Microsoft Build 2018 – Keynote 2 Summary

Microsoft 365 Platform: Windows + Office + Graph

Joe Belfiore, CVP Windows

We see the world evolving. We see solutions being built in compinaion of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. We believe in data and AI, in devices that are multi-sense.Today we focus on Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 is a product suite with Windows, Office and EMS. Microsoft wants M365 to embrace multi-device, multi-sense use, vision. Also part of M365 are experiences lit up by the Graph to make the lives of end users better.

Windows – new productivity across devices

The Windows 10 experience is evolving to give better productivity across devices. Over 200 milion corporate accounts using Windows 10.

Windows PCs working with other devices with Timeline. It is ramping to milions of people with the April Update. Timeline is based on Graph, it enabled cross device experiences. Now is the time for your apps to post the activity to Graph. With the Graph data in the cloud, Microsoft will start experimenting to make better user experiences.

Mobile experiences. Microsoft Launcher is bringing the fluent customer first experience to the Android devices. Announcing Microsoft Launcher for Enterprise, a customizable and secure launcher for a more productive experience.

Microsoft is focused on making the phone a great second screen. Announcing Timeline on Phone, for iOS and Android.

One Timeline. All your devices.

Announcing a new way to bring your phone and PC together. Instant access to your phone’s photos, text messages and more… now on your PC.

Your phone and PC work together for you and on your behalf.

A better desktop user experience is staying organized with sets. The key idea of sets is to improve the experience with many tab pages being open in the browser, switching between applications. Recent web tabs right at your fingertips with Alt Tab. The act of switching between things remains smooth with Sets. There is a memory of what you were doin in combination so you are right back where you left off. This is stored in the Graph so it will have support in the Timeline. Now is the time to think about how to incorporate Sets into your apps.

Windows Developers – modernized apps, improved deployment and a great dev box

Fluent Design System, a community driven effort to understand how apps can work across devices.

You can enable great user productivity in multi-device, multi-code base reality. Microsoft has been working on decoupling on the Windows platform. Two new areas of innovation. UWP XAMP Islands for Winforms, Win32 and WPF. All Windows apps can access Fluent. Developers can better tailor Windows apps for desktop.

Word with WinML. Word has been improved with Machine Learning, e.g. trained the grammar checker.

Announcing Windows UI Library, native platform controls.

Pragmatic deployment solutions for .NET. Announcing .NET Core 3.0 for WinForms, WPF and WinForms. Multiple instances of Core side by side.

Packaging with MSIX providing full containerized solution. Announcing MSIX packaging tool to convert Application catalog. Announcing MSIX on Windows 7.

Best dev box with backend services, using ML, AI, bots, any language and framework.

Best dev box for all.

We fixed Notepad.

Give feedback and let’s build the best dev box together.

Announcing Windows Insider Preview SDK.

All this stuff is available to consumer developers. Announcing new revenue share model. Later this year the revenue sill be increased to 85% to you if someone finds and installs the app in the Store and 95% if found directly. This makes it the most developer friendly store in the ecosystem.

Office development

Start thinking about your apps like value that you create that can live in more places. The work that you do can appear in places where people collaborate, like Teams and Outlook, but also in Excel and Timeline.

Excel Services in the Cloud: Custom JavaScript code that looks and behaves like any function in Excel. Make it available to everyone in the organization with centralized deployment.

Extend Outlook experiences with adaptive cards to engage with users right in the flow of their conversation. Reach your users wherever they are. This will eliminate all the context switches that costs us precious time.

Announcing Payments in Outlook. Integrated with Microsoft Pay. You can pay your invoices right inside of Outlook all in your flow without leaving Outlook. Microsoft partnered with many companies to build adaptive cards.

Go to adaptivecards.ai to design your adaptive card and write the code in Visual Studio. Developers can increase user engagement with adaptive cards in Outlook.

You can communicate in a secure way with Teams. Teams is used by 200K organizations. Engage directly in the flow of conversation, powered by the insights and intelligence of Graph.

Announcing SharePoint pages in Teams.

The cost of context switching can become expensive and a conversational AI bot can find what you are looking for fast without disrupting the flow of your conversation.

Take advantage of the new messaging features. Conversation can be infused by data. Users can query your service, developers can extend every facet of their app inside Teams.

Announcing that companies can bring in apps in the store.

Microsoft Graph

you can connect data and intelligence using Graph. On any device as long as it can do http request. Graph is your data in M365, hosted by Microsoft. You control it and you manage it. For developers, Graph is accessible via REST API graph.microsoft.com.