During one of my recent presentations, Enterprise Social: Where are we now and where are we going, I praised the Office Graph & Delve but mentioned that I really missed an app. Well, it’s here now and available for the iPhone. No, I don’t have an iPhone. Do I want one? That’s content for another blog, but because I am limited on time I will give you the answer at the end of this review. After reading the latest blog about the new Office 365 & Delve developments, I got pretty excited to try out the new apps. Two problems. One: the apps are for the iPhone (and I don’t have one) and the apps are only available in the US, Ireland and Norway (and I don’t live in these countries). Luckily for me, my wife is American and has an iPhone! She was kind of enough to let me borrow her phone for a bit. I tried out both apps and took some screenshots. Let’s start with the a review of the Delve app.
Home
The Delve app has a smooth sign-in process. After you sign in, you’ll see the home screen shown in figure 1:
Figure 1: The home page for the Delve app for iPhone.
The Delve app presents you with an overview of cards displaying documents your colleagues are working on, attachments from your e-mails and many other Office 365 activities. With one click you can view a document (figure 2).
Figure 2: A document opened in the Delve app for iPhone.
You can browse through PowerPoint presentations or Word documents. It works fine but I am not the biggest fan of browsing documents on mobile phones (no matter the OS). For example, I sometimes find it difficult to read text in a PowerPoint presentation. You expect to use the zoom gesture you use with pictures. This doesn’t work. You have to tap on the screen and an icon appears at the left side (see the blue arrow in figure 3):
Figure 3: The Delve app for iPhone doesn’t let you zoom in to see a PowerPoint slide. Instead you need to click an icon on the left side.
Tap on the icon and three new icons appear in the center of the screen (figure 4):
Figure 4: Zooming in on a PowerPoint slide in the Delve App for iPhone takes more than one tap.
Click on the spyglass with the + symbol:
Figure 5: On the iPhone, use the icons at the bottom to zoom in or out of the slide. Click X to close.
You can now zoom in and zoom out. Are you done? Click the X icon at the top right side of the screen. Personally, I find this way too complex and too many manual actions for such a simple feature. This problem also occurs on my Windows Phone so it’s not an OS issue.
Unfortunately the Delve Board feature isn’t present and you cannot reply to or like Delve cards. Figure 6 shows the available options at the moment:
Figure 6: The Delve iPhone app lets you copy, share or edit a card.
I am certain that the next version of the Delve iPhone app will contain these features.
People
The People tab (figure 7) displays your colleagues (and also external contacts) you recently had the most contact with.
Figure 7: On the People tab of the Delve iPhone app, you can see colleagues and recent external contacts.
Willemijn, for example, is not a colleague but a customer of Sparked. I had multiple e-mail and Skype conversations with Willemijn. That’s why the Delve iPhone app displays her in my People tab.
Let’s see what my colleague, Dave Kiwi, is working on (figure 8):
Figure 8: Delve on iPhone shows me a few documents that Dave is working on.
I can browse through Dave’s documents and view these within the App. The next tab in Dave’s profile is “Works with” (figure 9).
Figure 9: Dave Kiwi’s colleagues.
We have a relatively small organization so we all know each other but in larger organizations this is a really valuable tab. You can click on someone’s name and start browsing to your (at the moment) unknown colleague. A great way to connect with people and find interesting content! The last tab, “Colleagues work on” (figure 10) shows the card view of the activities of Dave’s colleagues:
Figure 10: What the colleagues of my colleague are working on.
My work
Figure 11 shows the My Work tab, which is very self-explanatory because it displays your documents or the documents you have been working on with your colleagues.
Figure 11: The Delve app for iPhone shows My Work.
Conclusion
The very first official Microsoft Delve app for the iPhone is actually really good. It’s very self-explanatory and user friendly. The app really adapted the iPhone look & feel and feels very native. I did encounter some speed issues. The content didn’t always load and I had to sign out and sign in to resolve these issues. To be honest, this also could have been my Internet connection but if this happens to you definitely have to try this out.
The app really compliments the work anywhere, anytime on any device philosophy. I am now able to view trending documents, interesting videos and other important content directly from my iPhone to get the job done!
Do I want an iPhone? Yes!
You didn’t mention the absence of search functionality. I’d say this is pretty key to this being a useful application.
Good point Andrew! Let’s hope that’s available in a next version. At the moment we only have the people search available.