It might be called the 2014 SharePoint Conference, but Microsoft used the IT-themed event in Las Vegas today to make a number of announcements concerning Office 365. Many of them concern new social-based features that will be added to the business subscribers of Microsoft's productivity service.
The Office blog reveals that one of these features is called Office Graph. Microsoft says the basis for it comes from Yammer's Enterprise Graph which links people with their posts, likes, uploads and more on the social network. The blog says:
... we’re extending this idea to Office broadly, using signals from email, social conversations, documents, sites, instant messages, meetings, and more to map the relationships between the people and things that make your business go.
The Office Graph feature will be put into place later this year via a new app with the current code name Oslo. There's no word yet on which version or versions of Office 365 will gain access to the app.
Microsoft also announced that Yammer's groups feature will be integrated fully into Office 365, allowing employees who use the service to create smaller online networks with their own inboxes, social feed, calendar and more. Microsoft also plans to introduce what it calls Inline Social Experiences. This will allow for users to chat inside documents stored on SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business via Yammer conversations, with future plans to integrate Skype and Lync chats as well. All of these additions and more are planned for launch later in 2014 and in some cases into 2015.
Microsoft also announced that it has released newly updated software tools and APIs for developers to make apps that can connect to Office 365 services
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft
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