OK, maybe it’s not as frustrating as convincing a two-year-old to stop flushing random things down the toilet, but trying out allegedly "foolproof" new apps only to find that you can’t do the simplest of things — like share a grocery list with your family — can get annoying fast.
That’s what happened when I experimented with Microsoft’s Wunderlist, the app that’s supposed to help you organize your life and your business. While it worked fine for me as an individual, when I sent my husband an email through the app inviting him to join me in making a grocery list, he never received it. When I convinced him to download the app from Google Play onto his phone and then find a way onto “Our” grocery list, it didn’t work either.
“Can’t I just send you an email with the stuff I want from the store?” he pleaded.
I wrote to Wunderlist’s support team for help. It took them more than a day to respond. They suggested that maybe I misspelled my husband’s email address or that he misspelled mine. Nice try.
I finally got my husband to sign in using my credentials in order to add to the list … that worked. But he has no interest in going through all of that again and I’m tired of badgering.
Now think about bringing this kind of experience into the workplace.
Wunderlist, at least for now, is not a hit on my list, regardless of its great promise.
Forget PowerPoint, Sway is Here
It’s hard to imagine a presentation that doesn’t include a PowerPoint. But it’s hard to imagine a PowerPoint that, from a visual perspective, looks truly inspired. The same can be said for Excel and Power BI.
PowerPoint and Excel were built at a different time for different world. Static versus interactive. Cast in stone versus dynamic.
Though Microsoft insists that Sway wasn’t created as a PowerPoint replacement, it won’t take long before it becomes one. Sways are simply too easy to make and too aesthetically pleasing not to use.
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
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Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
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Accelerating Content Velocity Across the Digital Supply Chain
Learn to integrate DAM with upstream tools to improve workflow efficiency.
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Composable Commerce The Future of Retail
The Adobe Commerce approach to composable and why it's best in class
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Drive Business Growth Through Customer Service and Support
Defining the future of technology. What is AI’s role in the future of customer service?
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26
Future-proofing Your Marketing Through Better Customer Understanding
Understanding your customers and how to reach them in real-time across all channels
Webinar
Mar
30
An Optimized Customer Contact Strategy Combines Transparency and Intelligence: The State of Outbound Communications
Learn from the Neustar-commissioned Forrester Consulting study on challenges and solutions for contact centers
Webinar
Apr
5
Adopt a Modern Digital-First Marketing Strategy
Learn how to use a composable DXP to your advantage
Besides, it’s virtually foolproof whether you’re 15 or 90 (the extremes of my test market). And with its release from beta last week and the introduction of Sway for Windows 10, more people can get their hands dirty with it.
All of that being said, PowerPoint will remain the choice for certain people in certain use cases.
OneDrive for Business Needs Vision
In Gartner’s most recent Magic Quadrant for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing solutions, Microsoft One Drive for Business ranked eleventh when it comes to “Completeness of Vision.” Solutions as diverse as Citrix ShareFile, Syncplicity, Box, Accellion, Google Drive for Work, WatchDox by Blackberry, Egnyte, Dropbox for Business, AirWatch by VMWare and Intralinks all outranked it. And Huddle, which isn’t even trying to be an EFSS provider, scored similarly.
One Drive for Business came in at a much healthier position (tied for third or fourth) when it comes to execution.
The bright light here is that Microsoft knows that OneDrive for Business has issues.
Any Other Contenders?
These are my picks for Microsoft’s productivity hits and misses thus far this summer. What are yours?
