Software giant Microsoft, led by its Indian-American CEO Satya Nadella, has developed yet another cloud tool that allows team members to share and collaborate on documents with one another.
Part of Microsoft Office, the new tool called Delve surfaces the stuff one is interested in automatically. One doesn’t have to bookmark important documents or even search for anything. “It’s kind of like a Facebook news feed for work,” Nadella mentioned. “I can see all the work happening inside Microsoft, and it lights up based on what my topics of interest are. Think about how empowering it is to have that kind of transparency and access.”
For example, Delve might see that Nadella has a meeting coming up with a Windows executive. Delve would automatically display content relevant to the meeting drawn from Nadella’s email, from SharePoint or Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage system.
In a series of virtual “cards,” Delve would show Nadella an agenda the executive sent in advance of the meeting, a PowerPoint slideshow from a recent review with the Windows team, and some market research that the Windows 10 team posted to a team site.The only documents Nadella – or anyone – can see are those that are public or shared directly .Nadella can’t see private Office documents, such as an employee’s resume and cover letter being typed up for Apple.It’s kind of like Android’s Google Now tool for the office. It searches stuff on its own, without one having to sort through hundreds of emails or aimlessly wander through SharePoint to locate a relevant document.Microsoft says Delve taps into the “Office Graph,” an Office tool that learns how you and your team work with one another.It knows what documents you read and share, who you’re meeting with, who you work with and who you follow.As it learns, Microsoft Delve gets smarter, presenting more relevant cards the more you use it.
