The Office app for Windows and web version Office.com are getting a refresh and bringing new experiences. Microsoft announces this at Ignite 2021 as part of reimagining Office and transforming for a hybrid world. With the redesign Microsoft says it will serve as a hub for your content, easily finding content and taking action.
Changes to the Office app include a new homepage with a Quick Access section and a set of Recommended Actions. It also has a new My Content page to easily search and filter content and a Create page with all apps and tools, plus templates from all the apps. Microsoft will roll out the new features and experience to users gradually over the next couple of months.
The enhancements we’re making to Office.com is to help you optimize your time and simplify your work. These updates make it even easier to find all the content associated with you, access your apps and templates in one place, take action quickly, and understand what work needs your attention.
What is new in Office desktop app and Office for the web?
Microsoft Program manager Alyssa Galvin takes you on a deep dive into all the new changes.
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Microsoft is bringing The Garage program to Africa with sites to be located in Kenya and Nigeria. The company says The Garage Nigeria, in Lagos, is currently in advanced planning stages, as are other Garage locations in Africa. New information reaching us including the search for a Senior Program Manager to lead the program confirms it is close.
The Garage is an extracurricular Microsoft resource for employees to connect, experiment and be creative outside of their day job. But that is not all, it will also be a creative space for hacking and making for the local tech ecosystem and Microsoft customers. Running hackathons, engineering internships, and an experimental outlet for its local students and tech communities.
There are 12 garage sites across the globe with the Africa sites to increase this number to 14. Microsoft could yet still increase this number with possible sites in South Africa, Senegal and Egypt.
I expect each Microsoft Garage site in Africa to have three dedicated lab sections just like all the other global sites. The lab sections will consist of a collaboration hub for hackathons and workshops, a Makerspace and an Advanced Makerspace. The advanced Makerspace will have an electronic workbench, 3D Printers, laser cutter, PCB milling machine for creating prototypes. A Reality Room dedicated to working in the space of Augmented Reality (AR) Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality applications and dedicated space and equipment for doing work on Deep Learning.
Every person at Microsoft has the ability to come up with a good idea. The Garage is here to help.
Jeff Ramos, GM The Garage
The Microsoft Garage in Africa
“The Garage is a program designed to support our employees’ creative ambitions and innovative instincts,” says Jeff Ramos, general manager of The Garage. “Every person at Microsoft has the ability to come up with a good idea. The Garage is here to help our great people shape and develop those ideas. We need a place for people to feel confident to take creative liberties, and that place is The Garage.”
Ramos says Microsoft is going to learn how to do business better worldwide by learning in Africa. Noting that in Lagos, Microsoft sees a tremendous opportunity to learn as a company and as a culture.
For Gafar Lawal, principal group manager at Microsoft ADC Nigeria it will be essential to both tantalize and satisfy employees’ creative curiosities. Adding that the Garage will support employees as they continue to learn at every stage of their careers.
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Mesh for Teams is how Microsoft is planning to keep up with the Metaverse space. For Microsoft though, it will only mark the beginning of its Metaverse solutions which will cut across a host of its products. Mesh for Teams is an immersive 3D meetings experience enabled by the integration of Mesh and Teams. It is the next evolution of Microsoft’s mixed-reality product Mesh and collaboration tool Microsoft Teams. Preview will start rolling out in the first half of 2022.
Microsoft says Mesh will enable users to meet in traditional Teams meetings and immersive virtual spaces using personalized avatars. Using either a Personal Computer, mobile device, HoloLens or virtual reality headset. The avatars will enable participants to maintain a presence without turning on their cameras. Employees will also be able to collaborate using all of the Microsoft 365 productivity tools even in immersive spaces.
I can’t overstate how much of a breakthrough this is.
Satya Nadella
Microsoft metaverse, Mesh for Teams announced
Speaking at the Keynote event of Microsoft Ignite 2021, Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, announced the company’s plan on the metaverse space. Introducing two new solutions; Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces and Mesh for Teams.
He noted that “as the digital and physical world come together we [Microsoft] are creating an entirely new platform layer which is the metaverse. The metaverse is not just transforming how we see the world, it’s changing how all of us actively participate in it“, he adds.
We are bringing people, places and things together with the digital world in both the consumers space as well as in the enterprise. When we talk about the metaverse we are describing both the new platform and new application types. We are building the metaverse platform for you to build upon. In a sense, the metaverse enables us to embed computing into the real world and to embed the real world into computing, bringing real presence to any digital space. I can’t overstate how much of a breakthrough this is. It’s no longer just looking at a camera view of a factory floor, you can be on the floor. It’s no longer just video conferencing with colleagues, you can be with them in the same room. It’s no longer just playing a game with friends, you can be in the game with them.
