The Office 365 Boxset – latest DWG research on making the most of the suite

Office 365 is Microsoft’s fastest growing commercial product ever. It is positioned to respond to key trends in the digital workplace: remote work from anywhere, bring your own device (BYOD), shrinking IT budgets, cloud collaboration, and the “do more with less” mentality.

The 2019 DWG Member Survey shows that Office 365 is set to dominate the intranet and collaboration landscape. Around a third of companies who responded to the survey are currently using Office 365 for intranet publishing and over half are using it for formal and informal collaboration. A further 28% are planning to introduce Office 365 for one or both of these functions within the next 18 months.

Responding to these trends – as well as member demand for insight into how to make the most of the suite – DWG has just released a research “Boxset” on Office 365 covering the extended suite of products as well as focusing in on search specifically. Building on the first in the series, “Office 365: What digital workplace teams need to know”, guest authors Agnes Molnar (Office 365 & SharePoint Consultant at Search Explained) and Luke Mepham (Service Owner for Collaboration and Messaging at Aviva) bring exceptional specialist insight from the field to help members understand the promise and pitfalls of using the products.

The “Boxset” allows you to download the executive summaries and selected excerpts for all three reports in one go.

In the first of the two latest reports, “Office 365: Making use of the extended suite of products”, author Luke Mepham guides us on a journey through the benefits and considerations of using the extended suite, how to customize and extend Office 365 products, adopting new workloads and the implications of the evergreen model.

Case studies from The Kentucky Community and Technical College System, The 3M Company and UNHCR provide real-life examples, for instance, how 3M has used Delve to improve search, and how UNHCR is using PowerBI for reporting. The report tots up 45 pages of advice, insights and examples for practitioners needing to get to grips with using the wider suite.

While this second report in the Office 365 Boxset goes broad in looking at the extended suite, the third, “Office 365 Search: A guide for digital workplace teams”, focuses right in to just one element: search. I say “just”, but as we well know, search is a tricky customer and requires much attention to get right. With more than a decade of experience in helping companies make the most of enterprise search, our guest author, Agnes Molnar, has lots of great advice to offer on this topic.

First, she helps us get a “lie of the land” by introducing Classic, Modern and Microsoft Search and their respective implications. The report then delves into approaches for enhancing search, such as how to impact results and rankings, using metadata and taxonomy, and customizing the search experience.

Finally, it explores considerations and recommendations for making the most of search, such as re-indexing content, planning and configuring the search schema, and encouraging adoption. In 30 pages of advice and insights – including case studies from Korn Ferry and PMG Fonds – the report sets out key pointers for organizations wanting to make Office 365 search work.

You can learn more about the Office 365 Boxset and download the executive summaries and selected excerpts for free.

Get access to the full report and 75+ other best practice digital workplace reports

DWG members have unrestricted access to all three Office 365 reports. They form part of DWG’s best practice Research Library of 75+ reports covering key areas such as strategy and governance, personalization, user experience and change management for intranets and digital workplaces.

Find out what else is in the library and new research that’s coming up. Contact us to learn how to gain access to this library via DWG membership.

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Categorised in: Collaboration, Content management, Digital workplace, Research reports, Search & findability