GUIDE: SIMPLE CONFIGURATION OPTIONS FOR SIGNIFICANT PRODUCTIVITY.
Author: Jonathan Stuckey
Simple configuration options with more impact than expected
Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Office 365 applications are both at once, old-school and traditional business tools which everyone assumes your people know how to drive for best effect, and they are also new and changing in support of evolving business needs.
There are 000s of features and capabilities embedded into the suite of applications and services, some which seem simple, boring even, but they always seem to have a significant impact on every organisation we work with... and yet so many people have no idea they exist or have been shown how they work.
The following are 3 we often forget just how valuable people find them when told (which is why we have them on user-training and implementation checklists):
Publish Office (document) templates in apps
Feature | Publish Office templates (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) across the organization via the Organisation Asset Library |
|---|---|
Released | 2019 |
Example | Employees can access pre-approved Word contract template directly from within Word desktop application, ensuring access to most current approved version of the template. |
Benefits | always up to date, no keeping copies, easily accessible |
Where it works | Office apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint - Menu: > File > New > Office Template > {Organisation Tab}. |
How to Enable | Administrators set up an Organization Asset Library in SharePoint, making templates available to all users. |
Access full version history of an Office document while editing
Feature | View and restore previous versions of documents stored in SharePoint or OneDrive, directly when open within an Office app. |
|---|---|
Released | 2019 |
Example | While editing a report in Word, a user can revert to an earlier version if unwanted changes are made |
Benefits | All version and change history captured automatically. You don't have to change out of application or document to access it |
Where it works | Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Open document, Menu: File > Info > Version History. |
How to Enable | Available by default when store documents in OneDrive or SharePoint library. Open a document from library using desktop app. |
...now the settings and options for how many versions, if you need major and minor versioning or if formal approval workflows or other controls are required are separate but can all be configured for every library where documents are stored.
Automatic Saving and Co-Authoring in documents
An associated supporting feature to Versioning integration being out-of-the-box, is AutoSave which is necessary to support the amazingly useful Co-authoring (a.k.a. multi-party editing).
Feature | AutoSave and co-authoring functionality allows real-time collaboration on documents stored in SharePoint or OneDrive |
|---|---|
Released | Web 2010. Desktop 2013 |
Example | A team can co-author an Excel report, with AutoSave ensuring that all changes are captured in real-time, preventing version conflicts. |
Benefits | Avoid loss of content (last-character save), Automatically backed-up from library (using OneDrive), enables multi-user co-author of documents without interruption. |
Where it works | Office apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint -> AutoSave toggle. OneNote on by default. |
How to Enable | Enabled by default in Office 365 apps when saving files in OneDrive or SharePoint Library. New documents created need to be saved before this is available. |
Other productivity features?
When we say there a 000s we mean it. Between: integration across applications or services; making content available in Microsoft Teams when its' really held in SharePoint, or OneDrive; presenting and sharing content in 1-click from inside the application, to recording and transcribing your delivery of the information in a meeting there's just too many and a lot of them are specific to the application or task in hand.
The ones we focused on here are foundation features, that support all the core Office applications - if not more. These, we believe, should be on and configured for every organisation regardless of situation.
There is just so much capability that can facilitate user productivity its too hard to be good at using it all to best effect. The most effective way of continually gaining benefit from it is through:
taking time-out for personal development - as part of every working week
trial-and-error in the apps - check every <menu> and try the options in apps
community swaps - we often find the nuggets from other people in passing conversation
What next?
There are an enormous number of capabilities which become available from the integration provided out-of-the-box with the tools. Different people in various roles, groups and practices get value from some (or all) of them - but not in the same way we see these have an impact across the board.
If your roll-out didn't include setup or training on these then start now.
If you haven't enabled Organisation Asset Library for Corporate Images or Office templates, give us a call about it. It's not just enabling a library. If you enable it, do it in such a way that you support more than just your Word templates. The value here is actually making use of a template rather than a copy of document.
With Office 365 desktop applications set your default SaveAs locations, and train people on how to use OneDrive sync for SharePoint libraries. The transitional value for making it easy to save (and conversely access) documents should be front-of-mind for productivity and increased user-adoption. It is IT Admin driven with policies, as well as user training based.
User training and support options via Learning Pathways content are an ideal way to highlight and promote things which are useful in your context. Pulling all the content into your tenancy and being sure its kept up-to-date is the key selling point for this option. Low-impact deployment, low-maintenance and high-value for users.
In summary
If you are using Office 365 applications and SharePoint Online for your intranet, you can enable your users with some simple, but useful functionality. Easy to deploy and starts providing a productivity boost straight away.
Organization Asset Libraries for Images, Office templates etc is such an obvious value add this should be an 'on-by-default' for every organisation.
Default Save locations and AutoSave should be mandatory for all apps creating documents stored in libraries. It avoids so much heart-ache when the inevitable happens and an application or device fails. - No Lost Work.
With new features that support (automated) content management with version expiry, individual file archiving, and integrated Retention labelling in Purview arriving almost weekly productivity becomes more than just enablers for end-users. You should be looking at these to reduce the user risk while avoiding massive overhead in your support.
Want to know what we know? Give us a call!
If you want the best experience for your users, you need to know some of the tricks-of-the-trade that get lost in the noise from Microsoft. If you want to know about getting more out of SharePoint and Office in your tenancy, drop us a line: hi@timewespoke.com
About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
About this article: The guidance, opinions and learnings are the result of the authors experience.
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