10 Ways to Get More From Your Microsoft 365 Apps
Most small businesses pay for Microsoft 365 and use a fraction of it. Staff open Outlook, Word and Excel, and the rest of the licence sits idle. That is money left on the table, and often it means people are working around problems that Microsoft 365 already solves.
Here are ten practical ways to get more value from the Microsoft 365 apps your team already has, without buying anything new.
Work together in one place
1. Stop emailing attachments
Every attachment creates another copy of a file, and before long nobody knows which version is current. Save the file to OneDrive or SharePoint and share a link instead. Everyone works on the same document, changes appear in real time, and version history lets you roll back if someone makes a mistake.
2. Give each team or project a home in Teams
Create a Team for each department or major client project, with channels for the main topics. Conversations, files and meeting notes then live together instead of being scattered across inboxes. Keep the structure simple: a handful of well-named Teams beats fifty that nobody uses.
3. Use SharePoint for company files, OneDrive for personal drafts
A common mistake is storing shared company files in one person’s OneDrive. When that person leaves, access becomes messy. A clean rule works well: work in progress lives in your own OneDrive, and anything the business relies on lives in a SharePoint site or Team with the right permissions.
Save time every day
4. Tame Outlook with Focused Inbox and Quick Steps
Focused Inbox separates important mail from newsletters and notifications. Quick Steps let you file, flag and reply to common messages with one click. Rules can move invoices, alerts and reports into their own folders automatically. Ten minutes of setup can save a surprising amount of time each week.
5. Share calendars and use booking pages
Shared calendars stop the back-and-forth of “when are you free?”. For client appointments, Microsoft Bookings gives customers a page where they can choose a time that suits both of you, with confirmations sent automatically.
6. Automate repetitive tasks with Power Automate
If someone on your team copies data from one place to another every day, there is a good chance Power Automate can do it. Typical small business examples include saving email attachments to a SharePoint folder, sending a Teams message when a form is submitted, or creating a Planner task from a flagged email. Start with one small, annoying task and build from there.
7. Track work with Planner and collect information with Forms
Planner gives each team a simple board of tasks with owners and due dates, which is often all a small business needs for project tracking. Microsoft Forms handles staff surveys, client feedback, event registrations and internal requests, and the responses flow straight into Excel.
Use AI sensibly
8. Try Copilot Chat before buying more licences
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is available at no additional cost with eligible Microsoft 365 business plans. It can draft emails, summarise long documents and help with formulas. The full Microsoft 365 Copilot, which works across your emails, meetings and files, is a separate paid add-on. Let a few staff trial Copilot Chat first so you can see where AI genuinely saves time. Before anyone pastes client information into any AI tool, set some ground rules. Our guide to setting up AI rules for your staff covers what to include.
Keep it secure
9. Turn on the security you already pay for
Microsoft 365 includes strong security controls, but many are not switched on by default or are only partly configured. At a minimum, every business should have:
- Multi-factor authentication enforced for every user, including the owner and admin accounts.
- Legacy sign-in methods blocked, so attackers cannot bypass MFA through older protocols.
- External sharing settings reviewed, so files cannot be shared publicly by accident.
- Email protection tuned to catch phishing and spoofed messages.
If you are on Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you also have Microsoft Defender for Business and Intune for managing and protecting devices. These map well to several of the ASD’s Essential Eight controls. Our Essential Eight checklist for small business shows where they fit.
10. Back up your Microsoft 365 data
Microsoft keeps its service running, but protecting your data from deletion, ransomware or a rogue user is your responsibility. Recycle bins and version history only go back so far. A separate backup of email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams means you can restore what you need, when you need it. See our simple backup and recovery plans for the basics.
Help your team learn the tools
Microsoft adds features constantly, and most people never hear about them. A few habits help:
- Run a 20-minute “tip of the month” session in a team meeting.
- Point staff to Microsoft Learn, which has free, short training modules.
- Nominate one person as the go-to Microsoft 365 champion.
- Write down your file storage rules so new starters follow them from day one.
Quick checklist
- Files shared as links, not attachments
- Teams and SharePoint set up around how your business actually works
- Outlook rules and Quick Steps in place for common email
- One repetitive task automated with Power Automate
- MFA enforced for everyone, and sharing settings reviewed
- A separate backup of Microsoft 365 data, tested
If you would rather have someone set this up properly, our Microsoft 365 services cover licensing, setup, security and ongoing support.
Are you getting full value from Microsoft 365?
Our free IT Health Check reviews how your Microsoft 365 is set up, including security, sharing and backups, and shows you what to switch on next.
Or call 1300 133 770.
