There are always unknown, obscure workflow tips that translate into the difference between a thriving business vs. one that’s eventually going to close their doors.

Below are 3 ways to think about using MS Office365 Mail to give you a leading edge on the competition.

1. Internal Project Management

Let’s suppose you’re a project manager for a marketing team, and your current project is to design a consistent process for your company’s social media accounts.

Several other teammates work on the project with you, including a copywriter, a graphic designer, and a web developer. As you work, you exchange dozens of emails back and forth, many with attachments.

Folder sharing will let you keep all documents and communications about the project together in one place.

3 Major Benefits:

1. All documents and emails will be archived and accessible to everyone who’s working on the project.
2. If someone leaves the company mid-project, his or her communications will still be searchable by remaining team members.
3. If a new employee joins the project, the team will be able to easily provide access to all project files and communications.

2. Project Management with an Outside Contractor

Office365 has a built-in feature that allows two people to share a folder within your organization. That’s great, but what if you have to work with an outside contractor or a project?

Normally the only way you’d be able to share documents is by emailing files back and forth. This is inefficient and difficult to manage as a project moves along.

Major Benefit:

Folder sharing eliminates sharing problems by letting you give folder access to an outside contractor who’s not using the same platforms that you are (this is especially great for Upwork/ODesk freelancers).

3. Human Resources Updates

Many companies have their HR documents stored in a central Office365 OneDrive Business folder. Employees are given read-only access to that folder. However that approach doesn’t always work very well.

Some employees don’t work in front of computers all day. They primarily work from mobile devices where they don’t have easy access those OneDrive folders.

More often than not, HR departments send email blasts to everyone at the company whenever new copies of HR documents are updated. How inefficient and annoying with multiple foreseeable problems:

1. Employees might save their updated documents in the wrong folders, making them difficult to locate later.
2. Employees might accidentally delete the email that had the updated document attached.
3. Over time, employees will receive multiple versions of documents. It can be easy to become confused which one is the right one.

The cloudHQ folder sharing process resolves these issues. When HR updates a document in the OneDrive Business folder, employees will automatically have access to the most recent document through the Office365 Mail folder in their email, and the older version is deleted from employees’ email folders for total same page synchronicity.

5 Major Benefits:

1. Employees will know how to easily retrieve the latest version of HR documents.
2. Employees who only use mobile devices will have easy access to company documents through their email on their phones or tablets.
3. Only the latest version of each document will be available. Old versions will be deleted from the shared folder and won’t be accessible to employees.
4. HR won’t have to send blast emails every time a document is updated.
5. Email requests to HR for “the latest version of the employee handbook” should decrease dramatically.

 

Here’s how to sync MS Office365 Mail a folder to Sharepoint below:

 

 

Sharing folders in a flexible way offers your business a huge productivity boost.

If you’re not yet a cloudHQ user, try it out by signing up for a free 15-day free-trial. No obligation or credit card required.

 

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Photo credit: © 2011 Martin Eriksson.