Collaborating with Office X for Mac

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A few months ago, after Microsoft released Office XP, we took a look at the new collaboration features it offered, showing how they could be useful to intranet teams (see Working Together with Microsoft Office XP). Now that Office v. X for Mac is out, people who work in a cross-platform environment might wonder what new collaboration tools it brings to the mix. Does it even support the tools put out in Office XP? The answer is that, while it does make working cross-platform more seamless than ever, the best collaboration tools haven't made it to the Mac just yet.

That might seem strange since both Office XP and v. X were created by the same company, and released within months of each other. So why shouldn't both have the same features? Because the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU), which developed Office v. X, doesn't have all that much to do with the Windows-using rest of the company. The MacBU creates software with a different audience in mind, says Product Manager Erik Ryan, and is free to add or delete features as it thinks will suit its Mac-using audience.

When you get down to it, adding new features wasn't even the primary goal of the Office v. X team. Its top priority was recoding the entire Office suite, so that it would perform under Apple new operating system, OS X. They did it in just under a year, delivering one of the first major programs for the OS. While they attempted to add enough new features to justify the steep price, the main benefit of Office v. X is that it runs in OS X, so users don't need to use "Classic," the version of OS 9.x that runs within OS X.

Don't bother looking for some of the big collaboration highlights from Office XP. SharePoint, for example, which makes it easy to set up protected, shared intranet sites, isn't here. Neither is the group invitation calendar function. But there are still a few things that can make working on teams a bit easier.

Crossing Platforms
One of the biggest headaches about having a Windows and Macintosh office is simply exchanging documents. Because Macs don't require a three-letter suffix on the end of files, PCs can't open Mac files easily. Of course, users can always append that ".doc" - or whatever suffix - by themselves, but it's often forgotten. With Office v. X, it's automatic, so there's no way to forget. In Word, for example, when users indicate what kind of document they're saving - whether it's a standard Word document or in Rich Text Format- Word appends the correct suffix.

Time Zone Trouble
Most of the improvements to Office v. X fell to Entourage, Office's e-mail, calendar, and contact manager, which makes sense, as Entourage is the newest member of the team. (Starting with Office 2001, it took over for Outlook Express.) One feature in the latest Entourage simplifies scheduling for team members working in different time zones. If you've ever missed a meeting because you calculated a time zone difference incorrectly, you'll appreciate it. Users enter the time for a meeting in their calendar, then go to the Event menu and select Time Zone. From there, they can select from a long list of time zones and cities. Entourage automatically calculates the correct time for your own time zone, and enters that data in your calendar.

Here's to Future Days
That's not much to recommend Office v. X for intranet teams, or any other kind of workgroup, and the MacBU seems aware of the fact. Now that they've caught up with Mac OS X, which was no small feat, they can put their imaginations to work thinking up new features for the next incarnation. There's still the question, though, of what will best serve the Mac user. Do the typical Mac users even need group collaboration features?

According to Microsoft, as it put the finishing touches on Office v. X, they heard from users that collaborative features are important to them. So with the next version, they plan on adding more collaborative functionality.

So the best is yet to come. Office v. X is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool for Mac business professionals, but for real team features, you'll need to wait a year or two.

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