Microsoft Releases Office 2016 Today, New Features Aimed at Collaboration

Previously Published to TalentZoo’s Digital Pivot

Microsoft Office 2016 is released today, September 22, 2015, aimed at staying ahead of trends relating to virtual workers and globally dispersed teams. Their reason: “How people work has changed dramatically. But, one constant is that everyone wants to get more out of every moment of their life — after all, our time is the scarcest commodity.” Thus, the “reinvention of productivity,” as they proclaim it.

Understanding that most professionals are mobile and that many are even workaholics, Microsoft has vowed to continue making allowances for cross-device platform access in allowing freedom from previously bound means of productivity. No one will be stuck “waiting to get home” to finalize a document before sending it off.

They will continue to have access in the palm of their hands. But this is old news. What about the new news?

New Office products that enhance productivity through conversation, intelligence, and mobility will be made available through this new release. Meant to empower brands and individuals, Office 2016’s Office 365 subscription services will now provide upgrades to classic applications such as Office, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Access. But now, users will also have ongoing access to enterprise servicing, such as Skype for Business, Delve, Yammer, and enterprise-grade security features.

A new product that will most likely change the way that design and presentations are done is Sway. This new solution “makes it quick and easy to create and share polished, interactive reports, presentations, personal stories and more.” There is no need for formatting, because Sway will arrange your content to best fit the screen you are using. It can be remixed and/or customized to better fit your needs.

This solution will arrange content similar to a mood board in the design development stages of creative branding projects. It can be used in the same standpoint when presenting documents to clientele. The mood board concept is meshed with PowerPoint and HTML5 layouts, providing innovative, structured, and professional presentation possibilities to enterprise businesses all over!

While there are multiple upgrades to Visio and Project software, as well as the classic Office suite, Office Delve will be the additional push in project management. If you haven’t yet experienced it, you are in for a treat.

Across the cloud, Office Graph powers Delve to connect team members based on conversations and work that they have both accessed. Because of this, projects are then made easy to find within the Delve environment…even when the filename or storage location has been forgotten. You are even able to add documents from across the grid on specific boards for later access.

Joining Siri and other AI “assistants,” Cortana provides a more human-like way to interact with Microsoft products, allowing you to create reminders and to-do lists based on contacts, GPS locations, project tasks, and deliverables.

With productivity shifting and the way that we do business evolving, Microsoft is right on time with this new release. Office 365 accounts can be upgraded today to get the new features immediately. New servicing can also be purchased through Microsoft’s Office portal. It’s time to be more productive, starting with today!