The New Office 365 Preview – First Impressions

Yesterday Microsoft opened up for a customer preview of the next major update to Office 365 – called Office 365 Preview. You can try it out here.

After you've provided your basic information the service starts provisioning and you are presented with the Office 365 Preview admin center (click the picture to enlarge).

Notice the links at the top blue bar (the global navigation bar); Outlook (Inbox), Calendar, People (Contacts), Newfeed (similar to Activities on MySite), SkyDrive (storage in the cloud) and Sites (SharePoint). The three dots is the More menu and the Admin menu will take you to the admin center or the individual services admin centers. The links will stay at the top of the window no mather where you are in Office 365 :-)

On top of the new simplified look and the improved navigation, there are so many new things to get excited about. For example, I’m sure you (like I do) will appreciate the new SharePoint Online and Office Web App experience. To illustrate take a look at the experience of creating, editing and printing (yes it there :-)) an Excel Web App file – without ever leaving Office 365.

Click the Sites link to open SharePoint Online

Click the Team Site tile to open the Team Site

In the Team Site click the new document link to create a new file (notice that the four Office Web App document types are there by default :-))

Provide a file name

Enter the new Excel Web App:

Create e.g. a simple table and a simple chart

If you'd like to print your Excel file or in this case a section of the file you can select the area you'd like to print

Click File to enter the BackStage and then Print (yes its there now :-))

A dialog appears asking you what to print - pick the Current Section option

 Click Print and a new browser window pops up with a preview of your print and a Print bottom at the top left

And the print-out looks just fine :-)

 

The previewing experience

Files in document libraries can be previewed easily before opening them if needed. Hover the cursor over the three dots to the right of the file name, and you'll be presented with a series of previews to scroll through

If you click the three dots at the bottom of the preview pane you'll be presented with the options to Edit the file in the browser etc.

Stay tuned for more 'first impressions' of Office 365 Preview.

 

See also