Goodbye to Delve

I am a big fan of using colour as an organization principle. So I always wonder what connects “things” from the same organization/sender/application suite/etc. with the same colour.

In August 2022 I wrote something about three apps with a dark red icon, wondering if they were connected somehow. At that time we already knew that Stream was being transformed, and I was thinking about the future of Delve. (See that post below)

Well, I was right! On December 14, 2023 we learned that Delve will be retired in December 2024, as the functionality is now well embedded into other applications across Microsoft365.

This is part of the message in the Admin Message Center:

Message Summary

We will be retiring Delve on December 16th, 2024. Most of the features and value offered by Delve today are already available and improved in other experiences in Microsoft 365. The main one being Profile Cards in Microsoft 365. Here is a list of features offered in Delve and the experiences we recommend using instead:

• Delve Home – discover relevant documents recommended on Office.com, in Office apps and in Profile Cards.
• Delve Profile – view profile data in the Profile Cards cross M365, through people in search on Office.com and search in SharePoint.
• Edit profile – a new edit profile experience tightly coupled with Profile Cards are being developed and will be released in second half of 2024. It is also possible for users to edit their profile data in the SharePoint profile edit experience (editprofile.aspx).
• Organizational view – exists in the Profile Card and as a dedicated experience in Org Explorer
• Favorites – favorites on Office.com and OneDrive is not connected to Delve and is a good option for users with similar functionality and improved availability.
• Boards – will not be replaced.

I checked whether Outlook Boards could be a replacement for the Boards, but guess what? Those have been retired in June 2023 due to low usage. I guess the same was the case with Delve Boards.

Do I mind? Not particularly. As mentioned, the functionality has already been incorporated into other apps for some time, the Delve app is not visible to F3 users (although they can access it) and the app often causes confusion as generally, more documents are visible to you than you expect. Additionally, having one app less to think, teach or worry about in the Microsoft365 suite is probably welcome.

Now we just have to wait for information about Access 😉.

Dark red apps = danger?

Dark red apps = danger?

I have always wondered about the logic behind the Office365 apps colour scheme. Is there one and if yes, where can I find it?

• There’s lots of blue, which all have to do with the more traditional Microsoft programmes, but also with collaboration and workflows.
• There’s bright green, which is about “Dates and Data”, such as Excel, Planner and Project.
• There’s teal, which appears to be related to “Create beautiful content”, such as SharePoint, Publisher, Sway and (surprisingly) Forms.

…and there’s dark red: Access, Delve and Stream

Those apps are special. For instance, they have limitations for F3-licensed users.

• Access is a desktop app, while F3 users only have web apps.
• Employees with a F3 license can view videos in Stream, but not create/add them.
• And the Delve app is not visible for them, although there is a workaround.

Access

Hands up anyone who does NOT have an important business process built in MS Access, which has been running for years and years and the person who knew all about it, has left, so suddenly IT has to maintain it. And of course there is no documentation. And databases are notoriously large, resource-heavy and non-collaborative.

I do not hear much about new Access applications, because Power Apps + Dataverse are taking over this role. Switching from Access to a new solution is not always easy (no documentation often means that all requirements need to be re-invented and data migrated), so I do not expect Access to be phased out quickly, but I would not be surprised if that is on the horizon.

Delve

I have wondered earlier if Delve would be with us to stay, as so many functions are now elsewhere in the suite. Functionalities from Delve are incorporated into

• Outlook (contact details, organigram)
• Calendar (Boards, where you can create more than just boards of documents)
• SharePoint (Saved for later)
• Search (MC 320462 is rolling out – When people click on people suggestions in the search box and a results page with documents they are working on and the searcher has access to, will come up – prepare for havoc! 😊)
• The Office365 home page for recommended and shared files

Stream

We know Stream technology is being incorporated in SharePoint – I wrote a number of posts about the topic recently. Although this change will bring a lot of migration work for support folks, it means that videos can now benefit from all the document management capabilities in SharePoint. Good!

It also means that F3-licensed users can freely create videos, as long as their OneDrive has sufficient storage space or they have access to a SharePoint site. Nice!

I am not sure if the tile will go away or that it will only be used to go to your video landing page on SharePoint.

