Microsoft Brings Collaboration To New Office Tool Sway

Remember Sway? It’s a recent addition to Microsoft’s Office suite, blending together note taking, presenting, and now, collaboration. The software is notable in that it was launched first in-browser, a step away from the traditional, desktop-focused Office apps like Word and Excel.
Sway was opened to the general public in December of 2014. At the time, Microsoft noted that it had picked up a million unique visitors to Sway’s website, and 175,000 “requests to join.” Presumably those figures are now far surpassed. I’ve asked Microsoft for refreshed numbers, and will update this post when I hear back from the firm.
TechCrunch has kept an eye on Sway since its introduction because it’s a new page of sorts for the Office crew — if you were going to build a new Office product, what would it be? Microsoft seems comfortable with Sway sitting somewhere on a cloud, in between the use-cases of Word, and Power Point.

Also out today is the ability to copy Sways, so that you can have a version of your own. That will be useful among groups, when people might want to preserve a specific version or the like for later use.
Microsoft lagged behind Google in bringing real-time collaboration to its productivity tools, and has yet to finish the project. It’s good, therefore, to see the company keep the work moving forward.