Office 365 Suite Support & Guidance for Small Businesses

Quick Exec summary

• Choose the right Office product from the off: home or business option. Choose one of the Office 365 Business options for a one-person company
• Microsoft support were very customer focused and helpful
• Microsoft support for home and business are run as independent support organisations
• To map Onedrive for Office 365 Business you need to use Internet Explorer (see below for details)
• The 365 onedrive products would benefit from a standardised UX

I recently invested in Office 365 for my business, initially choosing the Office 365 Home version costing about $100 per annum. To arrange this through my outlook.live acccount was a super smooth experience. It literally took a couple of minutes and as soon as my credit card was registered I could download all the office apps and my onedrive was hiked up to 1 TB. I was really impressed - it was so user friendly.

I tried it for a month and was really happy so I allowed the payment to take place to have 365 for the year. Then I realised that to put this as a cost in my business I would need an invoice and I looked around but all I received was acknowledgement of payment. On further  research I read that it is possible to migrate from home to business 365, that I would get an invoice and it is registered to my company (as opposed to my outlook account which is personal).  

Following the instructions on microsoft's site I set up the office 365 Business account and the closed the Home account afterwards. I was a bit worried about really receiving a refund for resigning from the home account and contacted both 365 Business support and 365 Home support (yes, 2 separate organizations) and I was impressed by the personal contact from Microsoft. Both teams in turn reached out to me, even phoning me to help me with the issue. In the end I did get a refund and it was very efficient.

So now with my business 365 account I was ready to go, right? Well the apps worked great - I didn't notice any change whatsoever. I uninstalled the apps (from Home) and installed the business apps and everything was great.

I was using network mapping for copying and managing files on my one-drive for home because I prefer the manageability and often got stuck with various synching processes that the PC ondrive app does - I'll call that 'outlook.onedrive'. 

So I do not use the app on the PC, I just map the network drive - it works really great. The outlook.onedrive is still in place and is back to the original size limit rather than 1TB. Now with Office 365 Business Onedrive - I'll call that 'sharepoint.onedrive'. 

I first noticed a difference when I opened sharepoint.onedrive. It wasn't quite the same as the 'home' version and had an option to 'Return to Classic Onedrive'. I thought I was on classic onedrive so I checked and when I clicked it, I went to sharepoint. I was surprised to see that the Office 365 Business Account Onedrive was actually sharepoint. I recognised it because at CA we had onedrive and I eventually discovered the only way to map it was in the same way. It does not affect the capabilities but it is not a fantastic user experience and I would recommend Microsoft standardise the UX across the 365 products.

Now I had to map my new business drive. I thought it might be just as simple for the sharepoint.onedrive as it was when I set up Office 365 Home. However, there are some  fundamental differences and by noting them I hope that I can save you time.

• Once you have set up your Office 365 Business account, download and open Internet Explorer! It is by using Internet Explorer that you will be able to get the right network address to link you drive on the PC. It does not work in any other browser.
• Once in your Onedrive, click on 'classic view' and then 'click on the library tab, here you will see the 'open with internet explorer' enabled:
• When you open in explorer you can get the network path and thus use it for the network mapping.

My take-aways:

1. It is important to choose the right Office 365 product from the off. Sounds obvious - Home option or business. Choose business for a one-person company.
2. Microsoft support, in my experience was very customer focused and helpful.
3. Microsoft support for Home and Business are run as independent support orgs and do not communicate between each team. 
4. To map Onedrive for Office 365 Business you need to use Internet Explorer.
5. The 365 onedrive products would benefit from a standardised UX. Some people who already have a onedrive will opt for Business 365 and will be surprised that there is a difference.

The TikTok conundrum

TikTok may seem to many to be a benign platform for Gen Z'ers to make and share funny memes but could it become a Chinese vacuum for coveted American data?

Gary Vaynerchuk believes it will be greatly adopted and I have installed and uninstalled it already twice. First I wanted to understand what it was, then I realised that it was owned by a Chinese company and I wanted to find out more about what that meant. John Batelle spells it out in this blog.


While I did have TikTok installed I noticed already posts/films like this one appearing on twitter.



Is TikTok China's next big weapon? A discussion on adoption by US teens looks at whether this is a shiny new app that becomes ubiquitous or whether there is a hidden agenda.

