More free templates to handle bullying, other social situations faced by children with autism

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AppId is over the quota

In collaboration with Autism Speaks and the University of Washington Autism Center, Microsoft has published a series of PowerPoint templates covering bullying and other social situations faced by the families of the more than one million children with autism in the United States.

Families and therapists supporting children with autism can download these templates for free from the Autism Speaks article on Office.com or by searching for "autism" from the File > New search box in PowerPoint.  After downloading these templates, families and therapists are encouraged to customize the content in these templates to best meet the needs of the individual child.

"We hope that families will find these templates useful for helping their children understand and prepare for some of the everyday activities they may experience as challenging," said Dr. Wendy Stone, PhD, Director of the UW Research in Early Autism Detection and Intervention (READI) Lab.

"Issues such as bullying, toilet training and taking turns are sometimes difficult for individuals with autism to comprehend through traditional teaching methods," said Lisa Goring, Vice President of Family Services at Autism Speaks. "These new templates are a great way to help children on the spectrum learn about more complex topics in a visual and easy to understand format."

Templates recently published include social situations such as bullying, potty training, talking with others, taking turns, going to the store, and play dates. These and PowerPoint templates covering other social situations can be found on the Autism Speaks article on Office.com.

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Review: SocialSafe keeps your social data safe

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AppId is over the quota

Chances are, you have tons of information stored in your various social media accounts. Everything from photos and videos to chats with friends, contact lists, and more. If your favorite social network goes offline or becomes unavailable for any reason, all of that data could disappear. But not if you've backed it up with SocialSafe, an easy-to-use PC and Mac tool that makes safeguarding your social data downright fun.

SocialSafe makes it easy to pick and choose which accounts you'd like it to back up.

SocialSafe is free to try for 60 days, but the free version is limited to syncing four social media accounts. After the trial is up, you have to spring for a 12-month license to keep syncing your social networks. It costs $7 for four social network accounts, $17 for ten accounts, and $28 GBP for up to 20 accounts. Any data you download will always be available to you via SocialSafe, even if you do not renew your license.

Using SocialSafe is simple: You authorize it to access your social media accounts, and then set it to sync. SocialSafe supports the biggies in social media, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Vladeo, various blog services, and Facebook pages. If you have more than one Facebook account, you can add both.

A thin column on the left side of SocialSafe's interface offers access to its main features.

Once your accounts have been synced—which can take anywhere from minutes to hours, depending on how much info you have packed in there—SocialSafe stores the data right on your computer. You access all of the info using the SocialSafe interface, which is colorful, attractive, and intuitive.

SocialSafe lets you browse through your social network activity and data in a variety of ways. The calendar view lets you see how active you were on a certain date, while the journal view lets you see your activity in more of a story format. The journal is organized by date, and you can flip through its pages to see your added friends, posted photos, status updates, tweets, and more.

SocialSafe shows you how many times you were active on your various social networks on certain days.

Anyone who relies on Facebook and Instagram to capture and store photos will appreciate how SocialSafe allows you to back up and browse all of your snapshots. You can export the photos to another location on your PC for editing or other uses, too.

One of the most interesting aspects of SocialSafe is its Insights feature, which helps you gauge both the timing of your social networking activity and its reach with your friends and followers. You can see how often you post on certain days of the week, and which of your posts and online activities have proven the most popular. SocialSafe also shows you which friends you interact with the most and which photos have garnered the most feedback.

SocialSafe breaks down your social networking activity by day of the week.

I do wish SocialSafe synced your accounts automatically when you launched it, but that's a minor complaint, given that you can schedule the application to sync at a certain time each day. Overall, SocialSafe is a handy tool for backing up all of that data you store online…and one that makes it fun to browse.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

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Advancing the enterprise social roadmap

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AppId is over the quota

 Today's post comes from Jared Spataro, Senior Director, Microsoft Office Division. Jared leads the SharePoint business, and he works closely with Adam Pisoni and David Sacks on Yammer integration.

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Yammer acquisition, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on where we've come from and talk about where we're going. My last post focused on product integration, but this time I want to zoom out and look at the big picture. It has been a busy year, and it's exciting to see how our vision of "connected experiences" is taking shape.  

