Microsoft Expands Office Delve with Boards

Microsoft's new Office solution, Delve, has been updated today with a new content management feature called Boards. It appears that this feature is a way to pin, or "favorite" Delve-based information cards so that you can find both it and related information more easily at a later time.

You may recall that Delve is a new Office solution which surfaces the information that is most relevant to users based on the work they are doing and the people with whom they are engaging. In Delve Ushers in New Era for Office, I wrote that this new solution is "a fresh way of interacting with the content and data deluge we're all experiencing" and "something that could eventually replace Outlook as the center of most people's Office experiences, the portal we use to interact with Office services and the data they contain."

If there's a downside to Delve it's that it's being rolled out at a measured pace to Office 365 business customers only. Customers with Office 365 Business Essentials, Business Premium, Small Business, Small Business Premium, and Midsize Business are supposed to gain access to Delve starting this month.

So what's Boards?

"In Delve, you can use boards to group together and share related documents," the Office 365 team notes in a new post to the Office Blogs. "For example, you can create a board to collect and organize all documents related to a specific project your team is working on. Everyone in your organization can view and contribute to an existing board or create a board—but they can only see and open documents that they have permission to access."

Looking at the Microsoft supplied shots—I don't have access to Delve from my own Office 365 account yet—it appears that your Boards will appear in a new Boards list on the navigation pane on the left. It also seems that you can add an informational card to numerous Boards, which makes sense. And you can of course share boards with others.

As for the release, Boards will be included with Delve as it rolls out to Office 365 business customers who have signed up for the First Release program. Those who have already done so should see the new boards functionality appear "over the next few days," Microsoft says. For other Office 365 customers, expect Delve to roll out later in early 2015.

Here's a nice introductory video.