Reuters describes how there are over 26 million users in the US while the tensions over trade and technology transfers between the US and China are growing. So the US has launched an inquiry into the acquisition of Musical.ly by TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. Link

At the moment it is uninstalled again. I am not going to be a TikTok star for now.

Video-making for Social Media

There are more and more videos being posted that are not just shares of someone else's film but created by the person posting. Of course the most important element is to have something to say. It may be a one off Christmas message or an appeal for a sponsored run. You may also have a passion that you want to share with other enthusiasts across the world. I say 'across the world' because you may have a lot in similar with hundreds of people but they are scattered across the globe and all are just as passionate about your interest, so a video is an effective way to share your experience with other enthusiasts.

What is the medium?

It depends on the type of communication as to which channel you use to share your video. If it is a 'how to' then Youtube is best. Think about the stats and viewing information that you want.

• How-to, adventure, vlog - Youtube
• Professional information, work - LinkedIn
• Personal, family - Facebook
• very short - instagram story

How to present it?

There are a number of formats available:

1. Single take.If you flm carefully and it is a short message then you can film in one take and that will save on editing time. In that case you will also save time if you prepare your message and include everything including introducing yourself because there will be no title or credits.
2. Compile a number of still shots with a voice-over or text to explain.
3. Screen capture. If you are explaining a game or app then it would be useful to have a program that can record your screen actions as you do them.
4. However, Don't forget - it may be better to put the video on Youtube and link it to Facebook, twitter and Linked-in. .

Best practice

There are a few basics which will make any film you make for social media stand out.

1. What is the story?
2. Have you got enough light?
3. What are the acoustic qualities of the location?
4. Camera mount.
5. More than one camera?
6. Editing

LinkedIn How to make a quick and easy professional video

Banning PowerPoint

It is by no means a new concept to ban power point. I think it is always an issue when we adopt a particular tool or technology to the exclusion of others. This quite often happens in cycles. 

[Read this on Dropbox Paper Banning PowerPoint]

The first cycle was personal contact and a hand-shake, which progressed to written contract and signature or letter. Skipping some cycles (like telegram) we moved to verbal, i.e. telephones and faxes and because of the immediacy of the communication, business cycles could be reduced.  As the internet grew so did the concept and use of email. 

Did you notice how some people adopted email for everything at that point? Instead of phoning or meeting and talking there was a tendency (and still is with some) to email about everything. The theory being that this avoids wasted time calling when someone is out. I can sign up to that but the sense of sending an email with just the word “thanks” has been questioned in many blogs.

Calling came back into vogue with the arrival of the mobile ‘phone. People would be talking everywhere and anywhere - occasionally very loudly. There was a slight ‘exit stage left’ for phone calls when texting became more popular due to the cheaper rates. I think we still do have a situation when a text is used sometimes when the right thing to do would be to call. I have had many text messages “I am on my way but I’ll be about 40 minutes late, sorry” the day after a meeting!

One sees a similar story in the adoption of office tools like the Microsoft suite (including power point) and Open Office Impress, etc. PowerPoint was such an advancement to the over-head projector that presentations were revolutionised and then murdered. After some years of ppt’s the phrase “death by power point” was added to the business vocabulary. I suggest that this happened for the same reasons I mentioned above - it was over-adopted and there was little thought about whether there was a better way to communicate an idea and get a decision or response.

It was so easy in power point, the application almost wrote the presentation for you!  (Not).  So it is natural that there was a time when it would be banned in certain companies for certain or all purposes. In the case of Amazon and Twitter they opted for a briefing document and I think that makes sense. 

In the 21st century we started to see exponential growth in many channels of communication. It started slowly with Skype (that was quite a revolution) and then fast and frequent followed Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. However, I still have a concern about the way communication is used. I am a member of a small band and before I joined they were already using messenger to communicate information like the date and time of the next rehearsal and to share recordings. This kind of thing used to be done by ‘phone and for some things (sending out a recording link, sharing a track) messenger is a great tool but not everyone checks it in real time and there are occasions when it is possible to turn up to a practice that was already cancelled in messenger. It somehow reminds me of the ‘apologies-for-being-late’ text messages arriving the day after a meeting!

Aidan Hoyle

5th November, 2019