7 Essential Office 365 Tips for Your Business

7 Essential Office 365 Tips for Your Business

Are you considering switching to Office 365 for email? Do you currently have Office 365 and wondering if you are getting the most out of your service? Keep reading to learn 7 quick tips from an IT services company that will help your business take advantage of some of my favorite features of Office 365. Some of these features require certain subscriptions so contact me, your strategic technology planner, if you have any questions! If you’d like to see a video blog about this topic, you can find it here:  https://youtu.be/jsppNVDTDbo

Tip #1: Inbound Mail Rules
Let's start with a great policy for cyber security. An administrator can set an inbound mail rule with a comment like this one to show that this email is from an external source. This can potentially protect your staff from imposters pretending they are part of your organization.

Email-Scam Seminole

Tip #2: Encryption
Did you know that any email you send can be easily intercepted? This becomes a problem when sending passwords or sensitive information. Depending on your state and industry, it may even be illegal with heavy fines. That's why every organization should have the ability to send encrypted email. Office 365 makes this very easy. You can set a keyword to be used to trigger any email to become encrypted. Any time I use the word ENCRYPT in a subject line, that email is encrypted and can be sent safely.

Tip #3: HIPPA and PII Rules
Speaking of industry requirements, if you're in the medical industry (i.e. doctor, dentist, chiropractor, clinic, or other healthcare office), Office 365 offers a pre-built ruleset to help ensure HIPPA compliancy. This scans all un-encrypted email and attachments for social security numbers and other personal information and rejects the email before it's delivered. You can also set rules for credit card numbers being emailed.

Tip #4: Aliases
Aliases allow you to accept email from multiple email addresses which all filter into your main mailbox. For example, you can email me at Mike.Jenkins@BrickTechIT.com or at Michael.Jenkins@BrickTechIT.com. You can even set outlook to filter your email based on which email it was sent to!

Tip #5: Distribution Groups
Similar to aliases, distribution groups allow you to accept email from multiple email addresses. The difference is that many people can receive the same email. Your entire sales staff can receive email that's delivered to "Sales@yourcompany.com"

Tip #6: Sharing Calendars
Most people are familiar with calendar sharing. It allows anyone in your organization to view and edit other people's calendars. You can even customize the permissions to only show the level of detail you want to share.

Tip #7: Resources
Resources are like shared calendars but are designed for shared rooms like a conference room. If you have a conference room resource, users can email calendar invites to its assigned email address and Office 365 will automatically accept the invitation if the room is free and decline it if it's already booked.

I hope you find these tips helpful. If you'd like help configuring any of these features for your business, please contact me, your strategic technology planner, at SecurityFrist@BrickTechIT.com or at (407) 244-4494.

BrickTech performs IT Support, IT Consulting, Managed IT Services and offers VoIP phone systems in Orange County and Seminole County including Orlando, Winter Park, Oviedo, Maitland, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Lake Mary, Sanford and surrounding areas.