To gain more insights into being more productive by leveraging M365 tools, we reached out to four experts from a number of fields including MVPs and professionals from the IT and HR spaces. Their expertise and recommendations provide valuable guidance on how to boost productivity using Microsoft 365 tools – independently or in combination with one or more tools.
Let’s dive into their expert advice and discover how M365 can revolutionize your workday.
For Ragnar Heil, Microsoft MVP and Rencore’s Director of Partner & Alliances, Microsoft Loop is his go-to solution for short-term collaborations. He feels that picking the right tool for collaborative work has an impact on the productivity of not only an individual, but also of the company in general.
When asked about his favorite productivity tools in Microsoft M365, Russel Dyas got so excited as he admits his love for integrating parts of frameworks and productivity systems into his own system. Head of IT Operations at Rencore, Russel has two main productivity tools in M365.
What helps Agnieszka Lipinski stay productive during her workday is to block off focus time every day. She achieves this with one of Microsoft’s dedicated productivity tools Viva. More specifically, it is the feature Viva Insights that excites this Head of People & Culture at Rencore.
Viva Insights – perhaps the most visible of the Viva tools – will automatically schedule focus time for you every day. Microsoft Viva Insights also gives you a comprehensive overview of your meeting habits, such as whether meetings ended on time and whether you joined a meeting on time. It lets you chart out a plan for yourself by answering a few questions about your preferences.
‘’As an HR person, I can only recommend my colleagues to also make use of the features in Viva Insight to stay productive every day!’’
Erwin van Hunen is a Microsoft MVP and CTO at Rencore. Erwin’s take on maximizing productivity with Microsoft 365 tools centers around adoption and the need to make use of the range of tools in the Microsoft suite.
Creator of PnP Powershell, Erwin has years of experience working extensively in the Microsoft community. He says:
‘’PnP PowerShell was built out of the frustration that as a consultant I wasn’t able to perform simple tasks towards M365 without writing a full feature application, run it, and then delete it again. E.g. it was a ‘breaking action’ all the time. When I came up with PnP PowerShell I could use a single command or a simple script that would allow me to do the same thing instead of writing this application that I needed to code, build, compile, test, etc.
In a nutshell:
PnP PowerShell allows you to do complex, scenario based, scripted activities towards Microsoft 365 without the need to write a single line of code in a programming language, while still giving you the required flexibility to adjust your actions when needed.’’
Rencore is incredibly glad to have motivated and highly skilled individuals who constantly give their best, every single day. If I were you, I would listen to their recommendations and follow suite.
We also realize that with using multiple products, comes the concern of clutter and lack of visibility of all the tools that are in use. Check out our cloud collaboration governance tool Rencore Governance, that helps you declutter your Microsoft 365 tenant, gain more visibility and exercise more control over your Microsoft 365 environment.