Most businesses that pay for Microsoft 365 are using it the same way they used Office 2010: email, Word, Excel, and maybe Teams for video calls. But inside your subscription are tools that, if used properly, could save each of your team members 30 minutes to an hour every single day.
Here are the most underutilised capabilities we see across our client base: features you're already paying for that are doing nothing.
1. Microsoft Planner. Ditch the Endless Email Threads
If your team still coordinates project tasks over email, you're creating invisible work. Microsoft Planner gives every team a visual task board (similar to Trello) built directly into Teams. Tasks have owners, due dates, progress indicators, and comments. No additional subscription required. It's in your M365 plan.
2. Power Automate. Automate Repetitive Approvals and Notifications
Power Automate (formerly Flow) lets non-technical staff build automated workflows between Microsoft apps and hundreds of third-party services. Common examples we set up for clients: automatic approval emails when a form is submitted, copying attachments from email into SharePoint, sending Teams notifications when a spreadsheet is updated. Most people are surprised how little setup the first workflow takes.
3. SharePoint. Your Intranet Is Sitting Idle
SharePoint works well as an internal knowledge base, document management system, and team intranet. Most businesses treat it as a clunky shared drive. Properly configured, it becomes the single source of truth for policies, templates, and company documents, searchable, version-controlled, and accessible from anywhere.
4. Microsoft Forms. Stop Emailing Spreadsheets for Data Collection
Need to collect feedback, run an internal survey, or gather structured information from clients? Microsoft Forms is included in your plan and takes two minutes to set up. Responses feed directly into Excel for analysis. Most of our clients didn't know it existed until we pointed it out.
5. Viva Insights. Understand How Your Team Actually Works
Viva Insights gives leaders and individuals data about how time is being spent: meeting loads, focus time, collaboration patterns, and wellbeing signals. It's privacy-respecting (individual data isn't exposed to managers without consent) and often reveals genuine inefficiencies. Available in most Business and Enterprise plans.
The Common Thread
All of these tools share one trait: they require a modest upfront investment in configuration and training, and then they save time indefinitely. The businesses we see extracting the most value from Microsoft 365 are those that treat it as a platform to grow into, not a static subscription.
If you'd like a review of how your business is using Microsoft 365 and where the unused value is sitting, that's exactly the kind of thing we cover in a discovery call.