Boost Your Office 365 Productivity With 4 Simple Hacks

And what better new year’s resolution for your business than to be more productive in 2017?

None, we reckon. And if you’re an Office 365 Business user, we’ve got some brilliantly simple insights and hacks for you, straight from Microsoft themselves.

‘Our productivity survey says…’

First up, Microsoft and Levo just ran a survey of 1,500 workers on the issues that most affect their productivity.

The top answers?

• 93% believe productivity is important to happiness
• The top 3 obstacles to productivity are too many distractions (e.g. social media), being interrupted by colleagues, and a lack of time management skills
• Most people said the best way to improve productivity is creating to-do lists (90.04%) and creating calendar tasks (51.66%)
• Early and mid-morning are the most productive times for most workers

In a nutshell then, employees would be happier if they felt more productive – and they want better time management tools to make it happen.

If you already use Office 365, you already have tools like shared calendars and tasks to make this happen. Make sure you’re getting full value from them.

Top 4 hacks for boosting productivity

Microsoft has also shared its own top 4 secrets for using Office 365 features to boost productivity.

1. Outlook’s focused inbox beats distractions

The Focused Inbox in Outlook lets you split your emails into tabs: one for the important ones, another for the chaff. Outlook learns which messages are important to you over time, keeping your inbox clearer. So you have fewer distractions.

2. Onenote makes to-do lists smarter

To-do lists are super effective, but only when you manage them well. OneNote makes it easy to prioritise to-do lists and integrate them with your work and accomplishments.

3. Jump-start projects with QuickStarter

Staring at a blank page can be a productivity killer. Give QuickStarter a topic, and it will provide a carefully curated outline for your new project based on information from the Web.

4. Improve your habits with MyAnalytics

Ever wished for an AI assistant who can measure how you use your time, and tell you how to improve? MyAnalytics for Office 365 Enterprise is kind of like that. You can understand where time is spent across people, meetings, email, and more, then adjust for higher impact.

If you need advice on getting started with any of these tips, feel free to ask the Fabric team today. We’re Microsoft Gold Partners, Office 365 experts, and we love to help!