The main use cases for Office 365 are both for our clients and internal use.

Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021
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Seamless remote teamwork and efficient communication enhance workflow
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The best features with Office 365 include the ability to access email anywhere since it's not an on-premises server, it's in the cloud, which saves us on storage and exchange administration, making it a significant change going from on-premises, which we were for the longest time, to the cloud, so it's definitely a benefit.
Office 365 definitely enhances our remote work capabilities, making it easier for us.
What needs improvement?
I don't think of any areas that could be improved or things that I would want to see in the next releases of Office 365.
Microsoft could improve their support; I don't deal with Office 365 or Office 365 application-specific issues, but I wonder if it's similar where you get someone from Microsoft to hold your case, which could take a couple of days, maybe a week in between when they get back in contact with you.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been dealing with this product for probably two and a half to three years.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use a different collaboration tool before this; when I arrived, this was already in place.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing, licensing, or setup costs with Office 365 is that it's the same thing; I'm not really involved with the pricing, so that's not my area of responsibility.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
From my personal experience, I don't know the main differences between Office 365 and other collaboration tools out there because I never really looked at other collaboration tools. One of the things that probably makes it easier is the fact that everything is a one-stop shop, making it convenient since everything is right here.
What other advice do I have?
I assess the integration capabilities of Office 365 applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive as working well with no complaints.
We employ Microsoft Teams as a tool for communication. Microsoft Teams helps facilitate teamwork and efficiency through immediate communications. It makes meetings much easier, and due to the fact that it's under one umbrella, everything is more streamlined.
I am satisfied with Teams. We used Zoom and LogMeIn before, but Teams is very integrated and has some excellent features. For us, it's a good package with phone calls, and I'm actually using Teams for this conversation, which is convenient because remote workers don't have to carry a separate phone.
We have just started using Power BI a little bit, nothing extensive yet.
I assess the effectiveness of Office 365's advanced security measures such as multi-factor authentication and data loss prevention for helping with sensitive information as good so far.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate Office 365 an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Excel's advanced formulas increase accuracy for sales and security features bolster data protection
What is our primary use case?
Our main use cases for Office 365 include the price books, for quotes, writing letters, bank recs, and reconciliations.
We work in wholesale retail with Office 365.
We're a small to mid-sized business using Office 365.
What is most valuable?
My favorite features of Office 365 include Excel with the abilities to do the different formulas and everything. It's quick and easy to formulate to get stuff to look nice on it, and being able to sum and automatic adding makes it easy and accurate for quotes.
Office 365 has positively impacted my organization by making the salespeople more accurate because they've been able to use the features in Excel instead of relying on the calculator or adding machine, and some of the AI with writing and things with Word has helped improve things with that, too.
What needs improvement?
One of the big changes is when Microsoft updates anything, they will switch where some of the settings are and where to find them, which becomes a little frustrating because you're used to it in one spot and it's someplace else.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been dealing with Office 365 for 13 years, including the downloads and other features since I've been here.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The initial setup for Office 365 was straightforward.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The integration capabilities of Office 365 with Word, Excel, and Outlook with OneDrive for cloud storage have been smooth and work well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We don't really do a lot of remote work with Office 365, which is nice.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate the technical support or customer service with Microsoft as probably an eight. The main issue is just trying to get in touch with somebody, and at times if you're trying to use their online support, they'll send you to an article that may or may not have anything to do with what you're looking for.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Office 365, they were using LibreOffice, but it didn't always open up Word or Excel documents quite right, so it was not as user-friendly.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup for Office 365 was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
I did the install of Office 365 myself.
What was our ROI?
An example of how the security measures have been helpful is just having that little bit of extra security so that people can't breach it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Office 365 is that a lot of times we've gotten them when they've been on sale, so we've had really good pricing for the Microsoft products.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I haven't used Power BI.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Office 365 a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Teams streamlines collaboration but Outlook experiences occasional slowness on Mac
What is our primary use case?
