Last November, we announced the limited preview of Office 365 Connectors, a brand new experience that delivers relevant interactive content and updates from popular apps and services to Office 365 Groups. We are now bringing this experience to you, our Office 365 customers.
Whether you are tracking a Twitter feed, managing a project with Trello or watching the latest news headlines with Bing—Office 365 Connectors surfaces all the information you care about in the Office 365 Groups shared inbox, so you can easily collaborate with others and interact with the updates as they happen.
[video=youtube;9qcwzVFppMg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qcwzVFppMg[/video]
Office 365 Groups is a service that enables teams to come together and get work done by establishing a single team identity and a single set of permissions across Office 365 apps. Setting up an Office 365 Group automatically creates a shared inbox, calendar, notebook and files. Now, any Groups member can add Office 365 Connectors for their group’s use, in seconds, to bring filtered information in the shared inbox that is relevant and contextual to the team’s needs and interests. For example, a product lead using the UserVoice connector can help her entire team track the latest feedback on a new product launched in market.
Each time a key activity takes place in the service you’re tracking—for example, when a new task is added to a Salesforce opportunity, an update is made to a Trello board or an incident is triggered in PagerDuty—a message is sent to the Groups shared inbox. You can then choose to share and discuss on the message with your team or take action with a few simple clicks.
Over 50 Office 365 Connectors are available today, spanning popular applications across productivity, news sources, HR systems, sales, project management, marketing automation, entertainment, eLearning, developer tools and many more. Some examples include MailChimp, Asana, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Aha, Zendesk, Salesforce, Twitter and UserVoice. We are also working with many other partners to enable additional connectors that will be made available soon.
In addition to the current Groups inbox integration, we plan to bring Office 365 Connectors to the Outlook inbox for individual users to leverage and over time to other experiences across Office 365.
If your organization already has Office 365, you can use Outlook, Outlook on the web or the Outlook Groups mobile app to start using Office 365 Connectors.
—Sonal Pardeshi, senior product marketing manager for the Office 365 team
Frequently asked questions
Q. When will Office 365 Connectors be generally available?
A. Office 365 Connectors are currently available for First Release customers and in the process of being rolled out for generally availability shortly.
Q. How do I add a connector for my Group?
A. Office 365 Connectors can be added and configured from Outlook on the web by navigating to your Group and clicking Connectors on the navigation bar. Find the connector you like, click Add and follow the instructions to set up the connector.
Q. What is the minimum requirement for using Office 365 Connectors?
A. Office 365 Connectors work with the Office 365 Groups shared inbox, which requires an Office 365 work or school account. The experience is available on Outlook 2016 and Outlook Web App, and support is coming soon to the Groups mobile app for iOS and Android. We’ve listed the minimum requirements here, as well as the mobile app frequently asked questions.
Q. Where can I go to learn more about the Office 365 Connectors?
A. Learn more about Office 365 Connectors here.
Also on Thursday, April 14, the Office 365 Network will host a YamJam from 9–10 a.m. PT / 8–9 p.m. GT. Members of the product engineering team will be on hand to answer your questions. For those unfamiliar with a YamJam, it is similar to a “TweetJam” on Twitter or an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) on Reddit, except it takes place on Yammer. It provides the opportunity for the community to ask questions and have a discussion with a panel of internal Microsoft experts on a particular topic.
Here’s how to participate:
On Thursday, April 14, sign in at 9 a.m. PT / 8 p.m. GT to ask questions, follow the discussions and connect with Microsoft team members.
- Request access to the Office 365 Network. All requests will be approved as quickly as possible.
- Join the Office 365 Groups group. You can find it by using the Browse Groups function or through the search bar.
Source: Introducing Office 365 Connectors - Office Blogs