Google-Suite or Office 365, What’s Better?

What is Office 365 and Google-Suite? Well, what they offer is a workspace for you and your colleagues where you can send messages, video calls, share and view documents, have important meetings, and provide you with online storage.

Why don’t we look further into the key features of both so you can decide which one fits your needs?

Information Protection

Office 365 offers rights management and data loss protection. Rights management features are at the file/email level so if they are stored or even sent they will still be covered. Data loss protection covers more than just emails, it also covers files and sites.

Google- Suite gives rights management and data loss protection. With rights management it allows users to disable printing, downloading, and copying over any specific document in a Google drive file. Data loss covers only Gmail to address sites or documents, Google customers would need a 3rd party service.

Reliability & Scalability

Microsoft guarantees a service level agreement with its users, on-demand services are available depending on your business-specific requirements.

Google offers a service level agreement with its users, on-demand services are available depending on your business-specific requirements.

Cloud Storage

Google has 30 GB of online cloud storage for the free starter account or unlimited storage for business teams or enterprise accounts that have a minimum of 5 users.

Office 365 gives 1 TB of online cloud storage regardless of what plan you choose.

Online Applications 

Office 365 offers easy-to-use online versions of their popular apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. 

Google offers all its online apps like Gmail, Hangouts, Drive, and Docs. Many customers find Google-Suite has more reliable and higher performance than Office 365.

Offline Email Capabilities

Google offline allows you to only access your email if you are connected to a Chrome browser.

Office 365 lets you view your email using a wide range of web browsers like Google, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.

Productivity

Office 365 document views and experiences are consistent regardless of the device being used. Documents can be accessed online or offline. 

Google document views and user experiences are inconsistent, and offline capabilities are shortened. Google does not allow you to share office documents unless first converted to Google. 

Security 

Google shares a privacy policy across both business and consumer applications, where data protection might not meet certain industry regulations or business security requirements.

Office 365 provides Advanced Threat Protection that protects your devices from malware and viruses and premium anti-spam and anti-virus protection, multi-factor authentication solutions, which are all included with their security measures.

IT Support 

Office 365 provides web and phone support for critical issues.

Google provides web and phone support for critical issues.

Conclusion

Now that you know what each one provides in finer detail, in conclusion, Office 365 and Google-Suite have many similarities within their shared working hub like cloud storage, offline email capabilities, productivity, and much more. Some exceed better in other categories than the other but are both similar and great.

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Office 365, What License Should You Purchase?

There are two different licenses for Office 365 you can purchase. What do they offer and which one should you buy?

First of all, Office 365 is a software service that acts as a hub where all your Microsoft apps are stored in one place, like Word and Outlook, which gives you easy access. 

Office 365 offers two licenses/subscriptions, let’s take a look between the two. 

Office 365 Nonprofit E3

E3 applications offer Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access (both are PC only).

Services that are included are Exchange, Onenote, Sharepoint, and Teams.

The price for Office E3 is $6.00 CAD/user/month.

Additional features that are added are compliance solutions to support archiving, Auditing, eDiscovery, Mailbox, internal search site, and legal hold capabilities depending upon subscription. 

Information protection, including rights, management, and data loss prevention for emails. 

Office 365 Nonprofit E5

E5 includes the same base applications and adds more additional uses.  

Services that are included are Exchange, Onenote, Sharepoint, and Teams.

E5 applications offer Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access (both are PC only).

Additional features that are added are compliance solutions to support archiving, Auditing, eDiscovery, Mailbox, internal search site, legal hold capabilities depending upon subscription, and Advanced eDiscovery with Predictive Coding and text analytics. 

Advanced security that helps protect against unknown malware and viruses, and provides better zero-day protection to safeguard messaging systems.

Audio Conferencing allows invitees to join Skype for business meetings by dialing in from a landline or mobile phone.

Phone system for cloud-based call management to make, receive, and transfer calls across a wide range of devices.

Price $18.60/user/month. 

