back to article Do you have a 'co-working mindset' and 'ephemerally involve others' in work?

In the olden days, when Reg hacks rode dinosaurs to work and used chisels and stone to write stories, Microsoft Office offered four applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. These days Office is a sprawling affair with new bits that Microsoft's pitching at those “with a co-working mindset” and keen to be empowered to “ …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm

    "But then we're guessing your father would never “spontaneously and ephemerally involve others” in anything."

    Are you sure? In my yonger days, my mother was always suggesting my father would kick my ass when he got home from work if I didn't start behaving...

    1. John 110

      Re: Hmmm

      That's not ephemeral though... (unless he didn't kick...wait I have to think about this)

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Hmmm

      People have been "spontaneously and ephemerally involv[ing] others" since social groups were invented. There's nothing novel about it.

      As usual, the Office team is reinventing information technology that's existed for years (zomg document fragments!), to move a little closer to how human beings actually prefer to work, and the marketing team is dressing it up. Though in the case of this particular phrase, it's at least technically correct.

  2. gv

    Lock-in

    “all your team’s discussions and deliverables stay with the plan and don’t get locked away across disparate applications.”

    Instead they get locked away in one application, which will probably be incompatible when they release a new version.

    1. Roger Greenwood
      Happy

      Re: Lock-in

      " . . will probably be incompatible when they release a new version."

      Which is why the description includes "ephemeral" ("Short lived, transitory" according to my dictionary). We've been warned.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lock-in

      Bollocks; say what you like about MS, but they tie themselves in knots to allow backwards compatibility for documents and software. I'm pretty confident I could open up my Word 6 format thesis from twenty years ago on my version of Word 2013 without too much trouble, beyond digging a 3.5" floppy disk drive out of somewhere.

      1. gv

        Re: Lock-in

        "I'm pretty confident I could open up my Word 6 format thesis"

        Possibly, but having been burned by the upgrade from Word 2 to Word 6, I still bear a grudge.

        Oh yeah, and see the post below about Microsoft 'Binder.'

  3. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Meh

    I'll add it onto the to-do list

    E-mail, Lync, Sharepoint, Yammer, and now two others.

    I think I'll mark an hour or so in my calendar to actually do work.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: I'll add it onto the to-do list

      Yep, bolting on extra toys is the sign that a software company has run out of ideas. Problem is, you adopt something like this, then find it's dropped or merged in a couple of years.

      I still miss InfoCentral....

      1. Mark 85
        Meh

        Re: I'll add it onto the to-do list

        Yep, bolting on extra toys is the sign that a software company has run out of ideas.

        Yeah but if you read the MS spiels on this stuff it's such a high grade of fertilizer and in such quantity that it will grow corn to immense heights when planted on bare rock. I need some mind bleach and lie down after reading it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: I'll add it onto the to-do list

      To make a todo list?

  4. James 51

    I misread Gigjam as something else. They really need to change that name.

    1. breakfast Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Whoever came up with "GigJam" is in urgent and sincere need of a thorough shoeing.

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    “spontaneously and ephemerally involve others in your work.”

    I thought they were building that into the OS now.

  6. dan1980

    Awesome!

    If there's one thing managers are always keen for, it's having their employees "spontaneously and ephemerally involv[ing] others in [their] work".

    Look, these kind of things have real benefits and freeing people from an application (e.g. Word & Excel) or file-share centric view is an attractive proposition - at least on the surface.

    When it comes down to it, most employees are task-focussed and giving them the ability to work in that way can be good.

    BUT . . .

    From a data-management perspective, things like this can be a real headache and the result can be that no one really knows where a given bit of data may sit or how to retrieve it. This can happen particularly when a staff member leaves.

    There is a lot of richness and potential in the Office applications but when you have a bubbling cauldron or OneDrive and 'Groups' and Outlook and Delve and Yammer and Sharepoint and now Planner and GigJam, things can quickly get very complicated.

    Much of this seems to be around the idea of showing you all the stuff you - or your colleagues - are working on at a given time or related to a given task without having to worry about getting this bit from here and that bit from there.

    That's cool but it's also a double-edged sword because people ('users') tend not to really think too much about where things are stored.

    We have users who rant and rave that their files have been deleted and they need them urgently when all that has happened is that they aren't showing up on the recent items list in Word. They have no idea WHERE the documents are stored because, to them, that's how they access those files.

    Likewise with things like 'favourites' and 'libraries' and so for showing up in Windows Explorer. In a way it's nice because it allows users to just access that stuff without having to worry about where it is but the moment it goes wrong, people can't work. Or they are saving things but really don't know where and can't find the files again if their shortcuts ever stop working.

