Office Delve and 2016 Resolutions

It’s just 2 days before we embrace a new year into our life. 2016 is around which became quite obvious when most of my friends in office and around started talking about their resolutions for the coming year. While having a discussion with one of my colleague, she talked about her resolutions, For e.g. No pastries, Running 4 times a week and a hell lot other things. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I haven’t yet found any sync or rhythm with her resolutions. But I got in to contemplation mode for last 2 hours to discover one thing which I really want to do regularly in much awaited 2016. At last, I realized the only thing which comes close to be a resolution is – Having an uncluttered and properly managed system to make it easier for me to get access to important files and conversations. 

Truth be told, I have invested a lot of my time on multiple occasions to find out the relevant document and conversations. I have faced a rather embarrassing situation when I din’t find the document relevant to a meeting at appropriate time. 

Uptil now, I was hell bent on embracing this resolution for 2016 but then the magic happened. As always buddies in Office 365 division has continued their tradition of redefining the term 'Productivity' and voila – This time it was 'Delve' .

Originally launched in SharePoint conference in March 2014, Delve codenamed 'OSLO' gives an entirely new perspective to efficiency of individuals. I was looking forward to it since the day of launch but right now I am astonished with vision of Delve. Imagine, the thought of getting what is relevant to you before you go actually and find it, well I don’t think I need to tell you anymore why I'm so excited.

To put it more formally, Delve is a new way to search and discover content and people across O365 based on personalized insights. These new insights are derived from each users’ behavior, their relationships to content, topics and one another. Delve determines what’s relevant to each individual based on who they work with, and what they and the people around them are working on. It helps people stay better connected and informed on topics and projects that matter most to them. Its is about search and discovery across Office 365, where search is used in instances when you’re looking for something you know exists, and discovery being about relevant information that is proactively surfaced to you based on the people and content that matter most to your work. At work, people share content with one another in a variety of ways, and interactions take place in multiple apps and tools across Office 365. Delve is a window into the content, activities and people that are most relevant to each individual.

What powers Delve is another amazing thing – Office Graphs. Office Graph is something really exciting and I am getting goosebumps even while writing about it. (I mean it! Seriously! I get excited writing or talking about innovations and breakthroughs which will literally redefine our future)

Delve is built on the Office Graph, which maps interactions and relationships between content and people in Office 365. Office Graph analyzes these relationships and activities in real-time with machine learning principles to prioritize the most meaningful and strongest signals and content for each user. By tapping into Office Graph Delve makes calculations to determine which content is most relevant to each individual based on these new insights. Think of Delve like a beautiful user interface of Office Graph with all the meaningful connections, you have at your workplace. 

Now, a big query which will be making you a bit hesitant towards Delve is Privacy. I could not agree more that, I will be a bit uncomfortable if someone tells me that there is this called as Delve which will sneak into your files, meetings, conversations, emails, OneNote, OneDrive and tons of other things and to give you personalized insights. Imagine, someone else getting access to your files and documents.

For all those people like me, who are in same dilemma – Other users can only see content that they already have permission to access in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online for other people. Each content card in Delve includes the same visual cues that are used in OneDrive for Business to show who else can view that particular piece of content. Email attachments are only visible by you and the sender, and have visible lock signs on the cards. Delve will never change permissions on any documents. Because the information shown in Delve is personalized, users will only see content they already have permissions to. Also, other people cannot see others’ private activities, such as what documents they’ve read, emails they’ve sent and received, or Lync conversations they’ve been in.

You can learn more about privacy in Delve, here.

In case, you really want to take a test drive of what Delve offers to you and your organization – then I suggest you should check this link.

If you are interested in reading more about Office Graphs and Group APIs – You can learn more about them through my earlier blog post - Productivity aka O365, Future Unleashed and My First Speaker Session.

People: Encourage you to write to shubham.chaudhary@microsoft.com, on comments, questions and suggestions.

Alternatively, You can always shoot me a tweet @NowayHeCodes for any comments or eccentric conversation on Startups, Atheism, Love and Family as well.

Thanks for reading this blog post and I hope I am going to honor my commitment of sharing things through this medium regularly.

P.S. In case – You haven’t noted down your resolutions, make sure you don’t include mine. Cheers! and Have a great day!