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Microsoft announced that it is rolling out its twist on confidence-boosting Likes and retweets for the enterprise this week.
Giving kudos on Delve, Microsoft’s context-aware Office search and discovery app for workplaces, is getting easier with a new update currently available to customers enrolled in the Office 365 First Release preview program in the United States. The update will be available to every Office 365 commercial customer soon, the company said.
“With the new Praise feature in Delve, you are now able to send publicly viewable praise to your colleagues,” stated Mark Kashman, senior product manager for Microsoft Office 365, in an Oct. 1 announcement. “In addition, an email is sent to their manager to make them aware of the individual’s efforts.”
Once the update is applied, a new Praise tile appears in a user’s profile. Users can compose a brief message and add one of a handful of stickers. Once sent, the praise appears in the Delve feed, encouraging others to heap on more praise. In its current iteration, Praise cannot be turned off, but Microsoft plans to add controls to enable administrators to manage the feature before it becomes generally available.
“The praise appears in Delve on the recipient’s profile, and colleagues can click ‘Like’ to increase the recognition,” Kashman said. “We know users will appreciate its ease of use and companies will benefit from the power of it being used.”
Additionally, the Delve update makes it easier for workers to express their individuality, courtesy of a new blogging and customization experience powered by SharePoint Online.
“The new authoring canvas is rolling out to all eligible Office 365 commercial customers starting today. Accessed from the Delve Profile tab, the authoring canvas allows you to edit and view pages and auto-save as you work,” explained Kashman.
Delve users can pull practically any content from Office repositories, including OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online Document Libraries. Multimedia support includes videos stored in the Office 365 Video portal “and even images from your C: drive,” Kashman said. “And to the consumer of the new page, it will be viewable across devices with beautiful, responsive design—keeping everything inline and in context without opening a bunch of tabs and windows,” he added.
More personalization options are in the works for future releases, Kashman revealed. “Currently, we are looking at methods for people to customize their profile page and continuing to improve the overall Delve user interface,” he said.
For the browser-based version of the app, Microsoft has borrowed a feature from the iOS mobile app: Favorites.
“When you see something in your activity feed that piques your interest, you can hover over the card and click the star in the upper-right corner,” stated Kashman. “When you want to get back to your favorites, you can visit the new Favorites tab in your ‘ME’ view in the left-hand navigation.” Delve Favorites on the browser is now rolling out to Office 365 First Release customers.