Microsoft's launch of the Office 2013 preview last week included a number of new features; one of them are the social networking options for the office software suite. In a new post on the Office Next blog, Microsoft goes over some of those new features.
The blog states that users of the new version of SharePoint can check out the Newsfeed feature; it offers updates for the people that a SharePoint user is following. Microsoft's Ben Wilde states in the blog:
For example, I'm following my co-worker Louise and whenever she posts something, I see it here. When she follows a document, I see a notification in my Newsfeed. Because I work with Louise, I like to see what she’s doing and what she’s interested in. Similarly, if I follow a document (the draft of this blog post, for example), my Newsfeed lets me know when my collaborators have made any changes or whether it’s been shared with additional people for review.
Office 2013 also allows users to follow updates in specific documents and sites, along with recommendations of other documents and sites to follow via the Enterprise Search engine. Microsoft also put in the Outlook Social Connector in Office 2013 which lets users connect to third party social networks such as Facebook with no need to download additional files.
Office 2012 lets users find experts to solve particular problems as well. Wilde states:
When I search for a person in Outlook, the results are automatically ranked based on how closely I work with each person on the list. When I search for an expert in SharePoint, it will return the best matches based on people’s areas of expertise. Plus, with SharePoint’s “fuzzy matching” search, I don’t even need to spell their name right to see them show up in my results!
Wilde also mentions that the Office team is still in the early stages of the Yammer team, which Microsoft bought a few weeks ago, but more information on how Yammer will become a part of Office will be revealed in November as part of the company's SharePoint conference.
Source: Office Next blog | Image via Microsoft
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