Michael Atalla, Director at Microsoft Corporation talked to the press today to tell all the latest updates on Microsoft Office 365 (subscription model) or the Office 2013 (off the shelf) for the last 12 months. He was the same person who showed me the first experience of using Office 365 in a touch-based environment at last year’s TechEd. Check out my review on the Office 365.
Thanks to the hard work of the team over at Microsoft, Office is now running multi platform: Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone, iPad, iPhone, Android tablet, Android phone (though some features are not available on specific apps/platforms).
Outlook on iOS (OWA for iPhone/iPad)
OWA (which stands for Outlook Web App) for iOS was redesigned and completely rewritten in HTML5. The challenge, according to Michael, was designing it for tablets because you don’t have windows to work with. In its latest updates, OWA delivers the same user experience with the desktop and Outlook Web.
Taking advantage of deploying a smartphone app, the app actually has more integration, such as being able to call recipients or event attendees directly within the app.
SkyDrive Pro
You can now login to access your documents in SkyDrive straight from the iPad/iPhone
OneNote
More powerful features with the latest updates, such as searching your notes based on titles, keywords, etc
Lync
Same threaded message experience and also video conferencing on the iPad
These apps are all free for Office 365 subscribers.
Michael also demoed us the official Office Mobile app on the iPhone, which allows you to view and do some basic editing on documents (though the experience is not as rich as the desktop application or on the web)
Recent Office 365 updates:
– Exchange online mailboxes double to 50GB
– SkyDrive Pro storage up to 25GB (upload size)
– Yammer default Office 365 newsfeed
– Lync-Skype federation (call out contacts outside of your company)
– Remote PowerShell for Lync Online
– PDF Reflow for Word Web App (open native PDF files)
– Excel Web App updates (data validations, sorting non-table data, hide/unhide sheets, etc)
– and more
More updates coming with features, better performance, real-time coauthoring, editing support for Chrome on Android tablets, etc.
Disclosure: I’m here as a guest of Microsoft Australia and being sponsored to cover press events at TechEd 2013. Official photos from Microsoft Australia
