once you put in all your details, configure your booking page and then publish it. You can embed the link of your page to your website, Facebook or email it out to your prospective customers. You’ll be notified when there is a booking, and the customer will have reminders through email or text of when their appointment is drawing close.
In case a customer bails out, you do not have to manually cancel and free up the time. Microsoft Bookings does it automatically and another customer can take the slot.
The tool also helps you collect analytics for your business by showing you how many bookings you have had and revenue made.
Microsoft Forms- Microsoft application tools
Are you looking to collect customer feedback, carry out a survey, or want to measure your employees’ satisfaction? If you are, Microsoft Forms can help. This is an online form builder in the Office suite that helps you write and design quality forms to collect data.
A key advantage of Microsoft forms is that it visualizes data into charts and graphs. So you can readily interpret and present the data you have collected. It also generates reports and you can transfer the data to Excel where you can do an in-depth analysis.
Microsoft Yammer- Microsoft application tools
A common challenge that businesses grapple with is how to collaborate. Whether you’re a small team in an office, remote workers, or a large organization, you need efficient collaboration to get things done. One of the collaboration tools that one can use is Microsoft Yammer.
The platform is widely referred to as the Facebook of corporate as it is a social networking application that helps coworkers have open and dynamic communication across the organization. Just like any social network site, you can use it to communicate, gather and share ideas, give feedback, keep everyone informed, and foster community.
Know of any other Microsoft tool we might have forgotten?
Microsoft is one of those pioneer tech companies that has revolutionized how businesses operate today. Much of its success has been responding to market demands and coming up with new software and applications.
Some are widely known, while others have not had their day. This is not to mean they are not good. So, be sure to check out these lesser-known Microsoft applications and see how you can integrate them and improve your productivity.