    1. m0rt

      Kill it. Kill it now. Save yourselves.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Er, no

      I thought you were being ironic. The last thing I want are my employees spontaneously and ephemerally getting involved. Planned involvement yes. Spontaneous - go back to your task focused stuff.

      I dont understand why you say people are freed from an application / file centric world. The file is data. The app is the viewer. No matter how you cut it you need both and this stuff is no different.

      I know of no serious project that doesnt have a document management system. ISO9000 demands it. If you have users who shove stuff wherever they should get an almighty b*****ing as you dont even know if its been backed up or under revision control.

      1. dan1980

        Re: Er, no

        @AC

        I was being sarcastic.

        BUT, I was also trying to give a both sides of the story, rather than just rejecting a concept out-of-hand.

        One result of the the proliferation of cloud-based applications - and particularly those based around 'sharing' and 'collaboration' - is that they often do provide the ability for users* to work more freely and easily to achieve the what they are trying to do.

        From the users' side, that's a good thing if it enables them to do some task quicker or easier. From the operational side, however, there is a LOT more to consider.

        One of the big challenges is modern IT is how we, as admins, manage this so that we help the business achieve the right mix of convenience and control - for them.

        When dealing with cloud-based applications, it can be difficult to enforce the level and granularity of control that may be desired so it's tempting to just say: "turn it off". Sometimes that's the right answer because the risk of problems is just too great. But other times, the answer is to work with the business to help them understand the complications and potential issues and help them design some policies around how people use the applications available to them.

        It's not fool-proof but when done correctly, you can find a middle ground between "too bad" and chaos.

        * - By 'users' I simply mean those staff whose main interaction with the software in question is using it, rather than choosing, provisioning or managing it.

    3. Potemkine Silver badge

      OMG

      You say 'users' are *people*... I thought they were some sort of demonic incarnations?

    4. Mark 85

      I tend to think this is more for the PHB's... err... leadership team, yeah.. that's right term.. then for the worker bees.

  7. BobChip
    WTF?

    Huge swamp?

    Looks like M$ are building a huge, gloomy swamp which will be almost impossible to navigate. And it will be populated by avaricious alligators ............ Take care ...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A designer setup without a clear client

    Making docs 'snackable'.

    For Christs sake, if you can't be arsed to read and understand (at least once) your project docs then you're in trouble. There's a shit-load of lazy out there and this crap doesn't help.

    MS are trying to put in a trendy tool for a trendy way of working. Fine, but if it doesnt add value to running the business take the bloated confusing instant messenger todo list shite away.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How in the name of all that's twatspeak

    did the article manage to get written without the word "leverage" used as a verb? Surely it's a perfect breeding ground for plenty of fannyfarts like that

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ah yes

    "In the olden days, when Reg hacks rode dinosaurs to work and used chisels and stone to write stories, Microsoft Office offered four applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access."

    Ah yes, I remember the olden days when the opening gags in the articles weren't as banal as this one.

    Good times.

    1. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

      Re: Ah yes

      Its a near-perfect gag. Yes it is. All it needs is something funny at the end.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Ah yes

        You mean you don't find Access funny?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ephemerally

    On-line dictionary defines this as:

    noun

    3. anything short-lived, as certain insects.

    Unfortunately the insects I work with and for are not short lived enough.

  12. just another employee

    One word

    Microsoft 'Binder'.

    Well - two words actually - but an old MS app that let you keep all your docs in one collection.

    At least it did - until MS dumped their support for it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One word

      While not wanting to detract from your point, third-party (and better) alternatives do exist.

  13. jake Silver badge

    Oh, my.

    Redmond is really struggling, isn't it?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Of course, it presumably requires all parties to have an Office 365 subscription. Well that ain't happening round these parts.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is obviously for rainy day working because when the sun comes out the clouds dissipate and we end up cloudless. I assume when that happens all the workers and go to the beach and play.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I get people trying to "spontaneously and ephemerally involve" me all the time - usually to sort out their fing problems for them.

  17. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    SharePointless

    Does that sound a bit like SharePoint, evolved. Which would be no bad thing!

    Oh, yes it would be. The only good SharePoint is a dead SharePoint.

    1. Pseudonymous Diehard

      Re: SharePointless

      Agreed. Sharepoint is was and always will be shit.

      That said it seems to be making something of a comeback. I know a chap that is about to launch a business dealing in nothing but Sharepoint consultancy.

      Madness.

  18. annodomini2
    Trollface

    GigJam

    So have they actually made a word diff tool that actually works?

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