Microsoft 365 Features You Already Pay For

Microsoft 365 is the most expensive software most small businesses buy and the least completely used. The typical pattern is email, Word, Excel and Teams — which is roughly the value of a licence tier or two below the one being paid for.

The gap is not laziness. It is that Microsoft ships features constantly and tells almost nobody, so capability accumulates silently in a tenant while the business goes on solving the same problems with workarounds.

Here is what is worth switching on, in rough order of value per minute spent.

1. Stop emailing attachments

Emailing a document creates a copy. Two people edit their copies, and now there are three versions and an argument about which is current. Everyone knows this and everyone still does it.

Share a link from SharePoint or OneDrive instead. One file, one version, everyone editing the same thing. The link can expire, be restricted to your organisation, or be read-only.

The security benefit is the one people miss: a link can be revoked. An attachment that went to the wrong address is simply gone, sitting in a stranger mailbox permanently.

2. Turn on version history and learn where the bin is

Every file in SharePoint and OneDrive keeps version history. You can open a document as it existed last Tuesday, compare it, and restore it. This resolves most "someone overwrote my work" incidents in under a minute, and almost nobody knows it is there.

Worth knowing alongside it: deleted files go to a site recycle bin and then a second-stage bin, typically 93 days in total. Useful — but as we covered in our guide to backup that actually works, a recycle bin with a timer is not a backup.

3. Use Teams channels properly instead of group chats

Most businesses adopt Teams as a chat app and stop there, which means every project lives in an ad-hoc group chat that nobody can search six months later and that new staff cannot be added to without exposing the entire history.

A channel per project or client gives you conversation, files and meeting notes in one place, joinable by new team members with the context intact. The Files tab in a channel is just a SharePoint folder, so everything from the previous two tips applies automatically.

4. Set up Bookings if anyone schedules meetings with outsiders

Microsoft Bookings is included in most business plans and replaces the four-email back-and-forth about availability. You publish a page, the other party picks a slot that is genuinely free in your calendar, and both sides get an invitation with a Teams link.

For anyone client-facing — consultants, allied health, trades doing quotes — this is an hour of setup that removes a recurring daily irritation.

5. Replace paper and spreadsheet intake with Forms

Microsoft Forms handles the small data-collection jobs businesses usually solve with a spreadsheet emailed around: incident reports, leave requests, client intake, staff surveys. Responses land in Excel automatically, which means no transcription and no version problem.

One caution worth stating plainly: a Form collecting personal information is subject to the same privacy obligations as any other system. Decide who can see responses and how long you keep them before you publish the link, not after.

6. Turn on the security features included in your plan

This is the highest-value item on the list and the least visible, because security features do not announce themselves the way a new app does.

• Multi-factor authentication with number matching. Included in every plan. If nothing else on this list gets done, do this one.
• Safe Links and Safe Attachments (Business Premium). Links are rewritten and checked at the moment of clicking, so a URL that was harmless when delivered and weaponised an hour later still gets caught.
• Anti-phishing impersonation protection. Configure it to know your executives and your domain so lookalike display names get flagged.
• Conditional access so sign-ins from unmanaged devices and unexpected countries are challenged or blocked.

Businesses on Business Premium are frequently paying for Defender and Intune without either being configured. That is the single most common thing our IT audits find.

7. Check you are on the right licence at all

Licence drift is expensive in both directions. Businesses pay for accounts belonging to people who left two years ago, hold Business Premium licences for staff who only need email, or sit on Business Standard while paying separately for a third-party security tool that Premium would have included.

An annual review of who has what, against what they actually do, usually pays for itself immediately. Look especially for unassigned licences still billing, and for shared mailboxes that were converted to full user accounts by accident.

Where to start

If you have twenty minutes: turn on number matching for MFA, and check for unassigned licences.

If you have an afternoon: configure Safe Links and impersonation protection, and move one active project into a proper Teams channel to see how it feels.

Our Microsoft 365 service covers the configuration and the licence review, and if you would rather keep your own IT person and bring us in alongside them, co-managed IT does exactly that.

Local IT and cyber security support across NSW

Chewing IT runs managed IT and cyber security for small and mid-sized businesses from our Wyong and Hornsby offices, covering the Central Coast, Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and Hornsby.

Paying for Business Premium and not using it? Ask us for a licence and security review — it usually finds money and gaps in the same pass.