At the ongoing Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft announced the expansion of its Microsoft 365 for empowering education customers and firstline workers. Microsoft also introduced its new vision centered around intelligent communications via Microsoft Teams, new intelligent search abilities and IT management and security betterments for helping its customers remain compliant and safe, including meeting the GDPR.
Empowering employees
- Microsoft 365 F1
An amalgamation of Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security and Windows 10, Microsoft 365 F1 will empower over 2 billion deskless workers (firstline workers), the folks behind the counter, on the phone, in the clinics, on the shop floor, who serve as the first point of a company’s contact. The aim of this plan is to digitize business processes, train and upskill employees to deliver real-time expertise while minimizing cost and risk.
- Microsoft 365 Education
Microsoft 365 Education combines Office 365 for Education, Enterprise Mobility + Security, Windows 10 and Minecraft: Education Edition, to make it useful for education. It helps students, faculty, and staff to create things and work together securely in the classroom.
- AI integrated Excel
Microsoft Excel will be harnessed with AI, and it will understand new data types, beyond text and numbers. The data will further be augmented on the basis of public and enterprise information. E.g. Excel will know that ‘India’ is a country and ‘MSFT’ is a stock.
- Intelligent Search
Bing for Business has been optimized with intelligent and personalized search options using AI and machine learning, to discover people and information from across the organizations. The content and expertise across the SharePoint and Office.com can be found quickly by searching directly from Windows taskbar.
- LinkedIn within Microsoft profile cards
The LinkedIn profiles can now be viewed in Microsoft apps and services. It will help customers have insights about their co-workers and teammates, right from within Office 365.
Improved sharing experience for teamwork
Microsoft Teams has been updated with new voice and video capabilities to transform calling and meeting experiences. Other more addition to Teams are cognitive and data services, and insights from Microsoft Graph. Teams might be replacing Skype for Business over time.
SharePoint and OneDrive will be enhanced so that the content can be shared not only within the organization but also outside the organization with those who don’t have a Microsoft account. New sharing experience, which is available in Windows, Mac, web, and mobile, will be available in Office apps in coming weeks. The looks of SharePoint pages can be customized and those pages can be shared on SharePoint sites or as a tab in Teams.
Also read: Microsoft to digitally transform businesses with AI and cloud
The updates to Office 365 also provide broad security powered by Microsoft’s Intelligent Security Graph so that sensitive data can be protected from advanced threats.
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