If you’re an internal communicator, no doubt you already have, or are looking at options for, a mixture of different communication channels, trying to get your messages out in multiple different ways to suit different audience needs and company objectives. 

There are a lot of internal communication tools out there (and obviously, they all cost money), but if your internal communications will hit employees who have Microsoft licences, it’s worth thinking about leveraging some of the standard Microsoft apps for your internal communications mix. These will save your organisation money and save you and your team the headache of working across several different systems. 

Here are some of the apps I suggest are perfect for internal communications: 

• Stream 

What is it? A video platform – a bit like YouTube but for your company’s video content.

What is it great for? Ensuring your company has easy access to those all-important business update call recordings or ask me anything sessions. You can create channels to categorise content, you can encourage users to give feedback by liking or commenting on the video, and you can lock down access to the videos to subsets of people within your organisation if needed. You also get a handy number of views for your tracking metrics.  

• Sway 

What is it? Microsoft call it a ‘storytelling app’ – I think it’s a great tool for easily creating and presenting really impactful content. I’m not calling it a presentation tool because it can be used for many things – although it definitely does lend itself to presentations. 

What is it great for? Company newsletters! (I have a whole blog about just this here) If you don’t have access to newsletter template software, Sway can be a free way to breathe new life into your all company email updates. You can embed lots of other content straight into it, like videos (see Stream above) and feedback forms (see Forms below!) You also get some handy analytics insights for your tracking metrics. (hmm, deja vu?)   

• Forms

What is it? What it says on the tin really – an app that lets you create digital forms and basic quizzes. 

What is it great for? Gathering employee feedback on anything and everything. It has branching, different types of question format including ranking and net promoter score, which would be perfect for employee engagement style surveys. You can also ensure that responders remain anonymous to encourage candid feedback. 

Or, as a bit of fun you can also create a quiz, maybe to help employees get to know each other by matching the pet picture to the owner? You can pre-populate correct answers (and even allow answer variations) so that users get their scores straight away. 

Once you’ve got responses to your survey or quiz, Forms will wrap up all the responses into handy graphs and exportable tables for your tracking metrics. 

• Yammer 

What is it? A platform for building and growing communities. I used to say it was “a bit like Facebook for work” but properly curated it can be much more powerful than that. 

What is it great for? Bringing people together virtually, especially useful if you have employees spread across different geographies and hybrid/agile working styles. You can build community groups and encourage question-and-answer sharing (which handily builds up a searchable knowledge base the more that people contribute), make announcements and host live events. Oh and if you have admin access there’s some handy engagement measurements for your tracking metrics. 

• Sharepoint 

What is it? You can use it to (really easily) create a company Intranet site. 

What is it great for? …Company Intranet sites! The editor is easy to use, and because it’s a Microsoft product, it’s so easy to hook in other Microsoft apps and embed them right inside your Intranet pages, including your all-company update Stream channel, your Employee Engagement Form, and your latest Company Newsletter Sway. Building an Intranet using a ‘Communications’ Sharepoint site also opens the door to using Viva Connections, which will allow you to personalise the Intranet content with audience segmentation. And yes, you guessed it, there’s lots of analytics available on each webpage for your tracking metrics. 

So there you have it, 5 tools that you can use today at no extra cost (if your employees already have Microsoft licences), for your internal communications needs. I’d especially recommend looking into these if you’re at the early stages of ‘proving’ the worth of internal communications within your organisation – there’s little up-front investment (apps are already available to users with Microsoft licences) and analytics everywhere to prove the gain.