Microsoft has declared today, November 7th, as “Get It Done Day” and they are finally introducing live collaboration using the Office Web Apps that are accessible to anyone with a Microsoft account and SkyDrive storage.

wordwebappcoauthoring

The new co-authoring features in the Word, Excel and PowerPoint Web Apps bring these features to your online work:

  • See where your co-authors are working in the document
  • See changes to text and formatting as they are made by co-authors
  • Help you and your co-authors bring together your individual ideas as you work together miles apart
  • Changes are saved as you work so no fear of losing the work you have done together
  • Work from anywhere via the web, your desktop, Windows Tablet, mobile device or even your iPad.
  • Work online or offline with changes being synched to the main document once you go back online

Other highlights:

  • Microsoft Office Web Apps. Microsoft has updated Office Web Apps with two highly anticipated features — the introduction of AutoSave in the Word Web App and real-time co-authoring, a feature that allows multiple people to contribute to and edit documents simultaneously in the Word Web App, PowerPoint Web App or Excel Web App.
  • Yammer. All Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise plans now ship with Yammer Enterprise, and all existing Office 365 Enterprise customers will receive Yammer Enterprise licenses. In addition, Office 365 customers no longer have to purchase individual new licenses for external users within their external networks. Microsoft has also created the Yammer Partner Enablement Program, designed to provide deeper insight and best practices for how to sell, implement and integrate a successful enterprise social solution.
  • New sharing updates to Office 365 Home Premium. Starting next month, Office 365 Home Premium subscribers can share some of their subscription benefits with up to four members of their household. Each household member can use any of the available installs on their own PCs, Macs or mobile devices, get an additional 20 GB of SkyDrive storage, and manage their own installs from their My Account page.

That final item is a nice addition to the Office 365 Home Premium license, which Microsoft recently announced has over 2 million subscribers now, because it lets someone else control the installation of Office 365 Home Premium on their device/devices. Plus who can snub their noses at another 20GB of SkyDrive storage. There would still be a limit of 5 installs per subscription though.

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