The gold standard for corporate office productivity
January 06, 2026

The gold standard for corporate office productivity

Chinthaka Jayawardane | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Microsoft Office 365 (Cloud)

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is an all-in-one super product which supports business users to get along which their individual needs which range from emailing needs which can be solved by Outlook, word processing needs which can be accomodated by Word, record keeping/calculation/tracking type needs which can be solved by Excel, business presentations and pitches which can be created with PowerPoint and lastly the key internal and external world collaboration needs which can be addressed with convinience with Teams tool. Further to the above we use SHAREPOINT as our web-based central data repository/content sharing and management system. Using SharePoint supports us heavily with maintaining and uplifting our compliance standards, such as GDPR. Teams immensly boots out speed is 360 customer and internal communications. Organization wide automation needs such as maintaining registers, etc could be easily attained by creating flows with power automate and forms which saves hours of repetitive human effort. Last but not least we also use Forms tool for running internal assessments, statistical information gathering with ease. The different tools and features provided within Microsoft 365 can be easily and conveniently distributed for different user groups by license management.

Pros

  • Provides easy to use predefined templates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Forms
  • Central all-in-one communication and collaboration via Teams
  • Compliance Data repository/content management system via SharePoint
  • Easy and fast data and statistical data gathering via forms

Cons

  • Forms lack comprehensive features and parameters for detailed questioning for example cannot be directly linked with Power BI
  • Outlook email filters are not handy to use and require more detailing in terms of location past emails
  • Teams requires substantially large amounts of system resources which could be finetuned
  • Immediate ROI and value based on qualitative measures can be expected within 1-3 months post implementation
  • Quantitative measures can take well over 12 months for large organizations
  • Direct and actual ROI are based on optimizing your on-premise and cloud operations for directly targeting your usage which can be expected immediately but based on intelligent streamlining of usage
The Microsoft 365 suite can be called a unified communication and collaboration platform due to its vast array of multiple features which are targeted at improving speed of communication and collaboration, improvements on efficiency, accuracy and productivity as a whole. Further, it supports maintaining and benchmarking organizational compliance and security posture with inbuilt native tools such as Entrar, Purview, and Defender.
WPS Office and Libre office are very strong competitors in terms of providing highly cost effective and convenient tools for general office productivity and performance however the Microsoft 365 platform seems to have better aligned their user interfaces and GUIs which are very user friendly for non IT savvy end user to get used to. This is a winning point.

Do you think Microsoft 365 delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft 365's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft 365 live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft 365 go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft 365 again?

Yes

The large array of collaboration features are very well suited for large organizations with 100+ end users which can be obtained by assigning a single license such as E5 and by doing this you receive multiple tools for doing the job and large enterprises can make use of these multiple tools for bridging gaps between different user groups, for example within Teams segregated grouping. However considering smaller organizations this might not be the case where they might have simple bought a feature license pack and still much more features which they do not require or hardly use within their corporate environment.

Using Microsoft 365

1200 - The 1200 users are a combination of diverse business functions which include admin, finance, logistics, devops, SOC, NOC, Shared services and managed services. Some users are offered multiple license types while majority of end users are offered basic licenses with basic communications needs and communications and functionality. This business functions are spanned across Global IT operations covering multiple geographic locations.
3 - Administration - Proficiency in Microsoft 365 admin center, Entrar ID, Active directory, and license management are needed as mandatory Workload expertise - A deeper knowledge of exchange online, SharePoint, Teams and onde drive configuration is required Fundamental security awareness - Skills in implementing multi factor authentication, data loss preventions and permission setting is needed Basic technical skills - Fundamentsal knowledge of DNS, networking and powersheel for automations of needed Soft skills - Strong analytical and problem solving skills, patience and lastly the ability to explain technical solutions to basic non technical end users is required
  • Unified collaborations & Communication - The primary use case of MS Teams serves as the digital office where employees can communicate seamlessly
  • Cloud storage and secure content management - SharePoint and OneDrive are used to move away from any unprotected local storage
  • Business process automation - Primary use of Power Automate and Copilot to automate repetitive manual tasks
  • Teams - using Microsoft Teams as a employee, college appreciation platform
  • Personal Planning - Using a planner in conjunction with scheduling and planning emails into activities for personal performance
  • Todo list - By linking email and tasks into activities in personal calendars
  • Power Automate - Utilise automated flows to create advanced workflows for converting emails into ticket tasks for functional tech groups
  • Forms - Extensive use of forms for inhouse statistical data gathering and repository use
  • Teams - Creating communication hooks for linking with global monitoring tools by creating a Teams channel
So far the Microsoft 365 platform provides features and tools that can cater to 100% of present organizations needs considering both technical and business necessities, however most features are not been effectively utilised at present. The current featureset is able to cover for most of the future needs of the business and technical functions.

