Last week we covered the new Office 13 features in as much detail as possible for you, including mentioning the new social features Microsoft has in mind for the suite. This week we’re having a closer look at these details, thanks to a blog post on the Office Next blog. SharePoint users will be happy to discover the new Newsfeed feature pictured above that offers a look at what all SharePoint users are doing.
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.
Additionally, Office 2013 allows users to follow updates for specific documents and sites, with the option to see recommendations for other documents and sites from the Enterprise Search engine.
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!
Of course, all this social networking was made possible my Microsoft’s acquisition of Yammer, which is still in the process of being integrated fully into Office 2013. If you’re interested in reading the full post, you can check out the Office Next blog here.
