If you simply install Office 2016 on a single desktop, you could be excused for wondering what Microsoft has been doing for the last three years. Other than a bit of a facelift, and some admittedly welcome added features that we first reviewed in the Preview version (and won’t re-hash here), for the most part it looks and acts like Office 2013. The minute you start to share or work with others, though, the major changes in the way the Office system works begin to appear.
Cloud-first is more than just defaulting to OneDrive
Microsoft has started using OneDrive as the default storage location for an increasing number of its applications, but that is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the integration of the cloud — and team-based workflows — in Office 2016. The new version features brand new team-only apps Planner and Delve, as well as Sway, an innovative new presentation creation and sharing application. Real-time collaboration has also been added to Word, OneNote, and PowerPoint. For organizations that have standardized on Office, there is plenty to like in its newest incarnation.
Office 365 Planner & Delve
Office 2016 introduces two entirely new applications to support teams. Delve has been out in preview form for a while. Available to organizations with Office 365 business subscriptions, it uses the power of Microsoft’s servers to allow users to get an automated view into what is likely to be important to them. It does this by using data from Office Graph — essentially a complete record of every document, meeting, or email-related action taken by every user — to build a tiled dashboard of people, projects, and documents that are related to what you’ve been working on, or that have been shared with you.
Planner is a brand new tool that allows teams to quickly set up projects and populate them with tasks and documents. Like Delve, it then uses Office Graph to create user-specific, interactive dashboards of project status. It isn’t designed to replace the heavy-lifting style of project management done by Microsoft Project. But for busy team members, it’s a quick way to keep track of their involvement in many different projects. While Delve provides a people-focused dashboard of all Office-related activity, Planner provides one based on projects and tasks.
In functionality, Planner is very similar to some other existing services, such as Trello, but because it has the advantage of being deeply integrated with Office Graph, it may become the favorite among those organizations committed to Office. On the flip side, for organizations that don’t have a corporate commitment to hosted or server-based Office installations, a separate service allows more flexibility.
Office Sway
For individual users, the most exciting new capability is probably Sway. Sway allows users to easily construct catchy multimedia presentations. Unlike PowerPoint, it doesn’t rely on a slide-by-slide metaphor, and also moves much of the responsibility for layout style to the application. Users can tweak the layout themselves, or use the Remix! Button to have Sway cycle through suggestions. Although part of Office 2016, the Sway application is available from the Windows 10 app store, and for the iPhone and iPad. It is also part of Office Online.
Sway presentations are easy-to-create, colorful, and look cool. It is so easy to make them appear catchy, that I think we’ll see a lot of users go overboard — the same way people went crazy with typefaces when desktop publishing was introduced. It can be very disconcerting to be looking at a Sway presentation and having fly-in effects and panning images while you’re trying to read.
Once shared, a Sway can be viewed by anyone with a browser, although Sway presentations are always hosted on Microsoft’s sway.com, and can’t be off-lined or exported to another format. That raises another issue — longevity. Microsoft doesn’t have the best track record for long-term commitment to its creative tools (remember Expression, Movie Maker, or Live Writer?). Until there is a way to guarantee the long-term survival of a Sway, I see it being most effective for quick sharing.
Real-time collaboration in Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote
Not to be outdone by the rising tide of cloud-based document editors like Google Docs, Microsoft has added some very slick real-time collaboration capabilities to Word, and similar versions to PowerPoint and OneNote. On the editing front, not only can two users edit the same cloud-hosted document, but if it is on Microsoft’s servers (OneDrive or Office 365, for example) then they can each see exactly where other users are in the document.
Microsoft adds to this capability by making it easy to open a Skype call (or chat or meeting) with any of the document’s authors from right within Word.
Office mobile apps
While not news — as they’ve been around for a while already — Microsoft’s mobile apps for Office have been the most rapidly evolving part of the Office. These touch-friendly versions of Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint run on iOS, Android, and of course Windows 10. For Windows 10 users on tablets or phones, the mobile versions of the applications make it much easier to work without a keyboard or mouse. Microsoft also has some additional cool tools for mobile users, including my favorite mobile document scanning applications: Office Lens.
Office 365 (2016) pricing: Subscriptions get more attractive
Microsoft has clearly realized — like Adobe before it — that getting people to pay nearly any amount per month, forever, is better than relying on the whims of upgraders. So it is offering both a discounted Personal Plan ($7/month for 1 machine and 1 phone), and a more value-oriented Home Plan ($10/month for 5 computers and 5 phones). Both plans include 1TB of OneDrive storage and 60 Skype calling minutes per month — meaning you get Office essentially for free compared to a similarly-sized cloud plan from Google, for example. (You can compare plans in more detail at the Microsoft Office 3650 Home subscription page). Both plans include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access.
Those preferring to stick with the traditional purchase licensing model can get Office 2016 (one-time purchase without upgrades) Home and Business for $230. It includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. The Student and Teacher version is $150, but doesn’t include Outlook. Purchased versions don’t include the Skype minutes, and only feature 15GB of free storage.
Mobile-first, cloud-first: Does Microsoft have it right?
Whether you use Ballmer’s phrase “devices and services” or Nadella’s “mobile-first, cloud-first,” it represents the largest software pivot for Microsoft since its 1990s embrace of the web. It implies expanding its platform presence from just Windows to online and mobile, and its moving its revenue model from product licensing to cloud-based service subscriptions. Office 2016 represents Microsoft’s most aggressive effort to date to make these major changes. Its services are available across most platforms, and its revenue is increasingly platform neutral — since it gets subscription revenue independent of which platform you use to access the services.
Google has been selling a very similar vision with its Google Apps for Work offering, but Microsoft is bringing the world’s most mature suite of productivity applications to the party. The good news for organizations, especially those that are long-time Office customers, is that they no longer have to choose between the power of Office and the flexibility of the cloud. With Office 2016 combined with Office 365, Microsoft is giving them the opportunity to have both.
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