Office 365 For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4Giving Your Productivity a Boost

IN THIS CHAPTER

Appreciating the key productivity advantages of Office 365

Discovering new features in Outlook to get more done, faster

Promoting teamwork with Groups and Planner

Bringing social networking to your workplace

We live in a world where the line between personal and professional lives is becoming more blurred every day. When our mobile devices synchronize both personal and work emails, it’s hard not to send a quick response to a co-worker after office hours. When our colleagues are also our Facebook friends, we sometimes end up talking about work in our personal spaces.

What tools can we use to help us maintain a work/life balance? How do we measure productivity these days?

Office 365 not only provides tools that help get things done faster, it also comes with a dashboard that displays data to help you manage how much time to spend where, which colleague to stay in touch with, gain insight into basic email etiquettes, and more.

Last week, my dashboard showed I spent 3.7 hours writing and 4.3 hours reading emails while working on a project for a key client. Based on a typical work week in the United States, that means a fifth of my time last week was spent managing my mailbox. That wouldn’t have seemed so bad until I realized only 20 percent of the emails I sent to individuals were actually read! For the emails I sent to a group of people, only 2 percent were read. When I checked my Sent Items folder, I found out I had an email ...