Nearly Perfect, Constantly Improving (for better or worse)
March 24, 2017
Nearly Perfect, Constantly Improving (for better or worse)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Microsoft Office 365 (Cloud)
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Office 365
We moved all faculty and staff to Office 365 as our main email communication/collaboration platform several years ago. We had previously been using Novell Groupwise as our email platform. This past year, we moved our students from the Google Gmail environment in to Office 365 for their email as well. We adopted Office 365 primarily as an email platform, but it is also being used as a singular point of communication/collaboration for calendar and collaboration through Office 365 Groups and OneDrive for Business.
- Communication - Outlook is an excellent email platform, and Outlook on the Web is almost as full-featured as the desktop client version
- File Storage - OneDrive is the best cloud storage service I have used and makes everything feel seemless and integrated between computers. When logging in to a workstation with Active Directory, all my files appear in the "Recent Documents" list even if I've never logged on to that particular workstation in the past
- Cloud-based Software - the online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are very full-featured, though not as fully featured as the desktop versions, basic edits are simple to do quickly and everything is saved instantly to OneDrive.
- Evergreen Environment - Office 365 is constantly updating and changing, providing new services, apps, and improvements
- The constant changes and updates are mostly excellent, but there are occasional interface changes that are a bit jarring when you first bump in to them without warning. For users who are used to all updates coming through the IT department, it can be disconcerting when the IT department is as new to a product as they are - they expect us to know all the ins-and-outs and be able to fix/edit/resolve/change every little part of a product we are mostly hands-off with.
- Not necessarily a con, but syncing via OneDrive is a difficult concept to explain and it's difficult for users to comprehend. It has gotten MUCH better with the new Sync client, and I look forward to the day there is no difference between "OneDrive" and "OneDrive for Business" and the unified sync client is the default sync client. The new sync client offers selective sync, so you can choose what to cache locally to your hard drive. The old OneDrive for Business sync client caches all files to the local hard drive. What's the point of "cloud" storage if it's all going to copy locally to your hard drive anyway? It's getting better, but it had given many headaches and confusion when trying to explain how cloud storage works to a community that doesn't comprehend that storing files on the cloud is more secure than storing files locally.
- Microsoft's naming schemas are not very end-user friendly. Outlook (enterprise) vs Outlook.com (personal) confuses users. Microsoft (personal) Account vs Office 365 (work or school) Account. OneDrive (personal) vs. OneDrive for Business (enterprise). Skype vs Skype for Business - it's just confusing. And that doesn't even count the apps with names like "Sharepoint" that shows up everywhere and confuses users, or super-generic names like "Groups" and "Teams" that are difficult to talk about and share names with some basic functionality. An Office 365 Group is different than an Outlook Contact Group, but good luck explaining that to the person who is clicking on the wrong button.
- There have been times a product rolls out that isn't yet ready for prime-time, and we end up spinning on it for weeks until Microsoft makes improvements. It's hard to trust every new app when there are always a couple little things that don't work. Also, there are some services we tried adopting but they fell by the wayside and Microsoft doesn't seem to be developing them any more (Yammer for example), so it can be difficult as an organization to decide on a product to use when something might be coming from Microsoft that would fill the need.
- Office 365 has met all of our needs and given us the ability to scale to future goals and needs much easier than with our previous systems
- There is much less overhead and administrative work in Office 365 that needs to occur - this can be both a positive and a negative of course, but we have seen many benefits
- When helping users, it's nice to be able to Google search a solution since so many others are working with Office 365 as well. This far surpasses our previous email/communication system as it was mainly in-house and we could never find support help elsewhere. Office 365 has many tips and tricks out there.
- Google Apps, Novell Groupwise and Google Gmail
Google Apps made famous real-time collaborative editing in Google Docs. Now that Office 365 offers Word Online, there is no competition. Google Apps have always been "Microsoft Office-Lite" products, giving very basic functionality. With Office Online apps, it's hard not to see the benefits of using Excel or Word or PowerPoint online and offline. Anyone who has ever had to use Google Sheets to do Excel functionality knows why Excel is better - the Office suite is unparalleled.
Google Drive works great for personal use, and the syncing (when you opt-in to syncing) is very transparent. OneDrive handles file syncing better, but Microsoft also knows its strength is in the full offline Office apps so it encourages OneDrive integration with the "local" apps, whereas Google struggles even when using "offline" versions.
Comparing Gmail and Outlook is difficult. I love Gmail for my personal email and it has many benefits. I love Outlook for my work email and it too has many benefits. Google Calendar has pluses and minuses, Outlook's calendaring has pluses and minuses. For our organization, when it came to selecting a product for email, we needed something that was scalable for the entire organization. If we would have gone to Gmail, we would have had to support multiple offline clients for our faculty and staff users. With Office 365, we have Outlook 2016 on Mac, on PC, and the Outlook app on mobile. It makes support much easier.
Google Drive works great for personal use, and the syncing (when you opt-in to syncing) is very transparent. OneDrive handles file syncing better, but Microsoft also knows its strength is in the full offline Office apps so it encourages OneDrive integration with the "local" apps, whereas Google struggles even when using "offline" versions.
Comparing Gmail and Outlook is difficult. I love Gmail for my personal email and it has many benefits. I love Outlook for my work email and it too has many benefits. Google Calendar has pluses and minuses, Outlook's calendaring has pluses and minuses. For our organization, when it came to selecting a product for email, we needed something that was scalable for the entire organization. If we would have gone to Gmail, we would have had to support multiple offline clients for our faculty and staff users. With Office 365, we have Outlook 2016 on Mac, on PC, and the Outlook app on mobile. It makes support much easier.
Evaluating Microsoft Office 365 and Competitors
Yes - Office 365 was primarily a replacement for our email/calendar system. We were using Novell Groupwise.
Groupwise had some great features, but for the most part it was on old and outdated system. It was mostly local, so there was little to no support for mobile and web access. Mac support was also sufficiently lacking, and Novell did not show any interest in improving their Mac client.
Groupwise had some great features, but for the most part it was on old and outdated system. It was mostly local, so there was little to no support for mobile and web access. Mac support was also sufficiently lacking, and Novell did not show any interest in improving their Mac client.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Vendor Reputation
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Third-party Reviews
We really wanted to be able to adopt an ecosystem, not just another application. The Office 365 ecosystem was already showing its strength and adaptability - along with its scalability - and that was probably the most driving factor. We were already using the Office suite as our main office productivity suite, so it was a natural jump.
I would have wanted to make the change quicker, and not try to transfer emails over to the new system. That ended up causing some issues in the long run. There were also many "how do I make Outlook work like Groupwise" questions. We had breakout sessions and trainings, but they weren't attended as well as they should have been and there were many specific usage case scenarios that weren't applicable to a majority of the whole.