Will Yammerized Office help to shape CAD/PLM social future?

To connect relevant pieces of information is one of the long time dreams developed by many PLM vendors. The pieces of data in design, engineering, manufacturing are intertwined. However, in many situations they are managed by different systems and/or located in different places. Communication behaviors are applied on top of these pieces of information. Lots of communication behaviors and data sharing was captured by social networks these days.

I’ve been following what Microsoft is doing with social systems earlier in early versions of SharePoint and later with Yammer acquisition. Take a look on some of my earlier write ups here – Will Microsoft Yammer Kill Social PLM… Not yet. I’ve been reading CRN article Microsoft Deepens Yammer Integration With SharePoint Online, OneDrive For Business during the past weekend. The article speaks about an interesting feature – Document Conversation. The following passage explains that:

Microsoft Tuesday unveiled a new feature called Document Conversations, which adds Yammer conversations to more than 30 different file types, including Office documents, images and videos. When a user opens a document, image or video file in their browser from SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business, a contextual Yammer conversation pops up. From there, users can talk with other colleagues to get more insight about the file…

You can get more details in the Office blog article. The following video shows a little preview how it supposed to work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=qdL43ID0ccQ

Office/Yammer document conversation feature made think again about how important to have the ability to add contextual features applied to a specific content. By doing that, you have the ability to step down on the more granular level of communication between people. In the past, I’ve seen similar features applied in CAD and 3D model viewers tools as well. Navigate to one of my previous posts – From design collaboration to CAD social tools shows similar functionality in AutoCAD 360, Dassault UC tools and Vuuch design discussion.

One of the most important element of discussion is to have the ability to apply it to a specific “context” in the document / file / 3D model. It will make collaboration more precise and efficient.

What is my conclusion? The idea to make a contextual conversation applied to a specific content is the one that will allow to user to have a better, granular way to communicate. In the past world CAD/PDM/PLM world, “file” was the most granular communication medium. It is clearly not enough these days. To apply “document level” discussion and having the ability to identify granular context is the key. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg