Not content with implementing XML (Extensible Markup Language) as
the underlying format for its next Office productivity suite,
Microsoft will be using the cross-application capabilities this
brings to add new features and improve workgroup interactivity,
writes Eric Doyle.
The features and functions were revealed when Microsoft launched
the initial beta test of version 11 of Office to a select group of
users last week. The company has not revealed how many testers have
received copies but it is believed to be in the region of 3,000,
with a broader public beta test due to start early next year.
Office 11 will be given an official product name - expected to
reflect its .net Web services capabilities - when the final release
goes on sale in the middle of 2003. Pricing will also be revealed
nearer the shipping date.
XML, the tagging standard for structuring data within an
application, will allow Office applications to directly access and
display formatted Web pages in the same way as a Web browser does
today.
Similarly, documents created in Office can be posted to a Web site
without requiring specialised formatting. This is just the basic
role XML will play - tagged data will be put to other uses in what
Microsoft is calling "smart documents".
In Office XP, Microsoft introduced smart tags, which were
originally intended to "sense" specific events and react
accordingly. An event might be a user writing a person's name: this
would cause the smart tag to draw in information, such as the
company the person worked for and its address, and an icon would
appear which, when clicked on, could pull this information into the
document.
Smart documents take this concept further by allowing
context-specific information relating to the document to be
presented to the user. Microsoft gives the example of an expense
report which could provide a link to an online mobile phone bill or
credit card statement and could even make the company expense
reporting policy document available.
These extra resources would be presented in a task pane displayed
down one side of the screen beside the document or spreadsheet
being worked on.
User concerns about security forced Microsoft to rethink its smart
tags policy but the company has presumably addressed this issue for
smart documents. There will also be concerns regarding the ability
to access XML documents from non-Microsoft products and browsers
over the Web because this could be taken advantage of by hackers.
On the workgroup front, Office will be tightly integrated with
Microsoft's Sharepoint Team Services collaboration environment.
Documents can be made available across a workgroup to allow several
people to work on the same document and will show what changes have
been made as the document develops.
On a product-specific basis, Microsoft has only revealed its plans
for the Outlook e-mail manager. The most radical change is in
Outlook's interaction with the Exchange e-mail server. Instead of
storing e-mails on the server, they will be downloaded to the
client computer and regular synchronisation will keep the user
updated.
This not only allows managers to save server space but also enables
faster and wider searches for specific e-mails and groups of
e-mails.
Searches will encompass a single e-mail folder, a group of folders
or the whole of Outlook. Finds can then be moved or copied to a new
folder for easy access at a later date.
What is a smart document?
Through the use of XML-tagged
data, smart documents allow context-specific information relating
to an Office file to be presented to the user. Thus an expense
report could provide a link to an online mobile phone bill or
credit card statement.