The Top Benefits of Choosing Office 365 Nonprofit E5 License: 

As previously mentioned E5 costs about $18.60 which is fairly higher than E3, however with E5 you get a lot of additional services that can help your business save money, be more protected, and make better business decisions in the long run. Some of these additional services are:

• Expanded audio capabilities 

• Advanced security and compliance features 

• Advanced analytics tools

Conclusion

In conclusion, Office E5 offers more features than E3 which can be used to make your business a lot better, especially with stronger security, but at a higher cost.

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5 Core Office 365 Tools for Managing Tasks and Projects

There’s a reason why there are more than 100 million monthly active users on Microsoft Office 365 and why organizations rely on Microsoft Office 365 for their daily activities more than any other web-based business application. Office 365 is very beneficial for a variety of different projects and tasks and allows employees to manage more effectively. This blog will break down five relevant tools in Office 365 that will help you manage your projects, including the pros and cons for each to help you decide which is right for you.

The five tasks and project management applications currently available include; 

1. Planner

2. Sharepoint task lists

3. Project Outline

4. Outlook Tasks

5. To-Do

Planner

With Planner, teams can manage private and public plans and task buckets through creating and prioritizing tasks. Along with collaborating and commenting with other team members through SharePoint on project documents, users can also get instant reporting through board and chart views. 

Pros

• Clear visualization of activities and keeping on track of projects

• Easy to manage and well-defined plans and tasks

• Integrated with Microsoft Teams, making it simpler to collaborate

Cons

• Large projects are more difficult to manage

• Supervising and handling large teams is insufficient 

SharePoint Task Lists

Cohesive with this tool's name, this tool allows users to create lists of tasks and subtasks and visualize the allocation on the timeline of a project. Additionally, SharePoint Task Lists enables users to manage tasks, assign resources, and envision their tasks through Gantt charts, personal tasks, upcoming tasks, and more. 

Pros

• Utilize Outlook calendar and conversations

• Provides simplified representation of the project and individual tasks

• Can be paired with other SharePoint features

Cons

• Multiple timelines within one task list cannot be added

• Customization is needed for larger project reporting

Project Outline

Project Outline offers three plans; Essentials, Professional, and Premium. Each plan is for a different target group and includes project and resources managers. This application provides project planning, task scheduling, resource management, and other features. Project Online is a professional application for project portfolio management and is the most powerful out of all the Office 365 tools. 

Pros

• Can handle various projects 

• Has the ability to meet the needs of various different employees

Cons

• Requires employees’ skills to utilize and handle

• Training for end-users is required and adoptions can be challenging

Outlook Tasks

If you are looking for a more personalized task management tool, Outlook Tasks may be right for you. This tool allows teams to manage their activities within their email. Through Outlook Tasks, you can mark your tasks off by their status, priority, category, and more. 

Pros

• Easy to share with other team members

• Can be coupled with Outlook Groups and allow users to work together on the same app

• A great option for moderate project management

Cons

• Users have to put the effort in to make tasks clearly arranged

• Additional training may be required to be adequately used

• Tasks are not very organized and can appear messy if many entries and events are added

To-Do

To-Do is an app that enables users to manage personal or business-related tasks through lists, due dates, notifications, and slight UI changes. To-Do can be used alongside Outlook Tasks and synchronize with their inbox.

Pros

• Easy to use and aesthetically laid out tool

• Allows employees to use a private task management area and prioritize specific activities

• Can be used independently of other team members

Cons

• As it replaced Wunderlist, this tool is still incomplete and may lag. The mobile app is also much weaker than the web app

• There is no option for employees to create subtasks 

• Employees cannot share tasks with other users 

Conclusion

These five project management tools outlined are very effective to manage tasks and projects and can help to keep your team organized and on track. Aside from these five core tools, Office 365 also has some other options including:

• SharePoint Project sites - This tool is essentially an advancement from Sharepoint Task Lists where teams can collaborate and share the news.

• Microsoft Teams - This is a central communication hub where you have all the features from Planner as well as a more interactive component. 

• Yammer - Adding on to Project Online, Yammer is a forum-like area on the Sharepoint project site.

Evidently, there are numerous options for you to choose from when it comes to project management on Office 365. Every tool has its own strengths and weaknesses, but each individual tool has its own specialties. 

Contact us to figure out how you and your team can use software to stay more organized.