Microsoft 365: Overview for the Everyman

Without all the jargon, let's take a look at M365 at a high level and check out each app in isolation

Has your eyes started to bleed yet? Yes, this is Microsoft 365 in all it's glory, and this is not even including all the additional add-ons like Syntex and PowerApps.

it's a giant jungle of applications that are connected to each other, but amongst the chaos lies the genius.

I'll go over each app in simple terms and try not to complicated it.
m365 architecture, m365, microsoft 365 solution, solutions design, m365 design
m365 architecture, m365, microsoft 365 solution, solutions design, m365 design
Let's get straight to it, and start off with the easiest and most familiar one.

MS Office - Places where you do actual work and produce documents, spreadsheets, emails and notes. Let me state the obvious.
  • Word - Write documents, memos, etc
  • Excel - Do spreadsheets, tables, macros, lookups, charts, etc.
  • PowerPoint - Do slides and presentations, create posters and where I do a lot of creative work instead of Paint
  • Outlook - Emails, calendars, shared mailboxes
  • OneNote - Writing notes and pseudo-wikis. Hardly anyone uses this.

Apps explained

sharepoint, ms teams, communication sites, onedrive for business, onedrive, sharepoint sites
sharepoint, ms teams, communication sites, onedrive for business, onedrive, sharepoint sites
SharePoint and OneDrive - Places where you store and open your files. Like you C: drive but it's online. OneDrive is like the place where you do your drafts and keep personal stuff like medical certificates and travel tickets. SharePoint is the place where you put up files Loads of stuff you can do with this and will be covered in more depth in another article.
ms office, msoffice, office365, word, excel, powerpoint, onenote, outlook, productivity suite
ms office, msoffice, office365, word, excel, powerpoint, onenote, outlook, productivity suite
Teams - This is like an app that's always on. It's primarily the "skin" on top of SharePoint as it does basically the same thing since SharePoint was universally deemed "too ugly" for average users. It manages your files into channels, which are like folders, and keeps everything easy to modify and interact with.

It's also the place where you chat with people, make video calls, use CoPilot and hold meetings. Pretty much indispensable in a modern workplace.
ms teams, teams, chats, meetings, teams channels, channels, Teams platform
ms teams, teams, chats, meetings, teams channels, channels, Teams platform
Outlook and Exchange - It's where you send and receive emails. if you have emails older than 1 year, your organisation might also implement "Online Archie" which puts your older emails into colder tier storage. If you're lucky enough to have shared mailboxes, or old enough to still be using public folders, then those are here too.
azure, azure entra, entra, irm, risk management, data loss prevention, DLP,
azure, azure entra, entra, irm, risk management, data loss prevention, DLP,
ms outlook, m365 exchange, emails, exchange online, shared mailbox
ms outlook, m365 exchange, emails, exchange online, shared mailbox
Azure - Pronounced "Ash-shure" or whatever. It's where your users profiles are stored centrally and then can drawn from within M365 apps. Also manages external guests, and has AI and storage as well if you want to use it that way.
Purview - Controls settings and policies across the whole M365 tenant. Like the control tower at and airport.
Dynamics - If you work with customers and clients and need to keep their contact details in a complicated CRM database then this is golden, but if you don't like most of us, then you'll likely give this a miss.
ms dynamics, ms crm, crm, srm, dynamics, marketing, supply chain
ms dynamics, ms crm, crm, srm, dynamics, marketing, supply chain

Advanced things for advanced people

power apps, power automate, power BI, microsoft fabric, fabric, fabric BI
power apps, power automate, power BI, microsoft fabric, fabric, fabric BI
Now that we have seen the core products, now let's do a shorter rundown of some of the other apps.
I'll go over some of these in more details in other articles, but this is the general overview of the additional apps that pack a pretty big punch.

Power Apps - Create powerful apps that are bespoke. Serious data connections and custom applications.
Power Automate - Do crazy automated flows and have things happen either on schedule or at trigger points.
Power BI - Tableau is out, Power BI is in. Do next-level graphs and stuff.
Microsoft Fabric - Complex data analytics, labs, creation of semantic models and graphs, and potentially more.

Why this is all pretty cool

After taking in all of that, it looks like a gigantic mess. But the genius is in the native integration between all these pieces.

Everything is connected, and you can do things like:

  • Create a power automate flow that takes user data from Dynamics, add them as users on Entra, and then add these users to SharePoint sites.

  • Connect your excel spreadsheet to a SharePoint list, and synchronise the data so that data changing on one affects the other simultaneously.

  • Find a user on SharePoint, and create meetings with them on Outlook, and then hold that meeting in Teams which will save the meeting recording onto OneDrive.

    AND much, much more.