This could be an eBook but it would be outdated the first day I published it, so I opted to make a quick “newsletter/blog” and hope these tips don’t change overnight. If you are a new to Office 365, you will learn that Microsoft loves changing things without sending me a memo about it 🙂

Before I go into this, I will discuss the 2 different Office 365 plans. Did you know there was 2? Did you know that there was many more? Not many folks do! For the sake of my audience, I will just cover 2 of them.

And reminder! If you see the words “Office 365” it is always a subscription. Other products with the name “Office 2016” are purchases.

Office 365 Home is the version you can buy at a retail store or online, 5 installations for $99. This version is intended for one person or family to share. This is not the version for businesses. It includes the Office 2016, OneDrive, Skype minutes and the best part, SUPPORT for the software! Believe it or not, this is my favorite part. Sometimes Outlook can be tricky to fix and having Microsoft remote in is very helpful to my time and the clients time. Many fixes they have, I don’t have. (Did I mention I’m not on that memo list either?)

If you buy at a store, you will have to create an account online and find the install links in your account. This is the only Office 365 product I recommend buying from Microsoft (not the business packages). I recommend buying this online directly from Microsoft.

Office 365 Business offers many different packages, in fact too many flavors for me to get into but here is a quick tip! Most of my clients need 2 things, Office and Exchange (the email, calendar and contact syncing program). Some folks want the bigger Office that includes SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams and other now popular applications.

• They do not participate in the plans that allow you to transfer your account easily. In fact, if you want more products or need other products, you have to close your account with them, and setup a new account with another company. You have to pay for the install/setup and migration fees to the new company. I do this for clients, so I know…as I bill them for this work. I am helping a client this week move her entire company to a “Better Vendor” because she can’t add an application to her Office 365 account. This will cost her a lot of money, downtime and she can’t get a refund unfortunately.
• Restricted Access: GoDaddy doesn’t think you should play with the pretty buttons that you or your tech company need to do more advanced work with your Office 365 account. I have had to call in to get simple issues resolved or completed.
• Be careful of being oversold and under-delivered. I have been told that “buy their 3-year deal” was so good, clients could not resist. The techs on the first call also get paid commission so every great sale helps their paycheck. Be careful here because if you have an issue and need better support or another product, this is where that great deal might go sour for you.
• Also, they promise “seamless” migrations. Ok if you are one of the lucky ones. Their migration might take days and have issues and since you put the migration in their hands, there is nothing they can do to stop it or fix it while it’s going on. Had some calls about this and there is nothing I can do either!

Be careful buying Office 365 or Office from sites off the internet. While their pricing may be eye-catching, you might have issues down the road with these purchases and not worth your time to get the licenses figured out. I have been paid a lot of money to figure out these $30 savings.

• I help clients purchase Office 365 Business from my vendor who has awesome 24×7 support. Due to my business model I decided to not “resell” for many reasons but my vendor is always open and has a great sales and support team. Most vendors do basic support, this is where I come in, to handle the rest. I do the exchange migrations, SharePoint help, setup in Outlook, configure the calendars, etc. Consider Call That Girl your “Support” company, the vendor is for passwords, new accounts, very simple Outlook issues.
• If you want to work with a local company, call computer shops or IT professional companies in your area and find out if they sell and support Office 365 Business. Be sure to find out their pricing and support included and their experience with Exchange most importantly. These shops should be a direct Microsoft partner or use a vendor like I do. If you specifically want to use a product such as SharePoint, be sure they have experience as SharePoint is fairly robust. This is one of the main calls I get in from clients, “We setup SharePoint and OneDrive and it’s a huge mess”. Get your new SharePoint and OneDrive setup the right way, the first time!
• Buy Office 365 Home from Microsoft directly as I said above. 

Due to so many folks on the internet and current clients who have a “Quick Question” and it’s something that can probably be figured out with a couple of emails, I am now offering a $10 per month “Call That Girl Quick Question Helpdesk”.

I already offer this as a free service to my prepay clients. Moving to this level will be helpful for you but there are some restrictions. It does not include phone or remote support. If the questions lead to me needing to help, it is a regular appointment then.

There is no contract just a monthly payment of $10 to keep you in the program. I also offer some content to only paid subscribers so you can read and learn more. In time I will have more offerings but to get started, just go to my page here and subscribe. This is new so if there are bugs to figure out, I will take care of it! I’m excited to help more folks with simple questions!