First off, it's worth noting that Yammer has continued to grow rapidly over the last 12 months--and that's not something you see every day. Big acquisitions generally slow things down, but in this case we've actually seen the opposite. David Sacks provided his perspective in a post on the Microsoft blog, but a few of the high-level numbers bear repeating: over the last year, registered users have increased 55% to almost 8 million, user activity has roughly doubled, and paid networks are up over 200%. All in all, those are pretty impressive stats, and I'm proud of the team and the way the things have gone post-acquisition.

Second, we've continued to innovate, testing and iterating our way to product enhancements that are helping people get more done. Over the last year we've shipped new features in the standalone service once a week, including:

Message translation. Real-time message translation based on Microsoft Translator. We support translation to 23 languages and can detect and translate from 37 languages. Inbox. A consolidated view of Yammer messages across conversations you're following and threads that are most important to you.File collaboration. Enhancements to the file directory for easy access to recent, followed, and group files- including support for multi-file drag and drop.Mobile app enhancements. Continual improvements for our mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone.Enterprise graph. A dynamically generated map of employees, content and business data based on the Open Graph standard. Using Open Graph, customers can push messages from line of business systems to the Yammer ticker.Platform enhancements. Embeddable feeds, likes, and follow buttons for integrating Yammer with line of business systems.

In addition to innovation in the standalone product, we've also been hard at work on product integration. In my last roadmap update, I highlighted our work with Dynamics CRM and described three phases of broad Office integration: "basic integration, deeper connections, and connected experiences." Earlier this month, we delivered the first component of "basic integration" by shipping an Office 365 update that lets customers make Yammer the default social network. This summer, we'll ship a Yammer app in the SharePoint store and publish guidance for integrating Yammer with an on-prem SharePoint 2013 deployment, and this fall we'll release Office 365 single sign-on, profile picture synchronization, and user experience enhancements.

Finally, even though we're proud of what we've accomplished over the last twelve months, we recognize that we're really just getting started.  "Connected experiences" is our shorthand for saying that social should be an integrated part of the way everyone works together, and over the next year we'll be introducing innovations designed to make Yammer a mainstream communication tool.  Because of the way we develop Yammer, even we don't know exactly what that will look like. But what we can tell you is that we have an initial set of features we're working on today, and we'll test and iterate our way to enhancements that will make working with others easier than ever before. This approach to product roadmap is fairly new for enterprise software, but we're convinced it's the only way to lead out in space that is as dynamic and fast-paced as enterprise social. To give you a sense for where we're headed, here are a few of the projects currently under development over the next 6-8 months:

SharePoint search integration. We're enabling SharePoint search to search Yammer conversations and setting the stage for deeper, more powerful apps that combine social and search.Yammer groups in SharePoint sites. The Yammer app in the SharePoint store will allow you to manually replace a SharePoint site feed with a Yammer group feed, but we recognize that many customers will want to do this programmatically. We're working on settings that will make Yammer feeds the default for all SharePoint sites. (See below for a mock-up of a Yammer group feed surfaced as an out-of-the-box component of a SharePoint team site.)Yammer messaging enhancements. We're redesigning the Yammer user experience to make it easier to use as a primary communication tool. We'll also be improving directed messaging and adding the ability to message multiple groups at once.Email interoperability. We're making it easier than ever to use Yammer and email together. You'll be able to follow an entire thread via email, respond to Yammer messages from email, and participate in conversations across Yammer and email.External communication. Yammer works great inside an organization, but today you have to create an external network to collaborate with people outside your domain. We're improving the messaging infrastructure so that you can easily include external parties in Yammer conversations.Mobile apps. We'll continue to invest in our iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8 apps as primary access points. The mobile apps are already a great way to use Yammer on the go, and we'll continue to improve the user experience as we add new features to the service.Localization. We're localizing the Yammer interface into new languages to meet growing demand across the world.

It will take some time, and we'll learn a lot as we go, but every new feature will help define the future--one iteration at a time.

When I take a moment to look at how much has happened over the last year, I'm really proud of the team and all they've accomplished. An acquisition can be a big distraction for both sides, but the teams in San Francisco and Redmond have come together and delivered. And as you can see from the list of projects in flight, we're definitely not resting on our laurels. We're determined to lead the way forward with rapid innovation, quick-turn iterations, and connected experiences that combine the best of Yammer with the familiar tools of Office. It's an exciting time, and we hope you'll join us in our journey. 