Satya Nadella
Microsoft says Mesh builds on the Together mode and Presenter mode features to keep meetings engaging and fun. It will roll out with a set of pre-built immersive spaces including meetings to social mixers. Organizations will get the opportunity to customize the spaces in future.
Facebook metaverse compared to the Microsoft metaverse
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Microsoft is announcing the addition of Availability Zones to the South Africa North cloud region. Expanding the region to have three unique physically separated locations within the region. To bring higher availability and asynchronous replication of applications and data for disaster recovery protection.
Microsoft says the Availability Zones give users additional options for high availability for their most demanding applications and services. As well as confidence and protection from potential hardware and software failures. By providing three or more unique physical locations within an Azure region.
These zones located in Johannesburg will each have their own power, cooling and high-speed low latency connections. Let’s say you are deploying a web tier consisting of 3 virtual machines, you can place one in each zone. So that if zone A fails your customers will still be able to access the other virtual machines in the other availability zones in the same Azure region. This is really ideal where data residency laws and regulatory requirements are important.
South Africa North is the only Azure cloud region in the Middle East and Africa to get availability zones presence. Microsoft will bring availability zones to the UAE North region and establish a new datacenter region in Israel this year.
Microsoft launched two cloud regions in Africa, South Africa North and West located in Johannesburg and Cape Town respectively. And two in the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Interestingly, when you check the Azure global infrastructure map it appears Microsoft is hiding certain regions. Regions it classifies as reserved access regions and this includes South Africa West and Abu Dhabi. Although these regions are available to customers, they will require you to go through a request process in order to gain access. The process to request access is straightforward and you can initiate it directly within the Azure portal.
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Nedbank is introducing the Nedbank DigiSkills online platform. A low bandwidth digital skills training program in partnership with Microsoft and Afrika Tikkun. To help South Africans acquire the in-demand skills needed in a more digital post-COVID-19 economy. It plans to upskill and create sustainable income opportunities for one thousand South Africans by the end of 2021. With plans to scale this number to five thousand in the longer term.
The platform offers five free online courses and learning tracks that lead to roles in software development, data analysis, IT administration, customer service specialist and project management. Participants will undergo an evaluation process after the completion of a learning path. Those who qualify proceed to complete a Microsoft Certification exam.
South Africans over the age of 18, who can read and write English are eligible to participate in the Nedbank DigiSkills training.
Participating in the skills program is easy and here are the steps. First, visit the platform https://www.digiskills.careers and sign up. Enter your mobile number to start the registration process. You will receive an SMS to verify and confirm your mobile number. Then enter your details to complete your profile. Finally, you’ll then have access to the course library. Choose a course and start learning.
Nedbank says exam writing is available at its facilities in major cities across South Africa.
Microsoft South Africa’s partnership with Nedbank is part of Microsoft’s global skills initiative to help people most affected by the pandemic gain in-demand skills to be employable. By offering free online courses across Microsoft, LinkedIn, and GitHub learning platforms. So far over 30 million people across the globe have participated in the program and over a million across Africa. Microsoft is partnering with organizations and governments in Africa to bring this to more people. Offering additional funding and services to make this possible where this is necessary.
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Meet the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio. The laptop that borrows heavily from the design and name of the Surface Laptop, Surface Studio, Surface Pro devices and even the Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel. Whether you call it a weird or an interesting form factor, Microsoft is introducing it as a replacement to the Surface Book line. But is the new device a worthy successor to the Surface Book?
The 14.4″ Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio runs on the latest quad-core 11th Gen Intel Core H Series processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti laptop GPU. It is available with 16 or 32GB RAM, and 256GB up to 2TB SSD storage. Oh, it also has an upgradeable SSD and comes with a thunderbolt 4 port. Weighs about 1.8kg and battery life estimations show up to 19 hours of typical device usage. Check out the full device specifications and models.
Introducing Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio + specifications
While the Surface Laptop Studio’s design isn’t entirely new, no one has done it quite to this level with such great results.
Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio review with Lisa Gade, MobileTechReview
The Surface Laptop Studio starts retailing at $ $1599.99 and is available in select markets. It is expected to become available in other markets including South Africa, Egypt and the UAE in early 2022.
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