Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager for your business tasks, notes, calendars, and emails. You can use Outlook as a standalone application, but most businesses just get it as part of their Microsoft 365 Suite of applications. When you deploy Outlook through Microsoft Exchange Server or SharePoint, your team can utilize shared functions such as shared mailboxes, calendars, contacts, SharePoint Lists, and appointment scheduling, among other things.
When you understand an application like Microsoft Outlook in greater detail, you can save time, energy, and attention. In the beginning, it may seem like just shaving off a few minutes here and there, but it adds up as new productivity hacks become routines.
What is Microsoft Outlook?
Broadly, Microsoft Outlook can be seen as a personal information manager, but more specifically, it’s an email application that allows you to manage emails, tasks, calendars, and notes.
What is an email application?
Like email service providers, you can use email applications to send and receive mail. However, you can also use them to host your email, which enables you to use Outlook but still have a Gmail email address. The security for email applications is also stronger and comes with greater storage space, making them the preferred option for many businesses.
Master list of tips
On Top of the basic email features and more advanced application functions of Microsoft Outlook, there are several noteworthy tips to enhance your business’s workflow efficiency. These tips range from things as simple as using email scheduling and taking advantage of Outlook’s task management capabilities to lesser-known things like rules management and increasing the size limits of your attachments.
Lesser-known tips
Some less well-known Outlook features include the ability to use shortcuts for a wide range of functions, forwarding emails as attachments, task management capabilities, and sending emails to undisclosed recipients.
What is the difference between a service provider and an application?
Email Service Provider
This is what most people use when they send and receive emails, and services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail fit into this category. The security with these is usually not the strongest, and the storage space is limited.
Email Application
While you can use these to send and receive emails, sometimes your provider can end up being different than your application. For instance, you can use your Gmail through Microsoft Outlook, even if you don’t have an Outlook email address. The security for email applications is typically stronger and comes with greater storage space. You can also use many of the features of your email application while offline, which isn’t the case for web-based email service providers.
It’s important that your business be set up with an email application that serves your needs today and into the future, and for 13% of businesses the solution is Microsoft Outlook. However, if you want to take full advantage of the application you’ll need to properly set up Outlook, which can be a hassle to take care of on top of all the other demands. Were you to work with an MSP like Commprise, you’d be able to skip the hassle by using our Managed IT Services. We’d set up Outlook for you so that it fulfills all the needs specific to your business and even show you how to use its bells and whistles if you’d like.