So…

If my hunch is correct, there will be no more dark red apps in the Office suite, over time. Having a few tiles less would not be a bad idea. At my most recent organization, many people were confused by the (too) many Office365 tools they had at their disposal.

What do you think?

Pin, save, follow, favourite the “Microsoft365 stuff you like”

While writing my latest post I came across the different words, icons and mechanisms to store “content you like and/or want to be able to find quickly later”.

So, I wrote this overview to know what is what. You may be able to use it when writing help texts and do not want to go and look what it’s called, or it may help you to understand what a colleague means exactly. There’s quite a few words and icons used for the same functionality.

I have captured the following for every application:

1. Terminology for the action
2. Terminology for undoing the action
3. Icon
4. Where you can find it later
5. Anything remarkable

Homepage:

1. Add to favourites
2. Remove from favourites
3. ⭐ (star)
4. Favourites tab on the M365 homepage
5. You can add everything that appears in the list to your Favourites. This is one way to save any interesting OneDrive or SharePoint documents for later.
   The other way is on the respective Word, Excel and PowerPoint online landing pages, where you can add them to favourites. These will be shown on the Microsoft365 homepage as well.
   There was an extra option in SharePoint but that has disappeared.

On the Microsoft365 homepage, you can add all content types shown to your Favourites by clicking the … . You can find them under the Favourites tab

Delve

1. Add to favourites (popup text when you hover over it)
2. Remove from favourites
3. 🏷 (label)
4. Left-hand rail in Delve under Favourites
5. Not sure about the exact words in 1. and 2. as I had to test this on my work account and that is in Dutch. (My own tenant only has me, and that means no suggested content)
   You can also create Favourite Boards.

Screenshot from my work account, so it is in Dutch. You can click the label below a document and you will be able to find it under “Favourites” in Delve.

Forms

1. Add to pinned
2. Remove from pinned
3. 📌 (pin)
4. Forms Homepage under Pinned
5. This action does not influence what is on your Microsoft365 homepage and vice versa

You can Pin a form from the Forms homepage and you will then see it under the Pinned tab.

Lists

1. Favourite this list
2. Remove this list from favourites
3. ⭐ (star)
4. Lists Homepage under Favourites
5. This action does not influence what is on your Microsoft365 homepage and vice versa

You can favourite a list from the Lists Homepage or in the list itself. This one works like SharePoint sites, right? You can see your favourites on top of the Lists homepage.

OneNote

1. Add to pinned
2. Remove from pinned
3. 📌
4. Pinned Notebooks are shown on the OneNote landing page, under the tab “Pinned”.
5. So this is different from Word, Excel and PowerPoint while they are usually in the same range.

OneNote uses Pinning, contrary to Word, Excel and PowerPoint which use Favourite.

Outlook

1. Pin
2. Unpin
3. 📌 (pin)
4. Pinned mails are shown on top of your Inbox, see also my post “12 reasons why I 💗 Outlook on the web (owa)“
5. Only available in Outlook for the web, not in Outlook desktop

One of the reasons I love Outlook on the web! You can pin mails you want to keep to the top.

Planner

1. Add to favourites
2. Remove from favourites
3. ⭐(star)
4. Left-hand rail in Planner
5. Plans only; you can not favourite an individual task

You can add a Plan to your favourites by clicking the star next to the name, or by clicking the … and then selecting Add to favourites. You will see your favourite Plans on the left-hand side.

SharePoint Sites:

1. Not following
2. Follow
3. ⭐ (star)
4. Follow block in left-hand rail on SharePoint homepage, world icon in the SharePoint app bar
5. Followed sites also appear as target sites when you copy or move files from OneDrive or SharePoint

You can follow a site from the SharePoint home page or in the site itself, by clicking on the star. In this screenshot, I am NOT following the Communication site. You can find your followed sites on the top left of this page and in some other places.

SharePoint News:

1. Save for later
2. Remove from your saved items
3. 🏷 (label)
4. See my earlier post
5. Will be shown together with favourited documents, see my earlier posts

One way to see your “Saved for later” items is on the SharePoint homepage.

