Just Like Your Larger Counterparts, Your Business Can Now Benefit from the Versatility and Flexibility of Outlook 2016

Microsoft Outlook is a professional email and calendar program that’s been heavily used by businesses for over 15 years. It has had many iterations over the years, but with 2016, and its integration with Office 365, Microsoft has taken Outlook to the next level. Today, small-to-medium sized businesses that couldn’t afford the enterprise-level application can now benefit from Outlook 2016.

Some of the Reasons SMBs, Like Yours, Love Outlook 2016:

• It’s integrated with Microsoft’s other products. You can bring in Word, Excel, and OneNote to name a few.
• You can centralize all your email addresses in one place. Link up to each of your email addresses and manage them all in one place. Plus, you can synchronize Office 2016 with your other devices, like your smartphone.
• It also includes a Calendar & Task Manager to organize and manage your appointments and to-dos (and others’).
• It’s time-saving, flexibility and productivity features, help make your life so much easier.

Outlook 2016 is similar to the look and feel of other Microsoft products.  So, it’s easy to get started.

You’ll Have So Many Options When Using Outlook.

Emails

• Change the color and contrast of Outlook: You can also use a picture or color as the background, add a text watermark to your emails.
• Customize emails with the fonts you prefer: Change the default font for various email messages you send, or a particular font for messages that you forward or reply to.
• Create signatures for your different email accounts: Create personalized signatures for your email messages: include text, images, your electronic business card, a logo, or even an image of your handwritten signature. Signatures can be added automatically to all outgoing messages, or you can choose which messages should use a particular signature.
• Setup sound alerts when new emails come in: A sound can play when a new email message arrives. The default sound is a short .wav audio file, but you can change it to any .wav file of your choice.
• Establish tracking options with delivery receipts: A delivery receipt confirms delivery of your email message to the recipient’s mailbox.
• Use Outlook’s templates for your messages, or create your own: Use email templates to send messages that include information that rarely changes from message to message. You can also insert icons, photos, and tables into your messages.
• Imbed voting buttons in your email to survey your recipients about a particular topic (such as, “When’s the best date and time for a meeting?”): Voting buttons are an excellent way to poll people, especially when communicating with large groups.
• Use Quickparts to insert a standard set of words you often use: Use the Quick Parts Gallery to create, store, and locate content, including AutoText, document properties such as title and author, and fields.
• Clutter: This is where you can place low priority emails you want to read later. Clutter helps you filter these low-priority emails saving time for your most important messages. Office 2016 remembers “Clutter” emails if you want.  If Clutter isn’t for you, you can TURN IT OFF.
• Create folders and subfolders: You can base these on topics, senders, organizations, projects, etc.—Whatever works for you and organize your emails under the subjects you choose. Use folders in Outlook to move email messages, add a folder to your Favorites, and set a rule to move specific emails out of your inbox.

Calendars

Outlook 2016 calendars have all the tools and functionality you’ve relied on in the past, with improved features to help you manage your time. 

• Set up multiple calendars (e.g., personal, business, health, etc.).
• Create appointments quickly and share them with your contacts.
• Scheduling assistant lets you access others’ calendars that you’re authorized to view (and vice versa).
• Set reminders, reoccurring appointments/meetings, alerts, and more.
• View your calendar by day, week, month, and year.

Contacts

• You can also import contacts to Outlook from other email providers using the Outlook Import/Export wizard. Import a CSV file, Excel spreadsheet, or vCard.
• Your contacts are linked to your email accounts, so you can simply key a name in the “To” field, and your contact’s email address will appear.
• Set permission for a particular contact (delegate) to view your emails while you’re on vacation. Plus, you can give this person access to your calendar, tasks, and so on, as appropriate. One delegate can take care of your email, another your tasks, etc.

Tools

• Always know how much space is left in your account.
• Notify those emailing you that you aren’t available during a particular period with Out of Office. You set up a special message you want others to see.
• Even set up different messages for people inside or outside your organization. (Outlook will remind you that the “Out of Office” message is turned on, so you don’t forget when you return.)
• As mentioned above, similar to having an assistant help you manage your incoming paper mail, you can use Microsoft Outlook to allow a delegate, to receive and respond to e-mail messages and meeting requests and responses on your behalf.
• You can also grant additional permissions that allow your delegate to read, create, or have more control over items in your Microsoft Exchange Server mailbox—And, set more than one delegate and permissions for various tasks.

Tasks

Outlook 2016’s task management helps you accomplish to-dos faster and easier.

• Categorize your tasks with color codes.
• Ping reminders for tasks.
• Check-off tasks when complete.
• Create tasks for others as well. Outlook integrates tasks with your emails so that you can assign a task to a recipient.  The task will show up on their task list.

And, there’s so much more Outlook 2016 has to offer!

To learn more about how Outlook 2016 can benefit your SMB, contact us at: (02) 8212 4722 or [email protected]