Microsoft Office Graph for Oslo Limits Bothersome Data
April 11, 2014
Just what we need—another way to shield folks from information they’d rather not see. Microsoft helps move us in that direction, this time within the enterprise. We learn about the hidden data-narrowing technology in “Social Enterprise, Machine Learning Meet in Microsoft’s Office Graph, Oslo” at eWeek. Oslo is a mobile app created to give users “an at-a-glance view of collaborative Office documents and activities.” The role of Office Graph is to narrow the data stream. Writer Pedro Hernandez tells us:
“Office Graph, while tucked ‘under the hood and never exposed to the user,’ helps users avoid information overload and focus on the task at hand by delivering ‘really personalized and relevant views of their world,’ according to Julia White, general manager of Microsoft Office. This ‘intelligence layer,’ which integrates with SharePoint, Exchange, Lync, Yammer and Office, is the basis of the company’s upcoming Oslo app. Oslo is a mobile-optimized app that ‘cuts through the noise by showing you what you need to know today, and even what’s likely to be important in the near future,’ stated Ashok Kuppusamy, a Microsoft FAST group program manager, in a blog post.”
The app should be available to users of Office 365 within the year. Some of Oslo’s features do sound helpful. For example, since many of us are better at remembering people’s names than project titles or keywords, users can search by colleague name. One can also see what content has been shared, liked, viewed, or modified. But I wonder—do people really need algorithms deciding what to include in “relevant views of their world”?
Cynthia Murrell, April 11, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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