Office 365 revolutionising Home Life!

Quite often when I've been doing demo's, I've used my "family" tenancy. Granted it's my play environment, but some of the tools that are part of the O365 family are just as useful in my home life as they are in my work life. I often use it as a little bit of a joke but the fact is, my family are all users of Office 365, and my Azure Active Directory is somewhat completed. In fact it's a joke I often use when showing Delve information being surfaced throughout O365, that I show how the organisational structure is automatically built and how it reflects the org structure of my family. As you can see, I report into my wife.

The common response to this demo is a lot of nodding from around the room and the words "yes that's about right" as everyone else recognises this as being correct.

Jokes aside, for now at least, there are other areas that O365 helps my family plan and work together in a better way.

Microsoft Teams

We use Teams primarily for the video conferencing, it's far superior to the Skype apps which we've used in the past and, as iPhone users, we also find that the video experience in Teams is better than FaceTime.

With external access enabled, my wife knows that she can also use Teams to get messages to me at work when I may not necessarily be able to monitor my phone.

OneDrive for Business

I open admit that I am useless when it comes to paper, and for the most part my services are paperless, however there are some providers that still insist on sending me letters or correspondence. If I don't need it, it's gets binned, otherwise I am a huge advocate of using the scanner built into the OneDrive for Business app which allows me to scan those letters straight into my correspondence folder in OneDrive.

My wife is extremely good at crafts, and so is always making something for the children, or something for her friends. Quite often I have to go onto the web to find pictures or resources for her to use, and I've finally won Laura round to using OneDrive to share those files. Those who know me personally know that I am constantly on a crusade against email attachments, and that crusade continues even after I leave the office.

To-Do

I am a huge fan of To Do, and now that I have shared some of my lists with my wife, so is she! There are two main scenarios where To-Do really helps me in my home life.

The first is with shopping. As previously said, I am useless with paper, so if I'm given a paper shopping list, then I'll either end up leaving it in the car or end up watching it flutter uselessly away as I walk from the car to the shop. Now we can both keep updating our shopping list as soon as we realise we need something, and the other can update it in real-time in the shop.

The second is planning out the jobs that I need to complete when I'm not at work, whether that's cutting the grass or clearing out the garage, I use To-Do to keep myself organised at home, planning my day in the same way as I would at work.

Power Automate

Power Automate is one of those technologies that I don't exploit to the extent that I should do in my home life. I'm sure there are loads of things that I could do with it, but I have only really implemented a single automation. This automation is designed to turn on my kettle when I get within a couple of minutes of home.

I hear you asking "Matt, how do I do that?!" and to be honest it's quite simple. When I enter an area, around my house, I simply send my wife an email asking her to put the kettle on! I should say that this automation isn't always 100% guaranteed to work, and certainly won't work if you don't warn off the other person before you implement it :)

So those are just a few ways in which I use O365 tools within my home life. It's nearly Christmas, and I am getting excited about the time of year, so thought I would post a less serious blog post!