--Jared Spataro

P.S. As you may have seen, we'll be hosting the next SharePoint Conference March 3rd through the 6th in Las Vegas. I'm really looking forward to getting the community back together again and hope that you'll join us there for more details on how we're delivering on our vision of transforming the way people work together. Look forward to seeing you there!

 

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Review: Glipho makes blogging social

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AppId is over the quota
Glipho Glipho offers easy to use blogging tools and options for boosting your audience, but the site is limited by the size of its own audience.

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If you took a dash of WordPress, added a sprinkle of Twitter and a tablespoon of Facebook, you just might end up with Glipho…or, at least, what Glipho hopes to become. Billed as "the social publishing engine," Glipho is a cloud-based service that aims to build a social community of writers and help those writers increase their visibility.

To begin using Glipho, you sign up with an existing account: The available choices are Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You build your Glipho feed by picking writers to follow, though you have to select them based on a wide topic area (such as "technology" or "sports") and without seeing their writing at first. You can fine-tune these selections later, though, as you browse the site.

Glipho's home page displays the blogs in small blocks that show an image from the post as well as a snippet of the content. And Glipho's site has plenty of content to browse. The site posts content from trending writers—those whose posts are getting attention from other users—on the home page, as well as other posts the Glipho team chooses to highlight. You also can search for specific content, or browse by interests, topics, writers, and more. The overall layout is attractive and easy to browse.

Writing content is just as easy, thanks to Glipho's attractive layout. The blogging tools allow you to compose posts directly on the site, and you can import posts from Blogger, Tumblr, and Wordpress. Unfortunately, you can't automate the import process so that every new post is imported to Glipho from your existing blog. You'll have to import each new piece of writing individually.  Glipho also restricts what types of posts you import. You can't, for example, import photo-only posts from Tumblr, as Glipho requires that any content you import contains at least 150 words.

Glipho also provides tools for promoting your work and your profile as a writer. You can create a social profile that displays next to your writing, showing your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin and Google+ accounts for readers to find. And the Glipho team promotes some of the work on the site through their own social media accounts.
Glipho offers plenty of tips as you begin to write.

Posting your work on Glipho could gain you a new audience for your work, and it could help your standing in search engine results. Certainly, the site will allow new readers to discover your work…but it's limited by how many people visit the site. Until Glipho's audience grows to a critical mass, the site's social reach is naturally limited.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

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Whining and SharePoint: Enterprise social roadmap update

Today's post comes from Jared Spataro, Senior Director, Microsoft Office Division. Jared leads the SharePoint business, and he works closely with Adam Pisoni and David sacks on Yammer integration.

In November last year of SharePoint Conference we announced about three phases of the Yammer integration roadmap for enterprise social and said: "Basic integration, deeper connections and connected experience."  (Post that I published shortly after the SPC Keynote please see social work .)  Today at the convergence of 2013 , we provided an update on this roadmap and I wanted the details to share.

Yammer and Office 365.  During the Office keynote today we performed the integration of Yammer and Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management).  We delivered this update last monthand we love the scenario social plus CRM is a natural fit.  But CRM integration is just one part of a broader range of work that we do to the social layer whining about all of our products.  Our next step is to integrate with Office 365, and we are now ready, more details about what when are available to share.  Here is what you need to know:

Basic integration.This summer we update the Office 365 service and allow customers, with whining to replace the SharePoint newsfeed. Many customers worry confusing to provide their users with two different feeds, and with this update they can simply replace Office-365-global navigation bar with a link to Yammer.com "Feed" link on the. We a yammer app into the SharePoint store will ship also, so that end users can easily integrate a group of Yammer feed in a SharePoint site to establish a connection between groups and pages that deliver the best of both worlds. The SharePoint newsfeed will continue to be the standard social experience in Office 365, but the possibility of complaining through valuable be replaced first in the entire integration process. Deep links. In this case, we supply to deepen another update on Office 365 and integration. Customers have the possibility of choice between complaining and the SharePoint newsfeed, but this new, integrated Yammer experience provides single sign-on (SSO) and seamless navigation. In other words, if you click the Yammer link in the Office-365-global navigation bar, Yammer appears immediately below the navigation, to regain Office 365 services like Outlook and sites. See also the user to begin to converge the experiences of Yammer and Office 365 (cf. the concept, which is down to mock, a directional sense get). This new Yammer experience features also rich document to add integration of Office Web apps work and news column, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents.