In Office 365, you can open Excel and Word documents and even PDFs without having to save the file or navigate outside Office 365. You can save your files on OneDrive. It offers access to all the software in the Microsoft ecosystem. Through Office 365, you can access applications such as Drive, Excel, and Word.
What is most valuable?
Regarding security, we have two-factor authentication governed by organizational policy. When trying to login to Office 365, Teams, or any Office 365 app, we are required to provide a password and use Microsoft Authenticator to sign in using a code. This is how two-factor authentication is implemented in our organization.
Office 365 offers a suite of apps including OneNote, though I don't use it very often. In terms of integration with Microsoft ecosystem, it offers everything needed to get work done without any hassle.
What needs improvement?
For how long have I used the solution?
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
What about the implementation team?
What was our ROI?
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There are competitors such as Google Workspace and Zoho, but in terms of support and reach, Office 365 surpasses them in features and integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, especially with Azure integration capabilities.
What other advice do I have?
Power BI is used extensively, but we have a separate team for that. I don't work on Power BI. The solution is deployed on cloud, not on-premises.
My rating for Office 365 is 7.5 out of 10. It would be interesting to see how it performs for Linux users, as there aren't as many Linux users as Mac or Windows users.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Experience boosts efficiency and seamless teamwork through document collaboration but online usability needs improvement
What is our primary use case?
We use Office 365 for ordinary regular documentation, using Excel and similar applications.
The integrations with Teams and SharePoint are beneficial as we use Teams for sharing and editing documents. The integration helps with document collaboration, though I have not used it as much as Microsoft Word.
What is most valuable?
It is a standard platform used across many organizations, making it valuable due to people's general exposure to Microsoft products.
What needs improvement?
Microsoft could improve their online apps compared to the desktop versions, as they are not easy to use. Users often face issues with typing and incorrect inputs. I have noticed that when trying to use the online version, I immediately switch to the desktop version because of its superior usability.
I would give Office 365 a rating of 7. I appreciate Office 365, but some products, such as OneNote, are somewhat outdated. There could be improvements made specifically for OneNote. While it is a tidy, neat note-taking app, there is more potential for development. However, products such as Excel and Word rank very high, though some products could perform better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have approximately 3 to 4 years of experience with Office 365.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The desktop version is stable, but the online version has stability issues. When multiple people use a document in the online version, we encounter problems that do not occur in the desktop version. This creates an inconsistent experience between the two versions.
How are customer service and support?
I cannot rate the customer service with Microsoft on a scale of 1 to 10 as I have never faced any issues, raised concerns, or attempted to contact technical support for Office products.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
I am not familiar with the initial setup process as it was implemented organization-wide, so I am uncertain whether it was easy or difficult or if any issues were encountered.
What other advice do I have?
I am not aware if our organization purchased it through AWS marketplace.
I do not know the pricing for our Office 365 or Microsoft 365.
I would recommend Office 365 to other businesses or people considering using it, though I have not used the AI features.
Regarding documentation, I do use the online resources. The online documentation is helpful, but not as beneficial as unofficial forums such as Reddit where users share their experiences and solutions. On these unofficial forums, other users who have faced similar issues provide answers. These tend to be more accurate and updated than the official Microsoft forums and knowledge base. While the official documentation helps, I often turn to Reddit or other platforms for additional information when the knowledge base does not address my needs.
I would rate my experience with that type of support at 7 out of 10.
Overall, I rate Office 365 a 7 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Integration capabilities enhance work efficiency and secure data storage
What is our primary use case?
My usual use cases for Office 365 include basic use for receiving or sending emails for official purposes using Outlook, and for creating small documents in Excel or Word. I use Word for PowerPoint presentations and any type of documentation to provide to clients.
Regarding Office 365 features and capabilities, I honestly don't use too much of the features of Outlook or Excel because I'm a technical person regarding my tools. I'm only using it for mail purposes or other documentation.
I use Microsoft Teams as a tool for communication and collaboration. Microsoft Teams is a very good option for me to connect within the organization or with my team. We can also connect with external teams, share links, share screens, and take control of other people's meetings. We do a lot of things through Teams, and we have scheduled many meetings with the help of the Teams calendar.
