Microsoft 365

Delve Analytics – A gimmick or real business value

When Microsoft announced Delve Analytics during Ignite 2015, I was really excited and couldn’t wait to start using the new service myself. Time passed and months later there was still no sign of Delve Analytics in our Office 365 tenant. It wasn’t until January 2016 before I saw a video on YouTube from Microsoft. I felt the excitement again and couldn’t wait to start trying it out. We had to wait until March 2016, after we activated the new Office 365 E5 subscription, before Delve Analytics showed up in our Sparked Office 365 tenant.

I used Delve Analytics for a couple weeks but slowly started to forget to take a weekly look at my statistics. It wasn’t until a couple days ago I realized I had totally forgotten about it. What does this mean? Is this just me? I am very busy with projects, presentations and writing blogs, but my colleagues and customers never mention Delve Analytics. We never really see a demand for it. Does this mean Delve Analytics isn’t a good service? No, not necessarily. As Figure 1 shows, the data is very valuable and useful.

I like to see how much time I actually spent in meetings, sending emails, working after hours and actually have time to focus. Working in IT with multiple customers and projects can be very stressful, and multitasking is often the norm instead of exception. I can monitor the time I spent after working hours by setting goals. One downside is that I don’t receive an e-mail notification when I go over my goals. That would help draw me back into Delve Analytics.

Figure 1 also displays a Losing touch section. This could be useful but it only considers your connection with people using email or meetings. That doesn’t always give a good representation of the real world. For example, I recently had a few Skype chats with Dave Smits but Delve Analytics doesn’t count those. How seriously should I take these statistics?

Delve Analytics is also integrated with Outlook. As Figure 2 shows, the Delve Analytics Outlook add-in shows email statistics between colleagues:

I think Mark and I need to have a chat because my response time is a lot higher 😉 Joking aside, this is valuable and interesting information. Perhaps we need to use Skype for Business more often instead of sending a crazy number of emails. These email statistics show me that we have a close working relationship and often collaborate. I do have one issue: I never remember to open this add-in. I read the email and move on.

The same applies for Delve. I use Office 365 in the browser for SharePoint and Yammer. I barely go to Delve, and because of that, I also never use Analytics. The services are hidden away in the App launcher. Of course, you can set Delve as your start page for Office 365 but that only works if I always start my browser with portal.office.com. I would love to use Delve and Analytics for our customers but to be honest, there isn’t really a demand for it at the moment. That doesn’t mean the service isn’t working or isn’t any good at all. I really believe in it. I can see the potential for businesses, but Microsoft is just ahead of its time. That’s is actually a good thing because when the demand finally comes, and believe me it will, Delve and Analytics will be mature and ready to be adopted.

Source:

https://www.itunity.com/article/delve-analytics-gimmick-real-business-3400

You Might Also Like

2 Comments

  • Reply
    Veronique Palmer
    July 25, 2016 at 6:10 pm

    I’ve been in Delve once since it launched. We also live in SharePoint.

    • Reply
      Jasper Oosterveld
      July 25, 2016 at 8:17 pm

      I just forget. I really love Delve & Analytics but it’s just not part of my daily routine. That being said, within a few years it’s going to be used within every business. I truly believe that.

    Leave a Reply

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.