Experiences connected. How to move, in 2014, we will update Office 365 with new social improvements continue, every 90 days. We just catch the links between whining and Office 365 services, these incremental improvements are social but in the course of time, collaboration, email, instant messaging, voice, video, and business applications in an innovative new way to combine. This is an exciting time and a hot room, and I can't wait to share more about our plans in the future.

Yammer and SharePoint Server.  Of course, we now recognize that many SharePoint clients still local.  You are working on your upgrade plans and find a way, with their on-premises deployment 2013 your Yammer network to connect SharePoint.  So as part of the summer updates offer we local through whining also instructions for SharePoint news feed to replace.  The Yammer app into the SharePoint store will be a valuable addition to allowing customers to create connections between Yammer groups and local SharePoint sites.  While we do not plan to deploy updates for SharePoint Server every 90 days, are numerous improvements to the Yammer service described above are still valuable in this scenario.  The SSO, updated UX, seamless navigation and all connections between the Yammer network and your local SharePoint deployment will deepen Office Web app integration.

What should I do?  Meet my clients in the last few months, people often have "asked, what I use for the social?  Yammer or the SharePoint newsfeed?"  My response was clear: go whine!  Yammer is our big bet for social enterprises, and we commit ourselves to making it the underlying social layer for all of our products.  It is the social experiences in SharePoint, Office 365, dynamics and more.   Lament the adoption of unique model appeals directly to end users and enjoy the benefits of social immediately relieved.  And whining because it is an online service that gives us the ability to innovations fast - update the service quickly developed as the market.  So no matter whether you are an Office 365 customer or current SharePoint local, complaining the latest innovations and provide optimum user friendliness.

What if I just use Yammer?  To whine my exuberance for all, I recognize that some organizations only not with multi-multi-tenant cloud services feel.  For these customers is our forecast to use the SharePoint newsfeed.  It provides rich social features with a wide range of SharePoint features integrated.  While the cloud lowers the barriers to adoption and allows for more frequent updates, we are getting some customers only ready to take the step.  (Some customers are in fact on it, which never move them to a multi-tenant service.)  When it comes to the cloud, we're "all in", but we are also realistic.  We have a large local installed base that is important to us and we are committed to future versions of the server.

Acquisitions can be tricky business, but we are very pleased with our progress.  Whining continues to have innovative grow and their independent companieshave, and the packaging and price changes , which we at the SharePoint Conference last year announced lighter the Yammer service accessible than ever before.  But the most to, what for me is that we are just beginning to have.  Today's schedule update provides a little more insight into how we plan to whining to integrate with Office 365 and SharePoint.  But we are out to change the world, and there is much more to come.

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Review: IFTTT connects social media, photo and other Web services

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AppId is over the quota

Think of social media—and the Web in general, really—as a game of dominoes: One action creates an entire range of reactions. That's what makes it so powerful...and so time-consuming, especially for those people who are trying to update a constant stream of information on multiple social media accounts. But IFTTT tries to make this easier by allowing you to link Web services, so doing something on one triggers the rest. It is a free service that's a lot like its name: a little bit confusing until you understand just how simple and useful it is.

IFTTT (it's pronounced like "gift" without the "g") stands for If This Then That. And that basically describes what IFTTT does: when one thing happens, IFTTT lets you create an automatic reaction. You could, for example, use IFTTT so that you'll receive a text message whenever someone posts a picture of you on Facebook. Or to receive an email if the weather forecast calls for rain. Or automatically save a copy of a photo to Dropbox whenever one is posted to Instagram.

IFTTT's neat, clean interface makes the service easy to use.

To use IFTTT, you simply create a free account with your email address. Then, you can get started building IFTTT recipes. IFTTT works on the basis of channels, which are what it calls the basic building blocks of its recipes. Channels are things like Facebook, Evernote, Email, Weather, Buffer, Craigslist, and more—there are 59 channels currently available.

To create a recipe, you select the first channel and then the trigger (the "this" part of IFTTT). Once the channel is selected, IFTTT displays applicable triggers. When I selected Etsy as my channel, available triggers were things like "new purchased item" or "new item in shop."

After selecting the trigger, you select the channel and the action (the "that"). The same 59 channels are available as the action channels; once you select one, you activate (if it's not already active) and then choose the action from the available choices.