What is most valuable?
The most interesting thing I have seen in Office 365 is the mail format along with the auto collection feature provided in Outlook, which I enjoy very much.
I assess the integration capabilities of Office 365 as good, as we have already integrated it with MuleSoft. We have many integrations, and we receive mail through Office 365, where we also monitor it, making it effective for our needs.
The integration capabilities of Office 365 enhance my remote work capabilities because we receive emails and monitoring alerts without opening the application. We have also integrated it with a mobile tool, and it works effectively.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvements for Office 365, I don't think there is much that needs to be enhanced, but it might take some time to reload sometimes.
The reload process can take some time, which I would prefer to be optimized.
The only thing I would suggest improving is optimizing the reload process.
For how long have I used the solution?
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
During the initial setup, I faced many challenges because there were many things we had to input the first time.
It was very difficult to configure the mobile cellphone, while configuring the system on a PC was very easy.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the scalability of Office 365 a 10.
Currently, almost three to four lakh employees are using Office 365 in HCL.
There are plans to increase the usage of Office 365 in the future, as every organization is utilizing it, especially Outlook and Teams.
How are customer service and support?
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
I rate my experience with the initial setup of Office 365 an eight.
During the initial setup, I faced many challenges because there were many things we had to input the first time.
It was very difficult to configure the mobile cellphone, while configuring the system on a PC was very easy.
What about the implementation team?
It took around half an hour to one and a half hours to deploy Office 365 for the first time.
The actions I needed to perform while deploying Office 365 included simply receiving my email ID, connecting it to our domain, and providing a password to check.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options before choosing Office 365.
I decided to go with Office 365 because it was provided by the organization when I joined.
It was already implemented when I joined.
What other advice do I have?
I find the effectiveness of Office 365 security measures good because of the multi-layer security; we log in via mobile OTP or via authentication. We can upload and download data safely without losing any information, and we have saved the last two to four years of emails, which is beneficial for both storage and security.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate Office 365 a nine.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Valuable features impress and support business needs effectively
What is our primary use case?
A typical use case for Office 365 is how I primarily use this solution.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Office 365 consists of the features that I prefer about this solution.
What needs improvement?
The areas of Office 365 that have room for improvement are what should be better in this solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have approximately 10 years of experience working with this solution.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate the technical support from Microsoft an eight on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 represents low quality technical support and 10 represents high quality.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Office 365, I did use a different solution.
What other advice do I have?
My relationship with Microsoft is that I am an end user.
I would rate the scalability of Office 365 a nine on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 represents low scalability and 10 represents high scalability.
I would rate the stability of Office 365 a nine on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 represents low stability and 10 represents high stability.
My thoughts about the price of Office 365 are that it is acceptable.
I would rate Office 365 overall an eight on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 represents the worst solution and 10 represents the best solution.
My company name is Linda, and I have the title of Support. My email address is boris_kaluza@enter.sk.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
User appreciates functionality but encounters frequent format prompts
What is our primary use case?
I'm using Office 365 because it's free, so there are signals besides Huawei that I work with or have used before.
I'm using it, and it's wonderful. It's custom made for Huawei, a special version of Office 365. It's not fully open to 3 Cloud or 365 because at Huawei, we have some restricted tools within Office 365. We use them just for email, Word documents, etc. We are not able to download or use online templates or download anything from Cloud. All those features are restricted. We're using only what Huawei provided as tools.
What is most valuable?
It has been fine regarding stability-wise issues, technical errors, and downtimes, but with Microsoft there are sometimes bugs, freezing, re-downloads, or redos. They have to reload the restrictive features and license. There was an issue from my PC itself, but the good thing is they auto-recover and auto-save, so when corruption happens, we can retrieve the latest version templates from Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
Sometimes I use templates from different versions through copy-paste. When I want to save, I get prompts about text or fonts. I need to click again and apply something to be able to save the file. When I have different styles, it is very hard to track this. To avoid checking these optics every time I want to save the file, sometimes reason pop-ups appear when saving files, indicating projects have some strange text.
