Meet Office Graph, one of new series of Office apps that Microsoft is planning to launch exclusively for Office365 users to bring together information from sources such as Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, Office, Lync, and Yammer.

Project Oslo is the codename for the new offering which uses “personal interactions and machine learning to surface a view of the most relevant, timely information for each individual using Office 365”, according to the announcement.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jeff Teper said the new technologies will enable a networked way of working together in teams, in groups and across organisations that can result in better customer responsiveness, collaboration, information sharing, discoverability and more.

“Today, the world has become a giant network where connections make information more relevant and people more productive. Most companies, however, are not working like a network, which we believe is vital for their ability to improve collaboration and respond to customers, competition and market changes,” Teper said. 

“The new Office 365 experiences powered by cloud, social, mobile and big data technologies enable people and teams to find the right connections and most relevant insights to get more done.”

Groups is a new feature unifying people, conversations, calendars, emails and files across the Office 365 suite, enabling a seamless collaboration experience across applications. Creating a Group anywhere in Office 365 will automatically provision a corresponding Yammer conversation feed, calendar, document library and inbox where members can collaborate and work as a team. Just like in Yammer, Groups are open by default but can be made private if necessary, enhancing discoverability and sharing.

Microsoft also plans to offer Inline Social experiences throughout Office 365. The first experience planned for introduction is the ability to have social conversations inside documents stored in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.

After renaming its cloud storage service SkyDrive to OneDrive, thereby settling the conflict with British Sky Broadcasting Group, Microsoft has also announced OneDrive for will now be available as a standalone product, without having to sign up for Office 365 or SharePoint Online. 

Organisations that use OneDrive for Business as part of Office Online can get 25GB of storage for each employee, for US$5 per user per month, according to Microsoft. They can also buy additional storage capacity if they need it. 

Microsoft is also boasting of new features in OneDrive for Business (over SkyDrive Pro), such as simpler, more intuitive one-click controls, Site Folders view to visit document libraries of sites, improved search with auto-complete and result actions, easier access Web-based access, and improved connectivity and configuration options with SharePoint Server 2013.