Did you know that O365 includes over 16 world-class productivity tools in its E1 license which is available to churches and non-profits for a majorly discounted rate? O365 has tons of tools to help you collaborate with your team, track the progress of projects, keep you on track, set appointments, gather information, and so much more: OneDrive, Teams, Stream, Planner, Flow, and Forms, just to name a few. Simply put, these tools can make your life so much easier, if you implement them! Chances are, you haven’t heard of all of these, and we want to help you take full advantage of the ways your church can maximize the resources available in O365.  

In this webinar, Travis Phipps, the Director of Technology here at Enable, talks about several features that are included in the Office 365 E1 (and above) package while giving practical applications in a church setting, and how they can aid your team’s workflow and ultimately strengthen your ministry. We’ve been working with churches for almost 20 years, and have been long-time fans of Microsoft’s services, and we simply want to share this knowledge with you so that you can take full advantage of the amazing features O365 has to offer! 

Webinar Q&A

SharePoint

• Q: Which tool in Office 365 can we use to schdeule and track Church employee vacations?
  A: There are several calendar options available. At Enable, we use SharePoint calendars for tracking PTO time. Users can choose to view/manage these calendars inside Outlook as well.
  (Video timestamp 51:42)

Microsoft Planner

• Q: Can you assign checklist items to individual people?
  A: In Planner you can only assign entire tasks, not individual checklist items. In situations where you need to split assignment for checklist items, we recommend separating those items into separate tasks.
  (Video timestamp 49:15)
• Q: How do you switch from Planner to Teams?
  A: Inside a Teams channel, the top bar includes ‘tabs’ which are customizable. Just click the + icon to add new tabs to existing (or new) items like Planner projects. Then users just click on those tabs to access the other data and applications.
  (Video timestamp 49:44)
• Q: Can non O365 users use Planner?
  A: We answered this incorrectly in the video – the answer is actually YES! See https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Guest-access-in-Microsoft-Planner-cc5d7f96-dced-4da4-ab62-08c72d9759c6
  (Video timestamp 50:38)

FindTime

• Q: I am new to O365. Where can I locate Find Time?
  A: It is available here: https://findtime.microsoft.com. In Outlook, you will want to enable the add-in. Contact your O365 administrator to do this. If you are the administrator, go to the admin panel, go to services and add-ins, and make FindTime available to your organization.
  (Video timestamp 55:33)

OneNote

• Q: Can OneNote take handwritten notes and convert them to plain text?
  A: We answered this incorrectly in the video – the answer is actually YES! See https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Take-handwritten-notes-in-OneNote-0ec88c54-05f3-4cac-b452-9ee62cebbd4c
  (Video timestamp 56:20)

General

• Q: Email groups do not work as they did previously in Outlook. Can you explain this and how it connects with other features discussed?
  A: Group email functionality still exists, but Microsoft is steering folks toward using Teams channels for this type of communication. We agree as our experience has shown users find Teams channels easier and faster to use.
  (Video timestamp 53:23)
• Q: Is it better to use your browser or download the desktop apps?
  A: This really is a personal choice. Microsoft has done an outstanding job bringing as much feature-parity as possible to the browser, Windows, and macOS application experiences. Personally I normally use the desktop apps, but since I’m mobile quite often, I often use the browser apps for short periods getting work done on other computers.
  (Video timestamp 56:46)
• Q: Are all of these tools available for free or are additional licenses required?
  A: Some of the functionality in PowerBI does require a paid license for certain members of your team (manager, creator). Everything else that we have shown today is included in the E1 license, which Microsoft makes available for free to all certified 501C3 organizations. The Office desktop applications do require an additional license fee of $3/user/month, but the web versions of the applications are completely free.
  (Video timestamp 57:36)