In his keynote speech, Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President for OneDrive, SharePoint, and Office, described the six pillars of SharePoint as sharing and working together, informing and engaging people, harnessing collective knowledge, transforming business processes, extending and developing, and protecting and managing.
Sharepoint is being used by over 400,000 organizations for creating websites and for storing, managing and accessing information. The software was remodeled two years ago to compete with the likes of Dropbox, Slack, and Box.
New innovations to the software involve mixed reality in the form of SharePoint Spaces. During the talk, Vidya Srinivasan, product lead for SharePoint Spaces, demonstrated how the new SharePoint Online could be used to build 3-Dimensional sites in remarkably small time.
SharePoint Spaces are made using extensible templates and can be customized using WebGL and BabylonJS. Users will be able to add color, images, ambient sound and Web Parts. SharePoint Spaces pages can also be linked to each other using Object Properties.
The software is proposed to be used for onboarding new employees, training courses, and product development.
Recruiting and on-boarding – New recruits can learn about a company through 360-degree virtual welcome and orientation.
Learning – A broader perspective of a subject can be gained by experience, and not just reading or watching
Product development – Research and prototyping can be done through the use of 3D models.
Microsoft claims that the technology will bring mixed reality to the mainstream by “empowering everyone to create visually compelling spaces that are available to anyone, on any device.”
The other major improvement is the inclusion of AI that optimizes content collaboration by providing personalized, intelligent search in the SharePoint mobile app, new personalized Office.com, enhanced image capabilities, and cognitive services for business process automation.
A special preview version of SharePoint spaces is made available before it is opened to the general public in the second half of this year. Microsoft states that “we know not everyone has a headset, so we’ll create amazing experiences on screens.” It remains to be seen whether the VR version will see widespread adoption.