Microsoft Office 365 E5 for Education

As an educational institution user, you may well already be taking advantage of the productivity features of Office 365 EDU, with its core functionality of email, document sharing and web conferencing.

And you may also already be making good use of the added functionality on offer such as OneNote Classroom, Office Mix, Sway, Video and of course Office Pro Plus for Faculty and Students.

But did you know that Microsoft have introduced the E5 suite which adds a host of other exciting new features?

Enhanced telephony, conferencing and meeting support

The first enhancement for Skype for business that Microsoft have rolled out  is PSTN Conferencing which is an option that gives you a local telephone number you can publish for your web meetings as part of its enhanced conferencing and meeting offer.

One of the most eagerly anticipated features, I’m sure though, is the new Cloud PBX option

Cloud PBX enables you to make, receive, and transfer business calls in the office, at home, or on the road, using phone, PC, and mobile without the need for a traditional phone system.

Microsoft will also shortly be releasing PTSN Calling, another add on in the UK market which will enable all your telephone calls to be charged as part of your Office 365 agreement. We will be providing more details once these become available.

Enhanced security features

As an existing customer, you will already benefit from Exchange Online Protection for your emails. The new E5 solution builds on these security features through its Advanced Threat Protection which includes Safe Attachments for Sandboxing for zero day attacks and Safe Links to ensure that links in emails are always protected when they are clicked.

Two other elements are also included:

• Customer Lockbox ensures that you have full control and transparency of Microsoft access to your O365 data; and
• Advanced eDiscovery which delivers greater compliance functionality.

Advanced analytics

Finally, E5 also provides additional analytics features including:

• Power BI Pro available on subscription, which will enable you to create dashboards for your data quickly and easily, and
• Delve Analytics, which provides personal analysis of your organisation’s productivity within Office 365 based on the Office Graph.

Update: Microsoft have announced that PSTN calling will be available in the UK from 1st June 2016

For more information on how you can implement these features, including how to license them most effectively for price and compliance in your organisation, why not call us – we are here to help on 01974 200 204.