eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Office Delve users can now organize their cards with a new feature called “boards.”
Delve is a mobile-optimized app that automatically surfaces situationally relevant information and interactions on “cards,” visual and sharable representations of documents, discussions and other content shared over the Office 365 platform. It is powered by Office Graph, content discovery and machine learning software that the company described as the “new Office 365 intelligence fabric” when it first announced the technology last year.
Office Graph determines the connections between employees and serves up personalized updates based on their roles and current projects. Now, early users—the Delve app is currently being rolled out to Office 365 business customers—can further personalize the experience and open up new collaborative opportunities.
“We are excited to introduce a new feature in Delve called boards that help you organize content, so it’s readily accessible and easy to share with others,” announced Microsoft’s Office Team in a Jan. 7 blog post. “In Delve, you can use boards to group together and share related documents. For example, you can create a board to collect and organize all documents related to a specific project your team is working on.”
Delve boards support cards generated by current Office Graph “signals” attuned to Office 365, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online team sites and the Office 365 Video Portal, according to the company. Email attachments and Yammer newsfeed support are slated for the “coming months.”
Microsoft also revealed that Delve boards are part of the company’s aim to change the way organizations curate and capitalize on employee-generated content. “Going forward, the ‘Add to board’ functionality will serve as a basis for new content curation and knowledge management scenarios within Office 365, in line with our vision for Next Gen Portals recently outlined with the introduction of Office 365 Video,” stated the company.
Given the oftentimes sensitive nature of corporate information, Delve boards are not a free-for-all. User identity and management safeguards still apply, according to the company. “Everyone in your organization can view and contribute to an existing board or create a board—but they can only see and open documents that they have permission to access,” stated Microsoft.
In keeping with the company’s mobile- and cloud-enabled vision of workplace collaboration, Microsoft envisions that teams will use tools like Delve to enhance their productivity and spend less time managing their email inboxes or exploring their companies’ search portals.
“Boards allow you to discover content related to topics and projects and make it easy to return to the content that matters most to you,” wrote Microsoft’s bloggers. “From within Delve, you can search for a board, follow it to stay informed and discover other boards—all without having to know or remember where individual pieces of content live.” Boards can be shared via email or messaging apps with a Delve URL.