Striking the right balance for productivity in the workplace can be a challenge. With so many new tools, platforms, and methods competing for our attention each day, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of options that are out there to help you keep your workday on track.
Microsoft Office 365 provides you with all of the tools that you need to work, communicate, and collaborate with your team each day. With a subscription to Office 365, you immediately gain access to over 25 tools that work together to help you work smarter, not harder.
What programs are included with Microsoft 365?
Word 
Word is your tried and true word processing workhorse. From notes to newsletters, Word has always been the right tool for the job. Over the years, more bells and whistles have been added that have improved the way that users are able to collaborate. With live editing, sharing, and cloud-based document storage, Word has become an even better version of the app that you typed papers on back in college.
Excel
Data is a major part of the modern workplace, providing insight into not only the work that we are doing, but how it’s done – and how we can do it better. Microsoft has introduced artificial intelligence to Excel, giving users unparalleled insight into data analytics that helps collect and inform users to help better plan for the future.
PowerPoint
Whether you’re new to the world of PowerPoint or a long-time slide design pro, the latest version of Microsoft PowerPoint provides the tools that you need to create beautiful, informative slides to inform, entertain, and share with your audience. With hundreds of pre-built themes, support for a variety of media, and more, the future of PowerPoint has never been brighter.
Teams
Staying in touch with your team has never been simpler. Microsoft has provided the ultimate tool for file sharing, communication, and collaboration on any scale. From 1:1 conversations to Events featuring thousands of participants, Teams provides the ultimate platform to help keep your groups invested and tuned into the task at hand with in-app document editing, video and audio calling, Outlook integrations, and more.
Outlook
Even with thousands of communication tools in today’s modern tech space, the workplace can’t shake the good ol’ email. Thankfully, with the rise of Microsoft Teams came a slew of improvements to Outlook – including integrations with Teams itself – that make it the email platform of the future ensuring you’ll never miss a message.
OneNote
From college classrooms to conference calls, OneNote has tools to jot, draw, doodle, and type important information that can be saved in OneDrive and referenced later from any device. Share notes with your classmates, send a recipe to your neighbor, and keep everything tucked away for the future through the safety and security of the cloud.
OneDrive
Think of OneDrive as the glue that holds the rest of the Microsoft family together. This cloud-based storage technology provides space for file storage, secure backups, confidential company communication, and more. Easily access your most important files from anywhere in the world, whether on a computer or on a mobile device, without having to worry about an external hard drive getting corrupted or emailing large files between team members.
To Do
We’ve all been there – you’re out on a run and suddenly you remember that you need to email your client tomorrow morning, run to the store for kitty litter, and finish processing this month’s reports. Never let your to-dos fall through the cracks again with Microsoft To Do, a checklist that keeps you in check each and every day.
These are just a small selection of Microsoft’s most popular applications that are baked into the Microsoft 365 family. Recently, Windows employees have been shuffled around through company reorganization efforts under Chief Product Officer Panos Panay, who gives us a glimpse at the future of what Microsoft has in store. Their ultimate goal is ubiquity and synergy between hardware and software with both sides coming together to create a platform of the future – all built on Windows.
An internal memo collected via The Verge signals three distinct goals:
1. Deliver iconic experiences across Microsoft, lighting up both modern work and life.
2. Grow the business of Windows and Surface, delivering the best of Microsoft and creating end-user pull.
3. Lead the industry through innovation and technology, enabling Microsoft's ecosystem of partners to thrive.
As the future continues to come into greater focus, it’s clear that Microsoft is focused not on creating one program that runs well on a small family of devices, but rather an entire fleet of software that runs well across all ecosystems and devices worldwide.
