Microsoft’s Office 365 is growing into becoming a very impressive cloud based solution platform. I’m kind of rediscovering Office these days.

Sure, we’re getting the relevant (and at times cool) “typical Office program” improvements. But mostly, we’re getting cloud based Enterprise class features for the digital workplace, which competes well with niche players across the board. It also, in most respects, compares favourably with Google’s G Suite…

Office 365 connects the dots between team collaboration (Sharepoint), file storage (OneDrive), real time communication (Skype, Yammer), analytics (Power BI), and so on. I’ve been a loyal user of Dropbox, Slack, Whatsapp, and our organization currently uses IBM Connections for team collaboration. The past couple of months, as we’re rolling out Office 365, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Microsoft has come a very long way on its transition into the clouds, and it’s time to re-calibrate my toolbox.

Office 365 is evolving rapidly as well. I recently discovered StaffHub, a new tool for team planning and scheduling. Free in the Office 365 license we have at work. And saving the best for last… more and more Office 365 APIs are getting published, making the platform excellent in terms of building custom built solutions that still integrates into core cloud features. On that note… if I were to add/integrate any features to Office 365 in anyway, it would be using the nifty collaboration platform Incentive.

So, this Sunday evening recommendation is to continue exploring the new side(s) of Office 365 and don’t forget to check out Incentive.

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