Evaluating Microsoft 365 and Competitors

  • Cloud Solutions
  • Scalability
  • Integration with Other Systems
  • Ease of Use
  • Other
Microsoft 365 provides a large array of diverse features which are targeted as unified communications, central data storage, day-to-day operations task automations, work processing, basic accounting and enterprise all-in-one tenant management which is very convenient. These are some of the key features influencing the purchase of the Microsoft 365 platform.
The key decisions affecting price and cost comparison or purchase should be based on identifying both present and future needs in segregating which would provide a clear ROI in terms of obtaining and purchasing a clear set of tools which could immediately cater to present requirements and would not be an overkill in terms of solution. This needs to be clearly evaluated at the beginning,

Microsoft 365 Implementation

The Microsoft support partners are more than capable of handling implementations and dealing with unprecedented errors during the implementations. Not part of the implementation though the setup was done with minimum misconfigurations which is evident with present live setup which works fine without any bugs and gaps at present context.
  • Implemented in-house
  • Third-party professional services
  • Don't know
The implementation was handled together alongside with inhouse technical certified staff who worked in conjunction with support partner who is Hone, for licensing tenant management and advanced level configuration requirements, including tenant creation and configuring advanced settings and post implementation support as the 3rd party reseller for Microsoft, providing Microsoft 365 solutions.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - The change management process bears substantial weight as the adoption success rate of implementing the fully fledged services is based on this ability of users to change the ways and methods of working which is required through different tools within the array of Microsoft 365. User awareness sessions and basic end-user trainings are a must for a successful implementation and adoption rate.
  • End user resistance - change the basic ways of working with different tools
  • Standardization - Enforcing standards within the Microsoft 365 suite
  • Customization - Dealing with different point of view and end user needs leading to customization needs

Microsoft 365 Training

  • Online Training
  • In-Person Training
  • No Training
The resellers involved with selling Microsoft products are reluctant to provide in person specialist trainings to consumers due to the fact of costs of economies of scale and is not provided free of charge most of the time. In Person trainings needs to be agreed to at the initiation of projects and implementations for better ROI.
The standard training offered with 3rd part resellers are fairly standard and covers the basic workability however the trainings needs to be specifically customised according to unique requirements of the organizations. for example an MSP would need to master specific communications verticals within Microsoft 365 whereas and online store using Microsoft 365 would needs to master a different set of tools within the suite to get the best ROI post implementation.
This depends on the learning curve of the individual and tech person and the hands on experience had on numerous Microsoft 365 products implemented and configured. Self learning via trial products can be performed to a certain extent while it would be easier to obtain a corporate learner license/student for understanding how configurations and implementations work around live systems, again that been said, it's everything to do with the individual's potential to learn with capability and capacity.

Configuring Microsoft 365

The configurability in terms of tools such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Power Automate, and Teams is just right for these products, and we need to focus on quick deployment. However the case with tools such as SharePoint and forms are too limited where the requirements to have custom features are fairly above and beyond of what features are provided within the standard product especially considering the look of feel for end users.
Always focus on Privacy, confidentiality, and security first, and misconfigurations on Azure/Entrata may lead to security breaches and vulnerabilities to the enterprise, which could lead to reputation damage and loss of function. The necessity exists to bring in hands on certified experts to perfrom an error free configurations. specifically items such as MFA enforcement is quite crucial.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - Minor customizations include changing the GUI wallpapers banners logs within different SharePoint pages and sites where some functional tech teams use different graphics while advanced customizations are not been actively used on already provided features. End users use minor out of the box provided graphical options wise feature display customizations to a certain basic level.
Apart from the standard out of the box customizations, custom sign-in pages have been customized to carry advanced tenant branding to display company log-in and background pages for all employees which includes organizational themes color scheme which is unique to enterprise within the global distribution or organization and to maintain consistency within the brand.

Microsoft 365 Support

The Microsoft 365 support is one of business operations in the world. given their range of diversity of products an absurd volume of tickets are passed daily for obtaining level one support as such their is a substantial lag in terms or first response for Microsoft 365 related tickets until resolution. And majority of the time the end users have to perform end user level troubleshooting and escalate finding to support staff which are done via guided remote sessions.
ProsCons
Knowledgeable team
Problems left unsolved
Not kept informed
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Need to explain problems multiple times
Slow Initial Response
As the current Microsoft partner is a gold partner, the present in-house information technology team is able to manage daily troubleshooting, reconfiguration, new implementation needs in conjunction with the support partner up to level-3 and as such the present capabilities are sufficient to carry on and support present technical and business needs.
Encountered a unique instance where an entire finance and operations data folder disappeared from a working SharePoint directory. The problem was immediately escalated and a critical issues where immediate call support was requested. The escalated ticket was responded to with 45 minutes and the restoration back to normal was performed within 1.5hrs.