Once you select the channel and the action, you can customize it using what IFTTT calls Ingredients. These ingredients are pieces of data from the trigger. For Etsy, the ingredients could be the Etsy URL and the price. For Facebook, the ingredients could be a photo caption and the image source. You use these ingredients to customize the resulting action, such as sending a text message or email, or posting a status update to Facebook.

IFTTT lets you customize any messages it sends or posts by adding "ingredients," which can be a bit confusing.

Once all the pieces are in place, you can save your recipe by giving it a name. Recipes can be kept private or shared with the entire IFTTT community—and IFTTT does have plenty of shared recipes to give you ideas or the building blocks for creating your own. (When you share a recipe, you're not sharing access to your personal data; anyone who accesses the recipe only gets the basic steps, and then fills in their own personal data to make it work for them.) When you select a channel, you'll have to give IFTTT access to your account, which usually involves either linking accounts or granting certain permissions. This process was simple and painless with all of the channels I tested.

Using IFTTT is actually a lot easier than explaining it, though the service is definitely not perfect. I was, for example, slightly disappointed with the result of one of my recipes. I set up a recipe where I would get a text message whenever a photo of me was tagged on Facebook. I set the action channel—the text message I'd receive—to include ingredients like caption, image source, upload date, and uploaded by. I was hoping to receive a detailed message with the photo and all of the data I'd requested. Instead, I got a link to view the photo online (not on Facebook)—and only the photo, not any of the other info I'd requested. The message format makes sense (given that it was an SMS, not MMS), but that SMS still could have included the additional details about the photo that I'd requested.

I was more impressed with my other IFTTT recipes, though, and I was definitely amused by some of the shared recipes available on the site. One user created a recipe that will alert him via SMS if the CDC reports a zombie outbreak, while another user created one that automatically uploads any photo he posts to Facebook to Picasa, too.  These two recipes sum up the appeal of IFTTT: it's fun and pretty darn useful, too.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use this Web-based software.

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Social Business – 10 Commandments Before You Start

Social Business – 10 Commandments Before You Start « Digital Dialogue function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      Digital Dialogue / Social Business – 10 Commandments Before You Startby adobeapacEngagement (2)Social (1)Social Business (1)Social Media (6)Will Bosma (1)  

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The Social Enterprise

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AppId is over the quota

Editor’s note Today Ben Wilde joins Office Next to discuss some of our investments in social for the Office Preview Release.

Ben Wilde, Program Manager, SharePoint

Social is rewiring the way we communicate and collaborate. Facebook and Twitter have completely transformed how we connect in our personal lives. And new social tools are making it easier to get things done at work.

We believe that the social enterprise needs to be a natural part of the way people get things done, creating a connected experience that extends and enhances familiar tools. And we recognize that companies often need to secure and manage social interactions, just as they do other forms of communication. Our social investments in this release are designed to accomplish both goals.

In this post, I thought I’d highlight how our new social features help me get my job done.

One of the first things you’ll see in the new release of SharePoint is the social Newsfeed. The Newsfeed has several pivots that help me focus on different kinds of information.

When I visit the Newsfeed hub, the first view that I see shows me the posts and activities that come from people, documents, sites, and tags I'm following. In other words, things that I'm expressly interested in all show up in this view. For example, I'm following my co-worker Louise and whenever she posts something, I see it here. When she follows a document, I see a notification in my Newsfeed. Because I work with Louise, I like to see what she’s doing and what she’s interested in.

Similarly, if I follow a document (the draft of this blog post, for example), my Newsfeed lets me know when my collaborators have made any changes or whether it’s been shared with additional people for review. My Newsfeed exemplifies the concept of the connected social experience by ensuring that I stay up-to-date about the people, content, and ideas that I care about the most, regardless of where in SharePoint they happen to live.

I work on a team of 100 engineers located in Cambridge, MA, but SharePoint is built by teams around the world (most of which are at the mother ship in Redmond, WA). I use the Everyone pivot to get a broad view of what people across Microsoft are talking about. This view is a Company Feed where I can see posts made by everyone in my organization.

Since I started reading the Everyone view, I’ve discovered interesting new people and engaging conversations. I can even start following those people right from the Newsfeed so that I’ll start seeing their posts and activities in the Newsfeed view. Working in a remote office, I don't get to see and interact with my colleagues at headquarters very often. The Everyone view makes me feel connected to them and what they're talking about.