What needs improvement?
Plugins and macros could be improved, such as Mouse broadcast and automation in Excel or SharePoint workflows.
More tools are needed, especially AI integrated features. This could be better in the Office 365 sixteen version. I'm using version eleven, but it still requires more enhancements, particularly in AI capabilities.
The download speed and safety need enhancement. At Huawei, we have WPS which is lighter, much better, and can adopt PDF files. As I don't have PDF capability in Office 365, I still need Microsoft separately. If Office 365 also includes PDF file capabilities, that would be perfect. WPS is much better as it has PDF functionality, scissors tool, and is more reliable.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Sometimes I use templates from different versions through copy-paste. When I want to save, I get prompts about text or fonts. I need to click again and apply something to be able to save the file. When I have different styles, it is very hard to track this.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
What other advice do I have?
I have been using it for a long time, from version eight to nine. I can debug issues myself because I know them, but I have to run through all slides and create fresh new templates or do manual work. I have workaround solutions, but when I have complex slides and multiple materials to combine, I get prompts when saving that require additional steps.
The overall rating for Office 365 is 7 out of 10.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Collaboration improves with automated document sharing but integration with databases could enhance data analysis
What is our primary use case?
I use Microsoft Security Copilot inside the company as it helps to assist in programming and document writing.
The main use cases for Microsoft Security Copilot involve searches. I have been using Microsoft Security Copilot for approximately one year.
Currently, I am using Copilot in programming, document creation, and information searching.
What is most valuable?
The feature of Office 365 that has significantly improved my team's collaboration is sharing cooperation with other team members or other teams. Working with the same document is more useful now.
A major efficiency gain enabled by Office 365 automated tools is that it helps with sharing documents and information, so efficiency can be improved substantially. Our company needs to share considerable information with the world and the China part. We mainly use Office 365 for sharing information.
Office 365 has AI capabilities that improve our processes, as we are using Copilot to assist us in writing documents. For example, we link up with Microsoft Teams, which helps to record scripts and wrap up meeting minutes.
What needs improvement?
For additional features that would make Office 365 even better, I think of better linking with Microsoft. Because we cross-sign, if Microsoft Excel could link up with a database, analyzing and getting information would be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have no experience with Jama Connect or any other Application Lifecycle Management tool. I inspect what is possible to use in the process only. We are just studying to see whether it is suitable for our process, looking around at all options. I do not have any planning to use this currently.
What other advice do I have?
I am not sure if we bought it on the AWS Marketplace because this is handled by the MIS department. The whole package includes Microsoft 365, Copilot, Azure server, and software firmware.
We use more than two features automatically. Every time we face a problem, we can handle it. We might be using Copilot, not Security Copilot.
To integrate Office 365 in our daily business workflows, it is not really tightly integrated with Copilot or other systems; it functions as a typical office solution. We share information and use it for operation. We are using Office 365 for operation, development, documents, and information only. It is not deeply integrated with other systems Azure or management tools, so I am looking for any service that can be integrated with our program or process.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.5.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Seamless integration and diverse management tools make operations efficient
What is our primary use case?
The team has already finalized the tool because the decision-makers are other teams and they have already onboarded some other tools for the patching.
For me, that is out of the box, as I'm not the right person to make their decisions. At the same time, I moved to another department, the application support team, which I'm currently supporting some applications.
In my use of Office 365, we have many different domains: exchange is different, Intune is different, Azure AD is different, and applications and services are different. I worked with the exchange Microsoft 365 exchange and then I worked with the defender with security, managing those defender things.
I also worked with the Intune team to manage the MDM deployment. Then I collaborated with the DevOps department to manage all those Kubernetes and DevOps and pipelines, checking the services. I was a middleman, checking everything, collaborating with all other departments.
This is where in Office 365 I worked around with them for 3 years.
What is most valuable?
For me, the most valuable features of Office 365 include eDiscovery, LDP, the security defender, the exchange, and many more.
