July's updates to Microsoft 365 are all about integrating apps and services

It's the end of the month, and so Microsoft is recapping the updates made to its Microsoft 365 subscription service in July. This month's updates are all about integrating many of the company's tools and apps into each other to provide a consolidated experience.

For starters, Microsoft Planner is now integrated into SharePoint team sites, making it possible to create a plan directly in the team site and embed boards and charts from Planner in SharePoint so all of that content is more easily accessible from a single location.

Continuing on the theme of integrations, Visio Visuals are now available in Power BI, so you can use the power of Visio to create charts and diagrams based on your Power BI data sets, which can then be used to create interactive dashboards.

That's not the only change made to Power BI, which will now allow customers to view analytics of their Microsoft 365 usage so they can understand how the services are being used. What's more, it's possible to view details of the usage of Microsoft Teams, such as how much the organization uses features such as chat, meetings, and channels.

Rounding up the integrations is the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which will soon be available for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 customers in the web version of Outlook. With this integration, profile information from LinkedIn will be available in the Microsoft 365 people card so it doesn't have to be looked up separately.

Lastly, Microsoft added threaded comments to Excel, which should make it easier to follow conversations within the comments made on documents. This brings the spreadsheet editor up to par with Word and PowerPoint, which had already received the feature.

July has been a relatively busy month for Microsoft and its business customers, thanks in part to its Inspire partner conference, where it also announced the general availability of the Whiteboard app for Windows. With Android, iOS, and web versions coming soon, this could be another important addition for collaboration in business and educational environments.