In addition to staying up-to-date with the things I follow by seeing them in my Newsfeed, I’m also able to easily access all of the content that I care about in a single place by visiting my Followed Documents and Followed Sites pages. From these pages, I’m able to easily open documents or navigate to sites that I’ve followed in the past. Plus, by taking advantage of the new unified Enterprise Search engine, I’m able to see high-quality, relevant recommendations to help me expand and grow my network. This has been a great way to find out about new documents that are related to the Social features that I’ve been working on, or community sites where I can have discussions with people who have a shared interest in everything from Windows Phone app development to fine dining in the Boston area.

I love that the social features are also integrated directly into the Office apps that I use every day, so I never have to stray too far from where I am to stay connected. When I read an email message from someone, start an IM discussion or just open their Person Card, I can see the latest social updates for them, directly in Office.

Rob is a colleague who works on social scenarios with me. He also happens to work in an office that is 3,000 miles away from mine. He frequently reads through important industry journals and posts the news that matters to our team in his feed. When I read an email from Rob or open up his contact card, I can see the headlines he posted without ever leaving Outlook.

Office also helps me connect with my personal social networks. The Outlook Social Connector for the new Office can connect to LinkedIn to and Facebook without any additional downloads (I just entered my username and password, and with one click, I was connected). When we sat down to design these features, we heard from customers around the world, ranging from large companies to college students, that these two networks help them connect and collaborate.

Whether I’m working in SharePoint, checking my email, or editing a document, presence is everywhere and in one click I can access the People Card. I can not only find out information about them (including their past activities across their social networks, whether they’re free or busy, and where their office is), but I can instantly start communicating with them.

For example, Rob and I collaborated on this post. He left a comment in the document and I was able to click on his photo without leaving Word, see his status and pick the best way to reach out to him to get clarification.

One of the other SharePoint features that I love is a new one that we call “community sites.” You can think about it as a discussion forum, where you can discover connections, ask questions, and get instant feedback on the projects you’re working on. I’d mentioned before that I’m a member of the Windows Phone App Developer community, and I would never have been able to compile the WP7 app that I wrote without it. Because I’m following it, I can navigate there from my list of Followed Sites, and when I land there, I’m immediately able to see some of the hot topics that are being discussed. With a single click I can create a new discussion and at a glance I can see statistics like number of new members, views, or posts, which gives me a sense of what topics are relevant or who is participating. Not only am I able to get questions about my Windows Phone App answered, and I can able to identify experts (based on the Community reputation feature), and follow them and get updates posted directly to my Newsfeed.

While it’s great to discover experts by looking at people’s reputation in a community sometimes I’m not 100% sure what I’m looking for. I can choose to post a broad question to my Newsfeed, which often produces a quick response, but I also like to have the ability to find someone on my own, then ask them a question directly.

Thankfully, Office and SharePoint each have ways to make it easy to find the exact person I’m looking for, even when I don’t know exactly where to start. When I search for a person in Outlook, the results are automatically ranked based on how closely I work with each person on the list. When I search for an expert in SharePoint, it will return the best matches based on people’s areas of expertise. Plus, with SharePoint’s “fuzzy matching” search, I don’t even need to spell their name right to see them show up in my results!

Once I find an expert, I can connect with them immediately, either by following them, or by using the Person Card to send an email or start an IM, a phone call, or a video call.

Of course, there’s more where this came from! J In this post I’ve just scratched the surface of what’s possible with the new Office. In addition, we just completed the acquisition of Yammer last week, and we’re excited to have such a talented team join us in our quest to change the way we work. We’re still early in the integration process, but we look forward to sharing more at the upcoming SharePoint conference in November. For now, I’d invite you to download the Office Customer Preview to see for yourself how social can help you get more done.

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We’re Social

We’re on Facebook and Twitter now. That is all.