If I can list it down, it would be a long list. Overall, it's really good. The management tools we have, such as device management tools, email management tools, and security management tools, every aspect is there. If we require any tools, we have them.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement in the exchange feature of Office 365. Sometimes users reach their emails quota; for example, if users receive a lot of emails and their quota has reached, they are not able to receive any more emails.
There is an archive service that Microsoft limits to 1 GB per day. This is a challenge currently faced by users. The migration part is also a bit tricky, especially from tenant to tenant or from third-party tools to Office 365, which relies on third-party tools to do the job. Improvements need to be made in this area.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Office 365 for 3 years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The deployment of Office 365 depends on the organization requirements. We can deploy it on the cloud for the exchange, but for some device management and from the user perspective, if the organization has on-premises servers, we can integrate it. If not, we can go for the cloud.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability of Office 365 ten out of ten. We do have some outages, but they are worldwide outages that happen very rarely.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Office 365 is great, so I would rate it nine or ten out of ten. There are scenarios where we want to increase resources without affecting the current workflow, and it is feasible. It is very scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support from Microsoft really needs to improve because sometimes we have cases that drag on for months. I would rate it six or five out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I haven't used any different solutions before Office 365. In the earlier days, about 7 or 8 years ago, we used some exchange servers that were locally set up, and users were creating emails there in local AD servers.
After that, we moved to Office 365.
How was the initial setup?
It is very easy. They have all the documentation we need; we can just Google it or simply download it from the Microsoft sites. It's very easy.
What other advice do I have?
We are just a consumer. We do directly deal with Microsoft, but we have some vendors here in UAE who provide us all the solutions from Microsoft if we need them. For example, if we need our Office 365 licenses, if we need E5, E3, or whatever licenses we require, we have to have a vendor here in UAE, and they provide us with all the requirements.
In our company we have our own IT team for everything; we have a department for that. We are an MNC company operating in about 80 countries. They have very good staff, and because the main HQ is in UAE, the IT HQ manages everything from there.
It's more than 10,000 people using Office 365 in our organization, but I'm not sure about the exact number of staff we have.
I would rate Office 365 overall at eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Integration of advanced features enhances productivity for enterprise users
What is our primary use case?
Regarding the use cases for the product, it is used for all documentation purposes and computation purposes.
The complete Office 365 suite is used, and we have recently started using it for designing purposes because Microsoft Designer has launched. It is a great product to have. We also use it for Project Management.
What is most valuable?
The recent Microsoft 365 integration with Copilot is certainly very useful and effective, specifically for enterprise customers as it provides more than a 5x boost to productivity.
Within this suite, Microsoft Teams is another component that plays a big role. The way Copilot has been integrated into all the suites of the product, including Office suite and collaboration suite, creates a very effective combination that is being productively used within organizations and enterprises.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement to make Office 365 more affordable.
Pricing is the major concern because certain features are also part of some free suites that people are used to using in their daily life, which drives the demand for Office 365. If it would be commercially more viable and affordable for smaller and medium-sized enterprises, their suite would be one of the best suites.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Windows for 35 years, which is the same period with Office 365.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The installation is quite easy, rating it 10 out of 10.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is quite stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Since it is on-premises, the solution is one of the best and easiest ones, requiring minimal resources for management.
How are customer service and support?
Support for Office 365 deserves nine points out of ten. The support is almost amazing.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What was our ROI?
From a productivity perspective, it is certainly saving time, but it is not saving money as similar work can be done with other Office suites available outside.
Regarding percentages and calculating ROI, it is difficult to provide specific figures.
What other advice do I have?
To manage and maintain Office 365, deployment depends on the use cases. The complete suite is not needed on every endpoint.
For example, the Project Management suite is necessary only for PMO team members. Otherwise, just the Office suite is sufficient if they are not looking for the Designer component.
The integration with Copilot is a good example of AI integration. It would be beneficial to have open options to use any kind of AI that is available, apart from only being tightly integrated with Microsoft.
The Office suite can be integrated with many applications.
On a scale of one to ten, this solution deserves a rating of nine.