IT major Microsoft has unveiled ‘SharePoint spaces’, at its on-going conference in Las Vegas, USA, which is a mix of immersive, mixed reality experiences, enabling the user to view & interact with Content (read product models) from every angle. Not only that, it will allow developers to also manipulate data & product models in real time. How?
According to a post by Jeff Teper, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, SharePoint spaces mainstreams mixed reality, empowering everyone to create visually compelling spaces that are available to anyone, on any device.
According to Jeff, mixed reality experiences immerse a user, focuses his attention, engages his senses “to unlock new scenarios for communication, learning, & collaboration.”
What exactly is SharePoint? For those who don’t know, this is an Intranet-like suite of storage, collaboration, & Content management tools for businesses. Spaces is a new dimension to it. It can be used for:
- Recruiting & onboarding: Recruits or new employees can learn about a company in a 360-degee virtual welcome & orientation, including a 360-degree video message from leadership. They can navigate the campus or building with 3D maps, learn the organizational structure with an interactive organization chart, or explore rich information about coworkers & the organization’s products.
- Learning: Mixed reality can breathe life into an otherwise boring class by captivating focus & attention.
- Product development: Helps create space for your team to spark innovation. You can explore a prototype in 3D to identify new opportunities, attach annotations, & visualize improvements.
Microsoft’s SharePoint spaces, say experts, is bound to change the world of communication & development. Until now, it was prohibitively expensive & complex to develop customized mixed reality apps to address business scenarios. Also, mixed reality apps were not used much in the workplace, because most require costly headsets. But all that’s set to change with spaces.
Here’s how it works:
Using Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform, SharePoint spaces empower creators to build immersive experiences with point-&-click simplicity. You can get started with smart templates to create a mixed reality environment complete with beautiful surroundings, ambient sounds, rich textures, & lighting. You then add Content, which can include files you already have in SharePoint, allowing you to re-purpose your existing data, documents, & images. This includes 3D Content, including 360-degree videos created with mobile phones. Using SharePoint spaces, says Microsoft, you can view & interact with 3D Content, empowering people to interact with objects that might be too numerous, too large, or too dynamic to experience in the real world or in a two-dimensional environment.
Anyone can immerse themselves in a compelling virtual space to view and interact with content, information, and video on any device—in a browser, mobile browser, or headset.
The ‘Find’ tab, coming to the SharePoint mobile app, lets you find people, Content, & answers to your questions while on the go. You’ll see links to documents & Sites you were recently working on, across your devices. You’ll see recommendations of Sites, files, news, & people that have been identified as relevant to you. You might find what you need without having to search at all. And when you perform a search, the results are refined as you type, returning personalized results based on your role, your work, & the people you work with. Search history & queries curated by your organization make it easy to find things. Instant answers to your questions showcase the power of AI, transforming search into action.
Going ahead, SharePoint spaces will be available in all Office 365 commercial plans. SharePoint powers content collaboration in Office 365, so, when you store your files, images, & data in Office 365, AI will unlock Content.
Microsoft says SharePoint is the 1st unified Content collaboration & services solution to span files, Websites &, soon, mixed reality spaces. Customers & partners can apply to be part of an early, limited preview by visiting SharePoint spaces.
Here’s a link for a video on it:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/videoplayer/embed/RE264JO
Image Credit: Microsoft