What is Delve, and how can it help your projects?

You’ve probably seen the Microsoft 365 Delve App in your Microsoft 365 navigation menu and wondered what is it and how you can use it to be more productive within my construction organization?

Microsoft 365 all apps

Webster defines the word delve as “to make a careful or detailed search for information.” Microsoft Delve does precisely that.

Delve was released in 2015, and it is included with specific Microsoft 365 subscriptions depending on the plan you have.  Delve aggregates relevant files from across Microsoft 365 and displays them in an easy-to-understand file-specific content card. Delve provides robust search across Office documents, PDFs, One Note Sections, images, and videos from One Drive and SharePoint.  

Delve navigation

To determine which content to present to you, Delve uses Microsoft Graph’s machine learning capabilities. The more frequently you modify the content, the better odds that it will be displayed higher in the list of available cards. Only content that you have access to will be displayed, and although your personal files might show in Delve, they will not be visible with others in the organization unless you choose to share them. To help with searching and to organize the cards, you can add tags, either as Boards or Favorites, to your cards.

In addition to presenting Microsoft 365 content, Delve is also an employee directory of your tenant users. By default, Delve displays the Microsoft 365 User profiles of all organization members, including phone number, email, location, etc. You can add additional metadata to your Profile, such as which projects you are currently working on, your skills and expertise, and education. All of the other metadata you add is also automatically searchable across your organization.

Delve profiles

So, how can I use it for a construction organization?

• Suppose you need to get to a file as fast as possible without going into a specific application such as a Teams site, SharePoint, or OneDrive. In that case, you can use Delve as your Microsoft 365 landing page and see all of your relevant files in one place.
• You may need a better way to organize relevant files. Unfortunately, files might have odd file naming conventions, reside in hard-to-find nested folders, or existing in many different file formats.  This situation could occur when preparing a proposal or a bid package where you may need to aggregate multiple files into a single presentation. With Delve, you can add tags to organize their associated cards in a more intuitive manner that best suits your work style and the deliverable, so the users don’t have to save their files into another separate location.
• If you are looking for a specific skill set or experience on your team, Delve can give you a quick and easy way to search the entire organization. With the additional metadata that users can add to their Profile, you can turn Delve into a searchable database of employee skills and experience the next time you have to put together a proposal or build project teams.

While Delve seems like one of those apps that you might want to investigate further, unfortunately, some black clouds are on the horizon. Microsoft has removed the Windows 10 Delve app and has announced at Ignite 21 that it will be removing Delve mobile for iOS and Android in June of this year. In its place, Microsoft is directing users to the Outlook mobile, which includes similar features to Delve. This could signal that the end of days for Delve, which is a shame because it does have some potential for enhancing your productivity. It might also be Microsoft’s intention to release a newer app that could consolidate Delve into the new Project Cortex, which utilizes Microsoft Graph as well. We will have to wait and see. Until then, give it a try and let us know your thoughts.

If you need any help with Microsoft 365 for your construction organization, check out our managed services by visiting LydonSolutions.com, where you can sign up for a free consultation. If you are interested in our prebuilt enterprise-ready PMIS for your Microsoft 365, visit our catalog of available Construction Viz apps and/or submit a demo request.