Microsoft Office 365: SharePoint Online New Features

Microsoft are committed to adding new features into their Cloud offerings and over the last week and a bit have been upgrading SharePoint Online to include some great new things:

BCS (Business Connectivity Services) – This enables companies to connect to external systems from within SharePoint. For more info, check this TechNet page – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee518675

Windows Phone 7 “Mango” Support – Enables newly upgraded Windows Phone users to access Sharepoint Online lists and document libraries.

Increased Browser Support – Now officially supports both IE9 & Google Chrome browsers

Recycle Bin Self Service – Self service ability to recover sites from a collection’s recycle bin

External Sharing Live ID support – Office 365 admins can now invite external users to a site collection and they sign in with their Windows Live ID

Of those, the addition of BCS is far and away the biggest and should make Sharepoint Online suddenly a viable option for a whole new set of organisations.

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