Microsoft Presents New Way to Get Work Done with GigJam - The UpStream

Microsoft Presents New Way to Get Work Done with GigJam

posted Sunday Jul 19, 2015 by Nicholas DiMeo

Microsoft Presents New Way to Get Work Done with GigJam

Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference was this week in Orlando, and it allowed the company to show off some new products and services that were outside the Windows 10 craze. On that list was a new service that helps you get work done. No bells, no whistles, just productivity.

Project GigJam, as it's been called for a while now, was in development for several years before it was announced at WPC 15. It's a simple an easy way to not only do work, but allow others to see and collaborate on your work. GigJam operates by taking a task and disassembling it into individual steps and focus points. You can assign people or groups certain tasks, connect to other software apps to grab information or even jump into internal databases to extract the data you need for the project at hand.

Running off of Microsoft's complex and efficient Azure Web Services, GigJam can be installed to any of the popular operating systems. Geared towards business power users, the entire system works using APIs, meaning there isn't special integration that's required to make GigJam work for you.

GigJam doesn't tout itself to be a new single product. As Microsoft's GM of Ambient Computing and Robotics Vijaty Mital puts it,

(Gigjam is) a new and different kind of productivity offering. We turn every task in an application into a multi-person app, all at the speed of communication. GigJam is doing something unprecedented. It's an entirely new system. it's ultra-light weight and follows standard protocols of HTTP, OAuth, REST, HTML/JavaScript, and more.

Microsoft's TechNet blog laid out two scenarios that GigJam is perfect for.

  • A physical therapist who previously worked alone to create a rehab protocol now involves the patient and the patient's family (each interacting from their own devices), all the while making sure that sensitive physician's notes and the patient's records are appropriately shielded.
  • An engineer assigned to inspect an aircraft fuselage can opportunistically accelerate the work by divvying up some of it for a couple of colleagues who happen to be nearby and free, while still maintaining personal responsibility through the ability to review the colleagues' input before committing it.

A sign-up link is on GigJam's homepage, where you'll be notified when the service goes live if you provide an email address. I'm very curious to see how the system works and have already signed up. If it can improve efficiency for businesses simply by making it easier to work together and gather information, then the Microsoft team has hit another home run this year.

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