Stream

1. Add to watchlist
2. Remove from watchlist
3. 📄 (list)
4. My content tab > Watchlist
5. You can also “like” a video but there is no list of your likes – “likes” are a compliment to the creator

You can add a video to the watchlist – all added video’s can be seen under My content > Watchlist

Sway

1. Add to pinned
2. Remove from pinned
3. 📌 (pin)
4. On the Sway homepage, tab “Pinned”

You can pin a Sway and it will appear under the tab Pinned on the Sway homepage.

Teams

1. Save this message
2. Unsave this message
3. 🏷 (label)
4. Profile picture top right > “Saved”
5. You can also Pin a message, but that means you will add the message for everyone in a specific place, so this has a different purpose.

You can Save a message for later by clicking the … on the top right of the message, You can find all saved messages by clicking on your profile pic and selecting “Saved”.

Yammer communities

1. None, just an icon underneath the community image + description
2. Remove from favorites
3. 🧡 (heart)
4. Left-hand rail under “Favorites”
5. There is also the option to Pin a post, but that is done by the admin for everyone, so this has a different purpose.

You can “💗” a Yammer community, it will be shown in the left-hand rail.

Conclusion:

The functionality to save a specific content item for later is available in most apps. I could not find it in Whiteboard, ToDo or Power Automate, and please let me know if I have missed anything.
Next to this personal action, there is often a group action where you can make something easily available for your team. This is usually called “Pinning” 📌

The nomenclature and imagery vary widely, and I would appreciate some more consistency. Personally, I tend to prefer “Save for later”. That is very clear, even more so than “Add to favourites”. We can then use the word “Pinning” for group actions, such as pinning a document to the top of a SharePoint library, a message to the top of a Yammer groep or a chat to the right of a Teams channel.
I also notice that the location where you can find your darlings varies widely too.

So, Microsoft, is this in the roadmap for a little more streamlining? 🙂

And while we are on this topic, I would also like to be able to categorize or group things using my own words, when I have more than 10, for instance. I seem to remember you could do that with SharePoint sites in earlier SharePoint versions. (On-prem, perhaps) And I know that Forms will have Collections (check out Mike Tholfsens’s video) in the near future, but I am looking forward to be able to do that with other content.

Recent updates of my posts

With all those rapid changes in the Microsoft 365 suite, some posts age quickly. I have recently updated a number of my most-read posts to keep up with the current situation.

Office Home

Did you know I keep screenshots of all the varieties of Office Homepage since 2016? It is great to see subtle and not so subtle changes. And since there is a new Homepage being rolled out right now, featuring some more filter options and with new Tabs for your files, I updated The New Microsoft365/Office365 Homepage.

Teams

Most changes occur within Teams at the moment, so I have updated the following articles:

The importance of being Organizer, with an Excel spreadsheet (download if you like) of what each role can do in a Teams meeting. I have updated this for breakout rooms and the option to turn off chat.

Take control of your Teams meeting, where I added the options to allow attendees to unmute and the option to control the chat. I also updated some screenshots.

Forms

I just found out that you can create a QR code from Microsoft Edge so I added that to Long live the QR Code or you can read this:

SharePoint

In my most recent post I noticed that the elusive “See all” info, that allows you to create a lovely SharePoint News Digest, does not always appear on your web part even if you have posted the required 5 items.
I wrote 10 things to know about the SharePoint News Digest in 2019 and I am shocked that it took me until 2021 to find the quirk to fill item #10! 😉

Delve

With the new Office homepage, the tab “Discover” has gone and with it the option for F3-licensed users, who have no Delve icon, to see suggested documents. So I also had to update An alternative way to dive into Delve.

Some quirks of the F3 license

Update April 2022: From January 1st, 2022 I am no longer working at an organization where I have access to both the E3 and F3 licenses. Unfortunately I can no longer update this post.

When people talk or write about Microsoft 365 Outlook, Word or Excel, they generally mean the desktop versions.

However, there are Microsoft365 subscriptions that provide only the web and mobile versions of things. With the ongoing improvements of the web apps these subscriptions are getting better and better.

Most of my therapist colleagues have the Microsoft365 F3 license, which is a good fit for people who mostly work with patients and use dedicated medical software as their main application. F3 has web and mobile apps only.

