With Office 2010, Microsoft began a shift from its traditional business model, moving away from software licensing to charging monthly fees. This move to a subscription service model was not the only shift for Microsoft with the Office 2010 rollout. There was also a realization of the need for collaboration among its users. More a more businesses have moved away from a centralized home office to supporting remote workers and even third-party software and service providers. This shift, coupled with a reliance on mobile devices, has presented challenges to project collaboration and coordination across multiple devices, locations, and even time zones. With Office 2010, Microsoft began addressing these difficulties. Collaboration, connection, real-time updates and shared documents became a focus. With that focus, companies began to realize benefits from the new tools.
Here are some Microsoft Office 2010 tools that facilitate collaboration.
OneNote
Once users start storing notes using OneNote, they have the ability to access them from multiple devices, search them, organize them and even invite coworkers to view and edit the notes together. For project teams, this research and note tool becomes invaluable. Notes and notebooks can be tagged and organized for storage and easy access.
Lync (now Skype) Integration
While working on or editing a document, users can see the status of team members and, with a single click, reach out to them via Lync/Skype instant messaging. Lync is also instrumental for conducting meetings, sharing screens, utilizing video and audio feeds and even providing real-time status updates such as “Available,” “Do not disturb, “In a meeting,” ”Off Work,” etc. Lync has gone a long way towards removing the need to rely on bloated email usage as a means of communication. Teams are now able to immediately connect with coworkers.
SharePoint
A single, centralized location for a variety of documents, pages, links, and attachments that can be updated in real-time by multiple users is a powerful tool for collaborators. SharePoint offers a single repository for a host of documentation. It also provides security, read and write roles, and the ability to share documentation across teams or the whole organization. The web-based storage repository greatly assists with team productivity while simultaneously reducing the size of bloated shared drives on peoples’ desktops.
Remote users and teams need to be connected to remain productive and competitive in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing work environments. Microsoft Office 2010 began addressing those needs in a big way while simultaneously making changes to their business model. These are just some of the reasons for businesses to buy Microsoft Office 2010.
