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.