While the comparison with the Microsoft E3 license (which most secretaries and staff have) clearly display most of the limitations of the F3, (albeit in the small print) there’s a few unmentioned “surprises” so let me list all that we have found so far, while providing support to our F3 collagues.

1. No desktop apps

This is the most obvious limitation. I think Word and Outlook for the web are both pretty good and getting better all the time, but some advanced functions are only available in the desktop apps, e.g. creation of scientific literature citations, or creation of a book index in Word.
An overview of the differences:

• Excel
• OneNote
• PowerPoint
• Word
• Outlook

2. Storage for Outlook and OneDrive: 2 GB

Yes, it is mentioned quite clearly (also in our own support materials) but we regularly get questions from people who have almost reached the limit. All we can do is provide them with help to clean up their Outlook and OneDrive.

This is also the reason why I was not happy with the recent change to store Teams meeting recordings to OneDrive.

3. You can not upload a video to Stream (Classic)

Update November 2022: With the move to Stream (on SharePoint) I expect this issue to disappear, as created videos will be stored on OneDrive. But with only 2 GB of storage space, it means F3 users will have to be very careful and move videos to SharePoint where possible.

Just to be clear: F3 people can consume videos from Stream but not create them. It is mentioned in the comparison. I do not really get this. Are F3 users not expected to share any videos? Not even of training materials or a team get-together? We have a few colleagues who like to do vlogs for their colleagues – no Stream for them. 😢

With the E3 and other licenses, there’s an upload option top right. No such thing for the F3.

4. Recorded Teams meetings go nowhere

We made the change from storage in Stream to OneDrive and SharePoint early, because we knew that F3-users can not upload anything to Stream. If an F3 recorded a meeting, they got an error message.
So we thought: “Well, OneDrive may not be optimal, but at least they will be able to store their recording in a good place. So let’s make the change, make them aware and suggest to move any recordings to SharePoint at their earliest convenience.”

The other day I recorded something with my F3 test account, and I was totally surprised to see that the recording did not go anywhere. It is in the meeting chat, with a message that it can be downloaded for 20 days.
The good news is that the recording can be saved. The bad news is that this is not as expected, and that people will need to take action to store it.

You need to download a recorded meeting.

5. You can not create a Live Event

This is not a major issue, as organizing a large online event will generally be done by a few selected roles. An executive secretary, our Convention Bureau, communications etc.
An F3 colleague can produce and present, however, as described in this post.

This has nothing to do with the difference between web or desktop app – everyone in our organization has the Teams desktop app.

6. You do not have the Delve app

This is not mentioned anywhere in the comparison, so this was also a surprise when we found this. It is not too much of a limitation, as you can get there via your Office profile.

7. Agenda sharing issues with E3-colleagues

If an F3 colleague shares his or her agenda with an E3-licensed colleague, e.g. a group secretary, the secretary can only edit the agenda when using the Outlook web app.
This may have to do with the fact that there is no “desktop equivalent” in the F3-agenda. It is annoying though, as our secretaries generally prefer to work with Outlook desktop. We are trying to convince them that the Outlook web app is a joy to use, but so far most of them stick to desktop. 😢

Do you know any more quirks?

I have deliberately not mentioned a number in the title. Please let me know in the comments if you know something else, so we can create a shared resource!

This is a great opportunity to use one of the more than gorgeous letters of Simon Koay’s Superbet. F = Flash!

Some intranet promotion videos – part 4

While List.ly is doing their best to get their Vimeo videos displayed properly, I thought I’d share a number of recent finds with you.
Where available, I have added related videos so you do not have 5, but 8 items to look at. In total, this should keep you busy for a little more than 30 minutes! 🙂

Stay indoors and stay safe!

1. Intro to Delve

Quite a good introduction to the capabilities of Delve. It is not very specific to the organization (a University in Melbourne, Australia) so it is very reusable. They also have good videos for Managing permissions in Delve and Managing your Office profile.

The logos are outdated so I guess the video is older than the upload date of February 2020. But as far as I can check in my one-person Delve, the functionality is still correct.

