Microsoft Rolls Out Office Live Workspace Beta
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Microsoft has began a full rollout of the public beta of its Live Office Workspace. OLW, unveiled earlier this year, is a Web-based feature of Microsoft Office that allows for collaboration and sharing of documents. The technologies included in OLW have already been rolled into Microsoft's [email protected], a portal, communications, and collaboration suite for education.
Office Live Workspace is the first service released under the Office Live services banner. It allows Office users to save documents to the Web, share work, and collaborate.
"Based on feedback during initial testing and planning, we've received very positive feedback about Office Live Workspace," said Kirk Gregersen, Office Director of Consumer and Small Business Product Management in an article posted on Microsoft's site. "The product team worked hard to give Office users what they have been asking us for. We did a ton of usability and early alpha testing, during which people gave us great feedback that we've been able to incorporate into the beta you'll see today. We'll continue to evolve the service over the coming months, drawing heavily from things we're hearing on the community forum and in our early adopter programs."
He said he's also seen a high level of interest on the education side of things, especially colleges and universities. "We reached capacity almost immediately with our early adopter program, which now includes schools such as the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and Vanderbilt University. Many students and faculty members use Office on the desktop every day, so people have been particularly excited about how Office and Office Live Workspace work together with features like the one-click save to their workspace, the Office Live Workspace add-in for Office, the high fidelity viewing experience, and the Outlook and Excel synching capabilities."
Other universities participating in the Office Live Workspace University Early Adopter Program have included Ball State University, DeVry University, Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Indiana University, Kentucky Community and Technical College System, Michigan State University, University of Illinois, and Rio Salado College of the Maricopa Community Colleges.
OLW's integration with [email protected], launched back in late October, brought users the ability to upload Office documents through the service and set permissions for others to view and collaborate on documents, including instructors and other students. [email protected] was also upgraded to provide 5 GB of e-mail storage space (up from 2 GB) and 1 GB of general storage space (password-protected). It's also added enhancements to e-mail, including whitelisting (which prevents specified e-mail addresses from being caught by the spam filter) and automatic e-mail reply.
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About the author: David Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's online education technology publications, including THE Journal and Campus Technology. He can be reached at [email protected].
Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at [email protected].
About the Author
David Nagel is editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Technology Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal and STEAM Universe. A 29-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art and business publications.
He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at or follow him on Twitter at @THEDavidNagel (K-12) or @CampusTechDave (higher education).