Microsoft rebrands Office 365, adds new AI-powered features
In a bid to expand its footprint and draw more users, Microsoft is rebranding its 'Office 365' subscription service into 'Microsoft 365'. The rebranded plan comes at the same $6.99 monthly price but its offerings have been expanded to include new AI-powered capabilities that can make both your work as well as day-to-day life a little easier. Here's all about it.
New Microsoft Editor to improve your writing
Microsoft's grammar correction is getting a major upgrade with Microsoft Editor, which is the company's take on Grammarly. The feature can provide advanced grammar and style suggestions, rewrite full sentences for fluency or readability, add more gender-neutral terms to reduce bias, or check for plagiarism and insert citations. It will be built in Word, Office Online, Outlook, and browsers through an extension.
Improved Presenter Coach for PowerPoint
Microsoft is also upgrading PowerPoint's AI-backed Presenter Coach, the feature that already listens to your presentation to suggest if you're simply reading the slides, using 'umm' plenty of times, or reading just too fast. Now, the capability can detect if your speech sounds too monotonous and suggest variations to make it more engaging; it can also suggest grammatical changes to make it more concise.
Money management in Excel
Another critical improvement comes in the form of money management features in Excel. Now, the platform can be used to connect to bank accounts and credit cards and keep a track of all the spending in one place. It imports balances and transactions and also generates alerts for fees and monthly spending, which actually makes sense for a spreadsheet management tool.
New Family Safety app
The Microsoft 365 subscription will also get you access to a new Family Safety app, which allows location sharing to help you track whereabouts of other members, especially kids. You can also use this app to manage screen time of members across devices and get notified on when they leave from work, home, or some other place, or are speeding on the road.
Personal features for Teams
Microsoft 365 will also let Teams users connect their personal accounts and use the service as a messaging app enhanced with various planning and collaboration tools. It can be used to share photos, coordinate schedules, assign tasks, and plan trips with family and friends.
When Microsoft 365 will be available?
All these features and many more, including new data types in Excel, work and personal calendar linking in Outlook, 300 new fonts, and thousands of Getty images/videos, will be available as part of the Microsoft 365 subscription. The Office features have already started rolling out, but everything else will debut on April 21, which is when Office 365 will be rebranded into Microsoft 365.