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Working with Nothing but a Windows Phone, Part 1 (Messages & Social)

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Send to friendRSS for post commentsAccessCEScreativitydesigndownloadsemailExcelFacebookhelpimageslearningmarketingOffice 2003Office 2007Office 2010Office AnniversaryOffice Web AppsOneNoteOutlookPowerPointresumesteacherstemplatesWindows PhoneWordUnfiltered HTML Working with Nothing but a Windows Phone, Part 1 (Messages & Social) by Doug Thomas on January 19

If you wake up in the middle of nowhere--or have to work regardless of the weather--you can get a lot done with a Windows Phone.  That's because it gives you lots of ways to reach people.  In this video I show you some of them --including how Windows Phone lets you text by voice, send group emails, and stay completely connected to Facebook. Watch:

In case you want to know more about the features of a Windows Phone, click these links:

 

Live TilesGroupsMe TileFacebook & Social NetworkingContact HistoryVoice CommandsLocal ScoutPin to StartAnd the three buttons that can get you to many of these features

Stay tuned, part 2 is next week.

--Doug Thomas

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Social media made easy

If some back to think about Valentine's day of this year, our post about AccessLovecould you you, remember a social-media-type access Web database, which became very popular with Microsoft employees. Decided on the basis of a response the creator of AccessLove, present to show a "how we did it" session, how easy someone a similar system from scratch could build. We recorded this session, and now you can Watch the videos and follow along with the procedures on Office.com ! Learn some great tips for a professional form design, create macros data and publish in access services.

On a side note digging we here are content publishers at Microsoft keen to know what you think this kind of article, where we take you through a scenario from beginning to end, instead of after you all through a collection of feature-based articles. Do you think that this scenario-based content access faster learn more people can help? If so, what other scenarios do you think that we should cover? Please leave a comment and let us know!

--Chris downs

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Boost your productivity of working with social media...?

You may find that headline counter-intuitive. The common perception is that social media are only updates posting, images, and connect with friends and family. If you have "social media" in your job title, you might think there is no way it can be part of the working day. However, social tools in the Office are to be adopted. In a recent independent survey of Rwandan professionals and students of age 18 and older social media under the direction of MarketTools Inc., 35 percent of respondents selected as an effective method of communication with colleagues, customers and suppliers. Some other interesting data points from the survey: 25% of respondents use social media to communicate and build relationships with colleagues. This figure was agreed up to 37% of the age group 18 - 24. 19% of respondents that social networking has helped to meet people who have made offline in valuable business relationships online. 89 Percent said their use of social media for personal communication increased or remained the same during the last Jahres.Es is no surprise that people use social media in their personal communication, but here at Microsoft, we believe that social networking can deliver real business value for all types of organizations. We have this with the social connector Outlook and SharePoint enable invested. And we have in cooperation with companies such as LinkedIn and Facebook. How can companies benefit from social networking? When used with a purpose, social tools in the Office with cooperation can help. Companies such as Getronics/Kpn and Catapult Systems have used social Outlook Connector professional social interaction and exchange of knowledge between the staff in different offices to promote that. James Sinclair of On-location advice used to build the social Outlook Connector and LinkedIn better business relationships and stay productive. James shared some thoughts with us recently: "Outlook of social connector (OSC) and LinkedIn work for me because it is an easy way to keep me informed of the people in my network." "I use this tool to interact with potential customers, employees and partners." "Nothing replaces face-to-face meetings, but OSC is part of my natural process of doing business, because it just there made in Outlook." "Often I find a degree of separation from someone I would like to do with business, and I use an introduction of a common contact, I discover by the OSC and LinkedIn."Of course we should take as for any communications platform, with social networking privacy and security to heart. With the social Outlook Connector, administrators can control and configure what networks with connect staff. Also, the social Outlook Connector users can choose which to bring social networks in their Inbox. He respects the privacy settings that have chosen users on social networks. The information that you see above your contacts depends on how much they have decided to share with you on social sites. Therefore, we have seen great examples of user acceptance of the Outlook social connector and social networking at work. You can to know you more, such as the Outlook social connector in this article on Office.com. I believe that social tools are a part of the workplace. With the right planning and the right tools, they can actually increase productivity. I encourage you to check out the Outlook social connector and think about how you use it in your company. Download the social network provider for Outlook social connector. Drop me a note, if you want to share your own experience! -Paco Contreras HerreraGroup product manager, Microsoft Office

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Office help is social on Facebook

Do you live in Facebook? Now you can use to get help with Office . And with Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPointand OneNote.

Of course you can always ask a question on the wall and wait for a response from the community.

But why wait? You can also the Help Desk link on click on the left side. Type in your question and click Help.

Then you see answers from Office.com and Answers Microsoft.

Quickly answer questions received, and to social, ahem, networking.

-Joannie bar country

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