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Today marks the general availability of Office 2016 for Windows, a suite of desktop applications that together with new mobile and web apps pushes Microsoft's new vision for PC-based productivity. Office 2016 is available immediately to Office 365 subscribers, as well as to individuals who would prefer to buy the software in standalone form. "We see Office 2016 as being just as important as the first release of Office," Microsoft group program manager Shawn Villaron told me in a briefing last week. "In the early days, Office was about bringing really important tools together to empower the individual for personal productivity. That was the way people wanted to work at that time. And for 20 to 30 years, Office fit right in. Today, things are changing. More people collaborate on work as groups and teams, so Office 2016 represents the change from personal productivity to team productivity."

Microsoft Forms is a new part of Office 365 Education that allows teachers and students to quickly and easily create custom quizzes, surveys, questionnaires, registrations and more. When you create a quiz or form, you can invite others to respond to it using any web browser, even on mobile devices. As results are submitted, you can use built-in analytics to evaluate responses. Form data, such as quiz results, can be easily exported to Excel for additional analysis or grading.

Social apps can make working with Office 2013 more engaging, efficient, and fun. They combine the networking and outreach capabilities of social media sites with the mobile productivity power of Office. Together, Office and social apps give you more insight into your contacts, allow you to monitor your social channels without using a browser, and can spice up your SharePoint sites in ways that you'll "like" (thumbs up). The LinkedIn for Outlook app is one of the most popular of the social apps. It lets you see LinkedIn profile data for your contacts while you are using Outlook. Not only can this app give you greater insight into your email contacts, it can help you build your professional network quickly from one of your most valuable professional resources: your Outlook contact list. Likewise, if you're an active Tweeter, you may want to add the ExTweet app to your library. It offers a way to display real-time Tweets that match the data in your Excel workbook. From the most popular social media website comes the Facebook Integration App. Use it to add Facebook social plug-ins to your SharePoint site so people can interact with it as they would a Facebook page. It can make your site more social by encouraging increased user engagement and eliciting immediate feedback and comments. Similarly, the ConnectWithUs app lets you connect your SharePoint site to your page on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, or any other community. These are just a few examples of apps that work with the Office applications you use every day to make them even more dynamic and useful. Explore the Office Apps Store to find more apps for Office 2013 that can make your work easier, increase your productivity, and help you have fun.

When FHI 360 wanted to move to cloud-based business productivity services, the organization decided to implement a Microsoft cloud-based solution. We recently spoke to Douglas Wilkins, Director of IT Infrastructure at FHI 360, to learn how the company is benefiting: FHI360 logoQ: Please tell us about FHI 360. Douglas Wilkins: FHI 360 is a nonprofit human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions. Our staff includes experts in health, education, nutrition, environment, economic development, civil society, gender equality, youth, research, technology, communication, and social marketing-creating a unique mix of capabilities to address today's interrelated development challenges. FHI 360 serves more than 60 countries and all US states and territories. Q: Why did you want to move to cloud-based services for messaging and collaboration? Wilkins: We had a diverse IT infrastructure. Employees in the US had different IT toolsets and Internet access than staff in countries like Mozambique. Subscribing employees to a single, cloud-based solution was the most expedient way to ensure that everyone had the same IT tools, to work efficiently regardless of location. Migrating our communication and collaboration technologies to the cloud reduced much of the time required by our IT staff to manage divergent IT infrastructures and connectivity options found around the world. Q: What criteria did you use to select Microsoft as your vendor for cloud-based business productivity services? Wilkins: We wanted a vendor that demonstrated a real interest in our mission and goals, and that offered online business productivity tools tailored for the enterprise space. The capabilities of the Microsoft Services Consulting team, and the work of Intellinet, the partner Microsoft introduced us to, provided us with that. We migrated our 4,300 staff members around the world from diverse platforms to a Microsoft Offi

When we launched the preview of Outlook.com, our goal was to build the best email service in the world, capable of scaling to over a billion active customers. When Outlook.com came out of preview, it was already the fastest growing email service thanks to your support. The last two months have seen the release of a new, modern Outlook.com calendar, a refreshed Outlook.com app for Android devices, two-factor authentication for your account, new international domains for people around the world, and the release of a preview of Skype calling in Outlook.com. Today, we're excited to announce that we've completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync. We're also pleased to announce that we're adding two new features to Outlook.com: SMTP send, so it's easier to send mail from different email addresses, and deeper integration with SkyDrive.

Office 365 for business allows small and large companies to use the power of SharePoint Online. In this week's webinar, you'll learn some of the basics and we'll answer your questions. Can't view this video? Watch it on Microsoft Showcase. Need a sneak peek? Here's a 30-seocnd trailer. What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar Logging on the first time What's that there? A look around Where can I put my stuff? Sites: for your company and your customer References for this webinar Office 365 for business (includes SharePoint) Video training courses for SharePoint What is SharePoint? (article) Get started with Office 365 business (video) Start using SharePoint sites, SkyDrive Pro, and Newsfeeds (video & links) Set up Office 365 for your business (site) What's new with SharePoint, a top 10 (blog post) New SharePoint mobile offerings (blog post) Sample SharePoint consumer site SharePoint Online for small businesses (index of articles) SharePoint Online for midsize/enterprise (index of articles) NEW: SkyDrive Pro App

Krishna Mamidipaka is a Senior Product Marketing Manager on the Microsoft Visio team. Visio diagram templates - www.office.com/setupMicrosoft Visio is one of the most widely used tools for Business Process Modeling (BPM) projects worldwide, and people use Visio for a variety of tasks within the context of their BPM projects. From creating process flows that are validated for critical compliance needs to automating human and document centric workflows, and monitoring these workflows, Microsoft Visio supports BPM efforts of varying complexity. The new Microsoft Visio, powered by interoperability with Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365, provides a strong social, mobile and cloud-based infrastructure for BPM initiatives. In addition to the newer workflows and collaboration features, it also offers several new diagram templates that support the latest industry standards, such as BPMN 2.0 and UML 2.4. Look for us at the Gartner BPM Summit April 2-4, 2013 as we take our very compelling and well-recognized BPM story to the Washington D.C. area. Microsoft is a Platinum sponsor of the summit, and we are very excited to speak with a variety of customers, partners, analysts and press while at the event. Do join us if you can! Learn more about new and improved BPM capabilities in Visio with our Microsoft BPM Whitepaper. -Krishna Mamidipaka, Senior Product Marketing Manager

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