2. Your new intranet (in Portuguese)

Teaser for the upcoming new intranet at Samsonite Brazil. 
Uploaded March 2020. 

https://vimeo.com/395558670

 

3. CM3 SharePoint – your first walkthrough

Quite a long demo of this SharePoint intranet for a USA-based building services organization. This demo starts with the log-on process and it starts to get really interesting from 1.40 onwards, when the homepage is shown. I am fascinated by the colour scheme! It has a lot of useful content and other stuff. In their next video, they look a bit more at the homepage and the SharePoint functionalities and invite you to name the intranet (by completing a Form, of course!).
Uploaded March 2020.

4. Mobile app for real estate organization (builder) – in Dutch

Nice overview of the mobile (SharePoint-based) intranet-app for this Dutch real estate organization. They build houses but also own some DIY-shops in the Netherlands.

This mobile app has a ton of good stuff – News of course, colleague search, employee-stuff. It does not look like the native SharePoint app though.
Uploaded March 2020.

 

5. SmartSpace SharePoint intranet

Walkthrough of a SharePoint intranet for a software organization with offices in UK and USA. The look and feel is quite basic (just the company logo, not even their corporate colours) compared to the design of their proposal templates and website. They appear to do almost everything “corporate” in one site.
Having your Mission and Vision statement on the landing page must become boring after some time, but they may want to change that over time into News or something used frequently. I really like the fact they have a list of approved software (with details) as well as their project portfolio also in SharePoint lists.
Uploaded March 2020.

An alternative way to dive into Delve

Delve is an interesting part of Office365.

In my previous organization I often received complaints about what was shown in Delve. Exactly like the results you see in Search, what you see is what you have access to, and for many people this was hard to understand. Every time the Search or Delve results got questioned (“Search is broken!”) I could prove that this person saw this search result or this document card on Delve because they had access to it, whether that was desired or not. I loved this demonstration of the importance of proper permissions management 🙂
In Search, any mismanagement of permissions only becomes apparent when you are actively searching, but in Delve “content finds YOU” so it is ruthlessly in-your-face.

Joanne Klein has written a great post on Delve and how to disable it – entirely or partially.

In my current organization we have not promoted it very much yet, so when we recently changed a number of licenses from E1 to F1 and then to F3, we did not consider the fact that the Delve app would no longer be visible for the F3-users, a big risk.
However, we received a question from someone who uses the people-part for looking up managers and direct reports, so I found three alternative options.

1. Via “My Office Profile”

After all, the Delve “Me” page is your profile page, so that should be available for every user. Just click on your picture top right and select “My Office profile”.

“My Office profile” leads to your Delve “Me” page

2. Via the URL

Delve is available for users if they are logged in to Office365 and use the following URL: https://<datacenterlocation&gt;.delve.office.com.
For our organization and my own tenant this is https://eur.delve.office.com and for a tenant in the UK this would be https://gbr.delve.office.com
I do not have access to any other tenants so I can not give you the “code” for other data centers but please take a look at your Delve to see what it is. It may come in useful one day.

My Delve page. The URL will resolve itself to yours as soon as you enter the URL.

3. Via Outlook (people data only)

Like Delve, Outlook also uses Active Directory so all people data is also in Outlook.
Users with an F1-license use the Outlook On The Web experience and they can see people’s managers and direct reports in the people card.
When you hover over a person’s name (searched or from an email) you will first see the small card, which expands into a larger card. When you click “Show more” you will see a ton of info, including the “Organisation” which will allow you to see a person’s manager and direct reports. In my case the tab is greyed-out because I am the only one in my tenant and have not set up AD.

Lots of info available if you click “Show more” on the extended hover card. The “Organization” tab will show you direct reports and managers.

What’s next for Delve?

My colleague was happy with the alternatives provided.

But when I found this all out I wondered if Delve may be going away as a separate workload as the functionality is now embedded in other, more frequently used, tools. Would anyone know?
Just as I was writing this post, I found this post from John Liu (in response to a Tweet about Delve from Joanne Klein) who is also wondering about the future of Delve – he has a good idea for its development.

So let’s wait and see if Delve keeps being a separate app, but with added functionality, or will be absorbed into relevant other workloads in Office365…

Photo by Matthew T Rader from Pexels