While a lot of offices around the globe use an open layout to increase productivity, there are also those who prefer giving its employees their own space. Regardless of layouts in the real world, Microsoft believes it will help if organizations work like one big network.
Microsoft announced Monday during its SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas that the Office 365 will evolve to become smarter and more social.The cloud suite will blur the line between Yammer, Sharepoint, and Exchange, putting social interaction and collaboration at work on spotlight.
The company introduced Office Graph, a machine-learning feature that maps interactions of groups, individuals, conversations, and files of users of Office 365 in order to highlight the most relevant contents. Then there is the Oslo, a codename for a new application that utilizes the Office Graph to give a single user insights on documents, conversations, meetings, among others.
"Today, the world is a giant network with people hyper-connected to information and each other. We talk to our friends and family using Facebook, brands can be made or broken with a simple Tweet, and we find our next job through contacts in LinkedIn. Information and knowledge move faster, and we're able to accomplish more together because we are so connected," stated Microsoft corporate vice president for Office Service and Servers group Jeff Teper.
"To be more responsive, we need to evolve. We need to flatten the information flow so that we can work better together and serve customers better, using a network of highly informed and highly connected people," he added.
The integration Yammer Enterprise, a social network platform for businesses, was announced by Microsoft to Office 365 in November last year and it will be integrated to the service this spring. It also made logging in to Yammer from the Office 365 easier in February. The Office Graph derives its DNA from the Enterprise Graph of Yammer.
"Just as consumer social networks connect you to people and information you'd otherwise never be able to keep up with, the Office Graph will plug you into the very fabric that makes your organization work," Microsoft's general manager of enterprise social Jared Spataro explained.
To make the inputs from Office Graph meaningful for individuals, there is the new application called Oslo.
"By tapping into the Office Graph, Oslo provides a natural way for users to navigate, discover, and search people and information across an organization," wrote Spataro.
Just like in real-life scenario, companies can also organize smaller social groups that will be working together for a specific deliverable. These groups can customize their social feeds, calendars, inboxes, and library of essential documents to help them perform more efficiently and achieve goals as a group.
