Microsoft Office 365 will soon become more collaborative, specializing in relevant content to present a more personalized work experience.

Microsoft kicked off its SharePoint 2014 conference on Monday with a preview of recent Office 365 technologies designed to make the cloud-based productivity suite more collaborative and cohesive.

Users openly share information on Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social platforms, but at work, the experience tends to not be like that, Office GM Julia White told InformationWeek in an interview. She said Microsoft wants its new products to “cut in the course of the noise” by specializing in a customized experience that recognizes the user’s current needs and automatically surfaces relevant content.

Microsoft’s plans hinge on Office Graph, which was introduced Monday and gives an “intelligence fabric” that runs within the background, constantly analyzing content and mapping relationships. A forthcoming application codenamed Oslo can be one of the products that rely upon Office Graph. It could provide an individualized dashboard that displays content, people, and activities germane to the user, including notes that remind the user why certain a given piece of info is helpful.

[Will Microsoft Office be successful at the iPad? Read Microsoft Office For iPad: Do It Right.]

Oslo will know a user’s meetings, what was shared in those meetings, who attended, and how much content is trending around those collaborators, White said. She emphasized, however, that Oslo “respects privacy and settings.”

White said Oslo will initially appear both as a Windows Store app and as element of Microsoft’s browser-based Office Online. Additional native apps will follow. White said the apps will “render nicely” on all form factors.

Microsoft also introduced Groups, which aims to enhance collaboration by unifying contacts, conversations, calendars, emails, and files around the Office 365 suite right into a single workspace. White said companies aren’t fascinated about deploying lots of separate collaboration and productivity products, and that Groups will provide a more holistic way for individual employees to collaborate and notice how surrounding activities fit together.

Users would be ready to create a set from anywhere within Office 365. The method could be intuitive and straightforward, per White, with Office 365 automatically provisioning a Yammer conversation feed, calendar, document library, and inbox. She also said Groups will appear differently dependent on the product during which it really is launched, with card-based views for mobile and more traditional column-based organizational panels for a lot of PC interfaces. Microsoft is conducting user testing to refine how Groups will look and operate.

Microsoft also announced plans to integrate social conversations into documents stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, the latter of with a purpose to be available starting in April as a brand new standalone SKU. The corporate also previewed an Office 365 video portal. The portal will securely support upload, storage, and discovery of videos, including mobile streaming. Companies should be ready to organize videos into channels.

White said the hot products turns into available over the following year, and that Microsoft desires to be transparent about its Office roadmap. “The cloud delivery model enables us to do this,” she said, noting that Office improvements used to involve multi-year engineering cycles but can now be deployed everyday. White said Microsoft has introduced greater than 75 new Office features inside the last one year, a mean of multiple a week. “Because we are able to iterate really rapidly, we will consult people much earlier,” she said.

During its SharePoint conference, Microsoft will recruit early adopters for trials, White said.

Microsoft also touted its goal to show Office 365 right into a development platform, stating that greater than 3.4 million developers write for Office and SharePoint. The corporate debuted a brand new SDK for Windows and Android that enables developers to hook up with Office 365 data and to construct contextual experiences informed by the user’s location, relationships, and projects. Microsoft also announced new capabilities aimed toward IT professionals, including data-loss prevention technology that enables organizations to control, track, and audit Office 365 content.

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Michael Endler joined InformationWeek as an associate editor in 2012. He previously worked in talent representation inside the entertainment industry, as a contract copywriter and photojournalist, and as a teacher. Michael earned a BA in English from Stanford University in 2005 … View Full Bio

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