As we have discussed in the past, Office 365 is an integrated suite of applications and services which are designed to help you grow your business. Familiar apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more are updated monthly with the latest features and security updates, and new capabilities and apps are added on a regular basis.

Office 365 included a video application which has since been re-introduced as Microsoft Stream, which builds upon the original and adds more functionality and capability for your business.

Does My Business Need Microsoft Stream?

In our personal lives, we understand how much of an impact a video can have. We share our videos on social media, send them to family, and use them to share our most exciting news. Increasingly, video is becoming one of our favorite ways to connect and share our business message as well. Video communicates more personally, teaches more effectively, and connects more powerfully than any other medium. The key is the human element which is often lacking in business communications – but is now easily available to your workforce.

Microsoft Stream is one of the latest additions to the already popular Office 365 suite of services. The goal has always been to remove clunky processes and unnecessary barriers, encouraging collaboration throughout the organization and positively affecting productivity. The Microsoft Stream business video service provides ease of access to video at work, allowing organizations to immediately begin uploading, sharing and tagging videos in their organization.

Did You Know? If you are already a Microsoft 365 customer, you can begin using Microsoft Stream today.

What Does Microsoft Stream Offer to My Business?

You can begin using Microsoft Stream immediately, with a simple sign-up process and no credit card requirements. From there, it is easy to start sharing your videos with coworkers and employees.

  • With basic drag and drop capabilities which will look familiar to your employees, you can upload videos and organize them by channel.
  • Channels can be based on a department such as HR or marketing; or a topic such as training. You can add and organize channels in the way that best suits your business model and needs.
  • Your employees can then search for relevant content by viewing “trending” videos, as well as searching by hashtag, most liked videos and other key search terms.
  • Employees can watch any video on any device at any time, meaning that remote employees and work-from-home staff have equal access to all relevant company content. Presentations and training can become a lot less costly if remote employees can watch and participate in real-time, instead of traveling to your location.
  • You will have the ability to decide who sees which video, making it as broadly accessible or as private as you determine appropriate. This means you control who can access each channel, and access can be turned off and on. Secure application access is enabled by Azure Active Directory, a recognized leader in identity management systems, to protect sensitive corporate content.
  • Users will have the ability to follow what matters to them, by setting up their Microsoft Stream homepage to feature their chosen channels.
  • Stream works in familiar ways, allowing your employees to engage with content, share with others in the company via email, “Like” favorite selections and embed videos to organizational webpages.

Video capability is expected to evolve into being the core apparatus for delivering business content.  Microsoft is also working on intelligent video search capabilities such as audio transcription and face detection, which will give employees the ability to quickly find relevant content within each video.

Making video an integral part of your business apps and workflows has never been easier. Add Microsoft Stream to your suite of services today, and watch your communication come to life. For any questions about Microsoft Stream, Microsoft 365, or managed services which can help to catapult your Sarasota area business productivity to the next level, simply call Alliance IT. We are here to help.