Microsoft 365 (previously Office 365) is a suite of business software and connectivity designed for business.
It provides cloud connectivity and storage with the highly successful Microsoft Office suite. Note: Previously, this was called Office 365, but now, with all the extra features, it has been renamed.
Microsoft 365 lets small and micro businesses have the power of enterprise-class email and shared resources. You can connect all your devices (Phone, PC, Mac, Tablet) and work locations together so it is easy to get work done.
It now also includes the highly successful Microsoft Teams, a great tool for collaborating when working, wherever the people might be.
Microsoft Teams’ great popularity comes from its features where you can share comments, share screens, do direct voice or video communication automatically with other members of a team, along with the capability of adding external users to a team, where they can also co-operate on projects.
We use ‘Teams ourselves and its been a revelation for remote working and keeping up to date during the COVID crisis where we all worked in isolation from separate homes to provide our customers IT support.
Other useful apps included (to name a few): The package also includes lots of extra-value apps like Microsoft Bookings (allowing you to share calendar slots with customers), Microsoft Forms (for easy, guided data collection), and Microsoft Planner (for planning and collaborating on projects).
Microsoft Co-pilot chat.
Also included is Microsoft Copilot chat. This is a business AI chat facility with Enterprise data protection (data stays with your Microsoft accounts). It’s rapidly expanding to be useful in many of the traditional Microsoft Business apps (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint). The free version of Copilot will do things like creating documents, rewriting tone and checking things through. There is also an upgraded version that offers priority access and lets you work with previous documents you have worked on before.
SharePoint: An important feature of the Microsoft 365 Business plans is the creation and use of SharePoint libraries (1TB shared storage included), which can store and share business data with other team members or external parties. This extra storage can replace the need for a data storage server or facilities like WeTransfer or Dropbox. All included in the price of the business plan.
With a correctly configured Microsoft 365 environment, you can often access data that was on your PC from a phone or other mobile device. This adds great flexibility.
Microsoft 365 versions
There are various Microsoft 365 packages available. The most popular we offer are:
Microsoft 365 Business Basic: which offers email, tasks, calendar and contacts integration, 1TB of online storage and 50GB of email storage and full access to your own Microsoft Teams site at £7.50+VAT/month per user, with us managing it for you.
and
Microsoft 365 Business Standard: which offers the connectivity, storage and collaboration tools of Office Basic but also includes 5 device licenses for Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access and Publisher) software package for PC or Mac. This costs £13.99+VAT/month per user, with us managing it for you.
and
Microsoft 365 Business Premium: This offers all the features of Business Standard, plus additional security and data management. Aimed at slightly bigger businesses or those who need compliance structures and rules applied to their work. This costs £20.50+VAT a user per month.
Microsoft 365 cloud-to-cloud backup.
Backing up cloud data can be a problem, as it has data shared across many devices and many users.
With collaboration comes some risk. Mistakes either accidental or deliberate are common problems. While Microsoft offer some options to recover documents short term, it is much better to have a separate system backing everything up, if you care about your data.
We provide cloud-to-cloud automatic daily backup of email, contacts, tasks, calendar, SharePoint and OneDrive data for £5+VAT/month per user.
This form of backup also gives you the capability of going backwards in time on a email or data systems state, which can be useful in conflict/legal situations.
Domain transfers and registrations
One of the biggest features of Microsoft 365 is the ability to transfer email domains across to open up its features.
Many businesses own a domain name, but are still using ineffective email systems sometimes using ISP domains instead of their own domain (e.g. name@btconnect.com instead of name@mybuisinessname.co.uk)
Having your own domain name as your first point of contact appears much more professional and ties into websites and your brand.
Fast and Easy Computers can do all the domain transfer, Microsoft 365 user setup, email transfers and consolidation of old and new accounts, pricing starts at £185+VAT (for one user and one account), with complexity and more accounts adding to the cost.
We can even organise new domains for you to use. So, if you are using old frustrating email solutions and/or want an integrated system where multiple users can share and communicate easily both internally and externally. Give us a call.
Why not do this yourself, that cloud stuff’s dead easy isn’t it, the adverts say so?
You can of course set up the Microsoft packages directly with Microsoft slightly cheaper than what we charge.
If you currently have a domain you can do the domain moves and hope your systems transition correctly.
However if you want local, contactable professionals, who use and support these products day-to-day, setting up these rather business critical services, with the ability to guide you through the features and help when the problems arise, then we would recommend getting us to help you with Microsoft 365.
Give us a call on 0161 483 6656.