Using Microsoft 365

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Feel confident using
Cumbersome
  • Teams chat - can be easily executed by typing the name of the target recipient and opening a quick chat window
  • Todo List - It is effortless to enter daily follow up tasks with target dates into a todolist and follow up with ease
  • Forms - Data gathering questionnaire forms could be created fairly easily for data gathering needs and surveys in no time
  • Entra ID - Setting up permissions at Azure can be confusing and needs attention to detail, at times take a while to populate
  • Integrations - Integrations of Teams with other platforms, required deep technical know how of integrations techniques and configurations
  • Power automate flows - The basic tech skills are not sufficient to create automation and the business somain knowledge is rather require to create automations
Yes, but I don't use it

Microsoft 365 Reliability

Multiple tools within the same platform have been deployed successfully within different functional technical and non technical teams such as Devops, SOC, NOC, Shared services, Managed services, Global Information technology, Cloud operations, Finance, Administration, human resources and all these teams collaborate while maintaining central uniformity in terms of global standards who are dispersed in different geographical locations with ease
To-date Microsoft 365 platform has offered an amazing uptime and availability percentage per year compared to all other products which provide the stability and overall business resilience of their ecosystem which is a great relief for information technology service entitites which heavy rely on Microsoft offerings as a whole to redeliver their own custom products
The Microsoft 365 tools expects and demands a substantial amount of system resources to operate at optimal level and even more when integrated with other applications which is a downside, however given that external supporting tech factors such as fibre/broadband speed bandwidth, high speed RAM and ample storage resources are allocated the tools work error free providing robust communication

Integrating Microsoft 365

We have integrated Microsoft 365 with Jira cloud with has been a bit complicated. The SSO features of Entra were established with JIRA SSO.
  • Jira Cloud - SSO sign-on with Entra ID
  • HSenid Software integration is in progress and project underway
  • M365 Integration and alerting dashboard with sentinel one which is underway
The standard documentation provided for setting up integrations with Microsoft 365 and other products are at very basic form and further extensive advanced documentation is needed for integrations to be done with ease. In-house technical teams are faced with numerous difficulties trying to compile the right set of configurations for advanced platform integrations.
  • Hsenid - Human resources software
  • 3rd Party Cloud monitoring software
  • Local development verticals
The 3rd party vendors have been positive in their approach to support with integration and data bridges, specifically pertaining to API integrations.
  • Single Signon
It's too soon to forecast as we are still in the midst of testing and configurations to proceed with future integrations
Prior to moving into integrations with other platforms strongly recommend to check out technical scalability and compatibility documents which will highlight possible system issues in terms on SRE, instability and vulnerability of new platforms to be integrated with Microsoft 365. Suggest that the SOC teams and security professional be included in the evaluations of products and configurations be involved at the earlier stages of planning to avoid critical gaps in integrations which would be discovered later on.

Relationship with Microsoft

Microsoft is a universally recongnised top tier vendor in terms of market share and providing a unified platform capable of providing 360 degree coverage in terms of aligning to solutions and providing a great after sales support which is a great plus. sales is usually handled by reputed and certified 3rd parties which works as resellers for their products which are easy to work with
The vendor has proper ticket channels and sales channels formalized through their reseller network for methodical requirements and after-sales support escalations, which can be used fairly easily to work with. The vendor is fairly responsive when communicated through directly at times based on the criticality of the concerns which are escalated and provides alternative support via authorized resellers around the world which is a plus.
Have not directly obtained professional services from Microsoft but rather obtained specialized services such as implementations and configurations, setting up and integration support with Microsoft authorized suppliers, 3rd parties, and resellers, which has been a pleasant experience. Again the level of delivery quality on professional services is based on the level of hands on exposure of the 3rd party
Microsoft offers a wide array of payments terms such as bulk one time payments, pay as you go and top up models making it a easy to handle and negotiate financial cost related negotiations to happen which can be based on understanding and mutual agreements however the recommendation is to agree before proceeding, as it's fairly challenging to change terms of payments in-between a project
Microsoft pricing is not very expensive and yet not very cheap as well, and it hovers in between the baseline. The charges are mostly based on the tier level partners who charge based on their individual reputation in the market. Power negotiation will lead to cost effective and attractive pricing
Recommend to always go through a mid tier partner request quotations to cap and close deals based on fixed pricing which is based on fixed contract terms rather than yearly renewable agreements and contracts where consumers can lock the price upfront and make use of the advantage for obtaining and allocations of fixed expenses for a long term

Upgrading Microsoft 365

  • The 2025 visual rebrand - The blocky icons were replaced with fluid designs featuring curves and gradients which has improved the look and feel for end user and tech staff
  • The shift to Agentic AI - Instead of just drafting text the new CoPilot can now perform multi-step workflows and in excel it can analyze data and generate BI reports which is a huge effort saving step for BI Team and cuts down on repetitive work
  • GPT5 Integration - Microsoft transitioned the backend of CoPilot to GPT5 which has significantly increased its reasoning and coding capacities and capabiltiies which is a plus for dev teams
  • Intelligent Fully AI driven automations which can be built from the command prompt
  • Collaboration automations and unattended tasks to be initiated from Teams chat sessions
  • Fully automated unattended Automated replies to email communications and heads of predictive responses

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