Microsoft Office Web Apps now support Android and real time co-authoring
Microsoft Office 365 unit has announced on their blog a mega update to Office Web Apps this week. But first, we congratulate Microsoft on reaching a billion worldwide users of Microsoft Office. For this update, efforts were put in areas like user experience, social and collaboration, and broad cross platform browser support and Microsoft hopes that these improvements will let Office Web Apps deliver a comprehensive productivity experience.
The most talked about feature from this update is the ability to access and edit Office Web App documents from an Android tablet. If you have an Android tablet, you can edit documents on Office Web using Chrome browser. This makes the OWA one of the very few business/authoring apps avaialble on all three major platforms (iOS, Android and Windows Phone). Collaboraing to create or edit a document is another area that Microsoft has concentrated on. Co-authoring allows multiple editors to work on same document at the same time and it doesnt matter if the authors are online or offline. Editors can also do real time co-authoring of the document. The co-authoring capability is added to all Office Web Apps. With real time authoring, editors will see in live any presence and edits for co-editors (without a need to do a refresh).
By building more Office tools for the web, improving on our collaboration experiences and continued commitment to broad browser support customers will be able to use Office as easily on the web as on their desktop. Throughout the process your feedback helps inform how we prioritize future capabilities and improvements to the Office experience. The collaboration with you is essential as we embark on the next chapter in our journey to put Office in the cloud. Share your thoughts here in comments or through our customer feedback tool within the Office Web Apps.
Below is a youtube video from Office 365 team showcasing PowerPoint webapp Co-authoring:
