Cloud Voice Express / Office 365 question

[RG]

A couple of weeks back, our company switched from a BT business broadband & phoneline to their Cloud Voice Express service.

When I log in to the Cloud Voice Express portal, I see listed under "Products Purchased", we have the following:

Business web space 2
Business Email Lite 2
Office 365 Small Business 1

My question is about the Office 365 product. Is this purely for email, or does it allow you to access the online version of Word/Excel etc? I've seen elsewhere that you need to pay about £3.80 per month per user for the service, so I'm not sure what's what).

Also, how do we get access? I saw somewhere else on BT's website that login details would be emailed, but we've never received anything, although.... BT has saddled us with a btconnect.com email address (they gave it to us years ago). Whilst I can login to BT's own website using this email, we've never, ever used it for anything but logging in to BT. All other correspondence (e.g. bill notifications, and messages regarding recent switchover to Cloud Voice Express) have always come to our main company email, which is something entirely different. Is it likely they've used the btconnect email for any Office 365 messages? To be honest, I don't even know where to sign in to read btconnect emails (why must we be saddled with an email address we don't want and never use?? why can't be use our main business email, like we do for everything else?)

Having access to the Office 365 thing might be useful occasionally, so thought I'd ask the question (I'm not curious enough to try to phone, as no doubt I'll hang on for 30mins then get someone who doesn't understand what I'm talking about!)

Has anyone got experience of this?

[RyanJames]

Hi RG

Hope you are well!

Have you got a domain email address? So one ending in "@yourownbusinessname.com" for example? If so, you should be able to use that as part of an Office365 package.

The Office365 packages themselves are only dealt with by our Enhanced IT Support Team who are available on 0800 500 247. Now they are usually a chargeable service to contact, but if you are on Cloud Voice Express you will usually also have Superfast Enhanced broadband, in which you get support from our IT Support Team for free. If you think that an O365 service could be useful I would recommend giving them a buzz and they can see about setting you up and clarifying exactly what services you have. They are available 24/7 and Office365 is their bread and butter, so they should know what you are referring to. 🙂

To answer another question you asked about the BTConnect - as you say it is sometihng usually given as standard at point of sale, usually as a login for your BT services, the BT Sport App, BT wifi hotspots etc, but if you also have a mailbox on that you can log in directly to your BTConnect email with your username and password at portal.office365.com. If you are unaware what your password is you can go to business.bt.com, click Forgotten My Password and that should take you down the password reset journey, and if you have no joy with that you can call us on 0800 800 154 or contact our livechat team which may be a little quicker!

If you have any other questions just let me know and I will answer as best I can!

Regards

Ryan

[RG]

Hi Ryan, thanks for taking the time to reply.

We do have a domain email, however we currently use Google Apps for business and we're very happy with that, and aren't looking to change.

It's not the email service in the Office 365 package that I'm interested in. It was access to online Word/Excel that I'm curious about, as sometimes Google Apps' own products mangle formatting (e.g. if someone emails us a .docx document, sometimes it looks wierd.)

Are you able to confirm if a version of Office 365 is included with Cloud Voice Express, and would that version give access to Word/Excel? I mean, it clearly states in our Cloud Voice Express portal under 'Products Purchased' that Office 365 Small Business is included. I want to know where I'll get the login details.

I can phone if I have to, but we're not going to pay for Office 365 in addition to Google Apps. I would have used it if it were included, but not if we have to pay. Oh, and for the record, yes we do have Superfast Enhanced broadband. I believe we were upgraded to this when we switched to Cloud Voice Express.

Thanks for your help.

[RyanJames]

Hi RG

So, I done a bit of digging here and the answers I got were somewhat surprising. Every day is a school day I suppose!

I had a chat with our Enhanced IT Support team and checked with someone there in regards to your query. They have advised that "Office 365 for Small Business" is no longer actually a service that works. They instead use Office 365 Business Essentials/Premium now (I knew that these were the names of the services we now offer, but I thought it was just a renam of Small Business, not a completely different service). The Small Business product should not be showing up, but they said occasionally it will linger in that products purchased section.

The agent I spoke to advised that sometimes it shows on the account but will not be a chargeable service, however we would recommend speaking to our billing team with this one - as if you are paying for that it would need to be stopped and your credited. Office 365 for Small Business is no longer a functional product and as such there is no way to log in. I also confirmed that it's more recent counterpart Office 365 Business Essentials is an add-on service and does not come as standard with Superfast Enhanced Broadband and Cloud Voice Express.

Again, if you wished to get Office 365 Business Essentials then the Enhanced IT Support Team would be the people to speak to, but I understand you already have a similar set-up as part of Google Apps already. If you want more info on any of this also they are the best people to speak to, the real experts on all our Office 365 services.

Sorry for all the confusion with this one, as I say this was something that even I wasn't aware of, so might be best to call to get it all checked out to make sure you are not paying for osmething you shouldn't be.

Regards

Ryan