Remember the Past - Anticipate the Future

I’m writing this blog post immediately after watching Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, give his 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote. I couldn’t help be amazed after hearing him exclaim:

“Hotmail, which is the #1 email service worldwide, deeply integrating Microsoft Office - took major steps forward. In the first hundred days, we drove over 20 million people to use our Office Web Applications through Hotmail.”

This got me to think about how far the Office Web Apps have come, starting when Microsoft Office reached the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) milestone back in April 2010 to over 30 million customers today.

Looking Back at 2010:

Although this blog started when Microsoft Office 2010 entered technical preview in July 2009, it wasn’t until 2010 that the service was made generally available. Here is a brief list of the major milestones that we reached in that time.

• April 14 - Microsoft Office (and the Office Web Apps along with it) released to manufacturing.
• April 21 - Microsoft FUSE Labs releases docs.com which allows Facebook users to create and share Microsoft Office documents using the Office Web Apps.
• June 7 - The Office Web Apps were released to Windows Live SkyDrive in four regions: Canada, Ireland, US, and UK.
• June 14 - In conjunction with the general availability of Microsoft Office, the Office Web Apps receive their first update to address customer feedback. We added support for the Chrome browser and began integration with Windows Live Hotmail.
• August 23 - The Office Web Apps received their second major update to address customer feedback. The Word Web App editor received the ability to print, which was previously only available when viewing documents. It also added support for first-line indentation (although we only blogged about it on September 10.) The Excel Web App got the extremely popular drag-handle, as well as the ability to insert charts. The PowerPoint Web App got the ability to insert Clip Art, and many additional themes.
• September 23 - Listening to customer feedback once more, the Office Web Apps team introduced embedding of Excel and PowerPoint documents. We also expanded into seven more countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Russia, and Switzerland.
• November 15 - The Office Web Apps were added to Facebook’s new messaging service allowing people to view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents without installing an additional application to their Facebook account.
• December 6 – The Office Web Apps expanded to 15 additional countries: China, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong SAR, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and Turkey.

This list, of course, only includes the highlights of this past year. We are constantly improving the Office Web Apps to address customer feedback, fix bug reports, and increase performance.

Get Involved:

We simply cannot stress enough how amazing it is to hear from our customers and fans. While we get too much feedback to respond to each one individually, rest assured that we do read every word and take your opinions to heart. As you can see from the updates we made last year, the Office Web Apps team is working diligently to add the functionality that you’re asking for. To that end, I’d like to share a couple of ways that you can get involved and send us your thoughts and feedback:

• Our blog - You can leave feedback below every blog post. If you do not see the “Leave a comment” form, then you need only click on the post’s name and scroll down.
• Email Nick - If you’d rather share your feedback privately, e-mail Nick Simons. He will make sure it gets where it needs to.
• Facebook – The Office Web Apps have a Facebook group. “Like” us and interact with others who feel the same way.
• Twitter – Microsoft Office is on Twitter. Simply @reply them mentioning the Office Web Apps.
• Support forums – Running into a problem with the Office Web Apps? Ask in our support forums, where we’ll try to help you through it.

All of this is in addition to simply sending feedback from within the product by clicking on the Give Feedback link in the File menu of each web app.

The Road Ahead

The past year has been an amazing journey. All of us on the Office Web Apps team are proud of the work we’ve already accomplished, but even more excited about the work we’re currently doing and what’s coming next.

More importantly, however, is what you think. What do you think as the customer? What would you put on our end-of-year report card?

Rob Rolnick
Software Development Engineer, Office Web Apps