Microsoft 365

We liked a lot. We managed to unify all the administration of licensing, mail and storage in a single tool which helped us save money.

Office 365 fits a very specific purpose, but it's a purpose that is very common in office environments: ensuring that you always have the latest version of Office applications available to you, including on multiple computers if you choose one of the higher-priced packages. Gone are the days of needing to purchase each new edition of Office every 3 years, because Office 365 automatically upgrades whenever a new version is released. The downside is, you're then locked into a monthly subscription, and then if you cancel it, all the money you spent leaves you with no access to the applications. This may not be a problem for everyone, but it is frustrating at times to realize you are essentially just "renting" access to the software. Its activation system is also a bit buggy, as Word regularly asks me to sign into my Microsoft account to re-activate the software, despite nothing on my account changing. If you can get beyond these issues, however, Office 365 definitely fills an important niche.

My overall experience with Microsoft 365 has been great, there are many ways to use it to ensure your organization has everything it needs to be successful.

Office365 has it all. Productivity apps like the Microsoft Office suite, Sharepoint, Delve, Sway, Email, Active Directory sync, etc. are what's included.

Once downloaded and installed, the office suite works better than previous versions. The online version of the office suite works well, but is still lacking features of the desktop apps. It is similar to Google apps for business but looks like Microsoft Office. Delve is a super cool tool that allows users to see recent documents that they are their coworkers are using. The email system functions well and also works well in conjunction w/ Microsoft Outlook desktop app.

My big gripe, as always, is Sharepoint. Even though Sharepoint has been improved with the updates to 2013 and then 2016, it still has many issues that Microsoft has not fixed, although they know about them.
The 2 most common problems I have had with Sharepoint are disappearing files and OneDrive for Business desktop client errors.

Randomly disappearing files is a horrible thing for a cloud storage service to do! I have seen at least 1 file disappear per month that I have been using Sharepoint and that's simply unacceptable. Especially since Microsoft is supposedly gearing their business towards business technology. Seeing as I work for a state funded organization that has a fixed income, there really isn't much of an option to switch from the service, because Office365 is the cheapest one that can be easily administered from off-site.

Every 1-2 weeks I have to manually stop syncing sharepoint with my computer and resync it. This costs me about 2 hours of minimized productivity each time. I have also had 2 issues where the client simply failed for unknown reasons. The first time, Microsoft support forced me to reformat and reinstall everything, which again is a huge time waster. The second time resulted in 2 days of inconsistent access to sharepoint through he client, so I had to use the web interface. On the topic of the web interface... YOU CAN'T MOVE FILES IN THE WEB INTERFACE! The only way to do it is with a paid app that you add to Sharepoint, which still isn't that convenient. Additionally, the web view of Sharepoint is clunky and not easy to navigate back once you've made it somewhere in the file structure. The 2 stage recycle bin can also be a big space waster. If you manage a lot of documents you can end up with a loaded recycle bin and no free space. I can honestly go on and on about how much I like the concept of Sharepoint, and how bad it has always let me down.

Overall, I'm very pleased with MS 365! I wouldn't switch to any other Office-like product. I'm with MS 365 from here on out!