Overview of January 2015 Microsoft's announcements in productivity space
I am planning to write this post for a while - and basic idea behind it is to cover all relevant announcements Microsoft made in january related to Office server and client products.
Disclaimer: This list is based on my personal importance criteria and it's not listed in any particular order. Feel free to comment below this post or via twitter.
Windows 10 announcements
On January 21st, Microsoft held a presentation dedicated to Windows 10, on which they made several announcements related to Windows 10 and even introduced new devices with Windows 10 support (and even new holographic computing platform, HoloLens). User interface of Windows 10 on computers, phones and tablets is more similar than ever before, and licensed Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 users will be able to upgrade for free during first year after launch (with some limitations). New browser will also be shipped with Windows 10, side-by-side with Internet Explorer. New public preview of Windows 10 is also published during January. For the first time are demoed new Office universal apps on Windows 10.
More information can be found on Windows blog http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/01/21/the-next-generation-of-windows-windows-10/
Office for Windows 10 and Office 2016
Following demo of Office for Windows 10 on small tablet during Windows 10 presentation, Office team shared more details about Office 10 Universal apps. All apps have touch-optimized user interface which is adaptable to screen size; Word in reading mode enables users to find out more about particular content using Insights for Office feature; selecting cells in Excel is quite easy using touch gestures; PowerPoint has support for annotating slides during presentation, and even saving annotations for later use; and Outlook has full editing engine from Word integrated to message composer. More info and demo: http://blogs.office.com/2015/01/22/next-chapter-office-windows/
Microsoft Ignite session catalog and Twitter chat
Microsoft has published session catalog for Microsoft Ignite, unified tech conference which takes place in Chicago in first week of May 2015. Event team will host twitter chat on February 3rd at 9:00 AM PT (18:00 CET). Chat will be under twitter hashtag #ignitejam and will be available at url twubs.com/ignitejam.
Source: http://blogs.office.com/2015/01/28/introducing-microsoft-ignite-session-catalog/
OneDrive and Outlook.com improvements
Consumer file-storage service OneDrive roled out new Albums experience for managing and displaying folders with photos, optimized for viewing photos and it's now possible to save attachments from emails in Outlook.com directly to OneDrive. More: https://blog.onedrive.com/introducing-an-all-new-way-to-view-manage-and-share-your-photos-in-onedrive/
Unified OneDrive client for iOS
New version for OneDrive client for iOS now supports both OneDrive and OneDrive for Business accounts, from within single app, thus elliminating need for two separate apps. More: https://blog.onedrive.com/your-work-and-life-on-all-your-apple-devices/
Office for Android
Touch-optimized version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android tablets have reached general availability. Source: http://blogs.office.com/2015/01/29/office-love-now-android-tablet/
Outlook for iOS and Android
Following acquisition of Accompli, maker of popular email client for iOS and Android last year, Microsoft released Outlook for iOS and preview of Outlook for Android. The apps are based on Accompli codebase and features, but rebranded under new name. The apps received quite good ratings at both Apple App Store and Google Play Store during this short period of time during which they are available. More info: http://blogs.office.com/2015/01/29/deeper-look-outlook-ios-android/
Office 365 Development Patterns and Practices documentation on MSDN
Office 365 Development Patterns and Practices is joint effort by Microsoft and community around building sample repository and best practices guidance. It is hosted on GitHub https://github.com/OfficeDev/PnP. Collection of community contributed Office 365 Developer Patterns and Practices guidance articles is now also published on MSDN https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn904529(v=office.15).aspx.
Office Garage Series renamed to Office Mechanics
Popular video show series dedicated to Office apps and services hosted by Jeremy Chapman, with interesting guests and topics, Office Garage Series, is rebranded as Office Mechanics. All episodes (previous and current) can be found at http://office.com/mechanics
This is my short selection of announcements in January. As I wrote above, list is based on my personal importance criteria and it's not listed in any particular order. Feel free to comment below this post or via twitter.
