Everyday office applications are supposed to raise the productivity bar, help workers perform mundane tasks faster, and streamline collaboration. But in reality, software complexity often causes employees to spend too much time working out the kinks or reverting to manual processes to get their job done.
Enter Microsoft 365, which includes familiar productivity apps with built-in intelligence capabilities that bolster productivity and help the workforce get to better results quicker – without the usual hand-holding. AI-driven capabilities in Microsoft 365 help reduce complexity while creating shortcuts that promote productivity and creativity.
“We all have to-do lists that never have a bottom,” says Brad Anderson, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Enterprise Experiences and Management. “We’re able to leverage what we’ve learned in the cloud on a global scale to help users get their work done faster.”
The intelligence capabilities of Microsoft 365 extend throughout the entire application portfolio and leverage the telemetry Microsoft collects at scale via its cloud services. This data is combined with machine learning to deliver behavioral analysis that can then be applied to the inputs of an individual user. As a result, Microsoft 365 apps can make suggestions that improve response times, maintain accuracy, and ensure consistency. The tools dramatically speed up routine tasks like creating PowerPoint presentations or wordsmithing documents by proposing steps users may not have otherwise considered.
Microsoft 365’s Intelligent Services include:
- PowerPoint Designer. A way to create visually compelling presentation slides without expertise in design principles. As a user adds information to a slide, Designer works in the background to match that content with the appropriate layout. “Once you turn on Designer in PowerPoint, it automatically gives suggestions,” Anderson says. “As the user is naturally working, the way AI is able to interact and help the user is a seamless experience.”
- Ideas in Excel. This feature provides a shortcut to understanding data: Users highlight a cell in a data range, click the Ideas button, and the feature will analyze data and return high-level visual summaries, trends, and patterns in a task pane.
- Editor. For those not fully confident in their writing abilities, Editor can provide a much-needed boost. The feature identifies words and phrases that might need more polish. It also analyzes text as it’s typed, making suggestions if it encounters misspellings or syntax errors.
- Delve. This capability helps workers discover new, relevant information based on who they work with and the content they’re involved in. Delve, powered by the Microsoft Graph, surfaces files and data from across all Microsoft 365 apps as well as OneDrive, SharePoint, and Yammer. Delve delivers material based on user access rights.
- Office Tell Me. Enter words and phrases about what you want to do next, and this capability will serve up features that correspond to the task or invoke an action you want to perform.
In addition to these, Microsoft 365 includes a myriad of other intelligent services, from functions that automatically translate selected words or whole documents into a different language to the ability to dictate actions with voice. Microsoft is continuously adding to the intelligent services pipeline.
The intelligent services in Microsoft 365 raise the bar on productivity applications so users can work smarter and faster.
Learn more to plan your shift to Microsoft 365.