Microsoft Adds Delve Social And Collaboration Tool To Office 365

Microsoft is making Office 365 more social and collaborative with the addition of Office Delve, a new feature that displays personalised information and connections depending on the type of content they are working on and the people with which they are engaging.

Previously known as ‘Oslo’, Office Delve is based on Office Graph, which uses machine learning techniques to map the relationships between people, content and activity across Office 365 services including email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Yammer.  Eventually this will also cover email attachments, OneNote and Lync.

Office 365 Delve

The central idea behind Delve is that users are provided with this information automatically rather than having to search for it, with data presented in a ‘card-based’ design that promises to be easy to understand and use. Microsoft stresses that Office 365 will only enable users to view content that they have access and permission to view.

“Delve simply makes work more intuitive and easier to navigate,” says Julia White, general manager of Office 365 technical product management. “Instead of having to dig through email, search on Yammer, or explore SharePoint and OneDrive for Business to find the right stuff, you can simply use Delve to have the right information delivered to you.”

Delve will be rolled out to all enterprise, business, academic and government plans by early 2015 with a phased rollout starting from today. Administrators can get the new feature earlier by opting in to receive service updates upon first release.

Other recent additions to Office 365 include DocuSign electronic signatures, closer Yammer integration and the introduction of a personal subscription. Microsoft has also refreshed its SMB plans and last week announced the service was to be integrated with the Box cloud platform.

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