If your users aren’t using Microsoft Delve, it’s likely because they don’t know its purpose or how it can benefit their daily work. Let’s explore Microsoft Delve and the benefits it offers Microsoft Office 365 users.

What is Office Delve for Microsoft 365?

Delve is part of the Microsoft 365 suite. It is a powerful search engine for your Microsoft 365 system.

But it’s more than just a search engine. Microsoft Office Delve helps users find the information they need.

Delve pulls data from the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It’s smart, using AI and machine learning to show the most useful content.

Delve uses Office Graph technology. This connects interactions across millions of Microsoft 365 users. Machine learning identifies patterns and relationships to show relevant content.

Delve mainly gets information from SharePoint and OneDrive. It can also search for email attachments in Microsoft Exchange, content from Yammer, and user-uploaded media, as well as other connected apps and systems.

How Microsoft Delve Works?

Delve uses Microsoft Graph to show users a mix of content from Microsoft 365 based on what they are working on and who they work with in the organisation. Microsoft Graph is a unified model powered by data and intelligence. It has three key elements:

1. Microsoft Graph Data Connect delivers Microsoft Graph data to Azure data stores securely and scalably.
2. Microsoft Graph connectors link to external data sources like Google Drive, Jira, and Salesforce to improve Microsoft 365 experiences.
3. Microsoft Graph API offers a single endpoint to access rich data and insights in Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Delve uses these elements in Microsoft Graph to present useful information in Microsoft 365. It applies machine learning techniques to identify patterns and relationships, helping it understand what content is most relevant and useful to a Microsoft 365 user.

Delve can find information from Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Exchange (for email attachments), user-uploaded images and videos, Yammer, and content from third-party apps and systems connected to the user’s Microsoft account.

Key Features of Delve And How to Use Them

When enabled by a Microsoft 365 admin, Delve appears in the app launcher. Users can then access all its features.

Advanced search

We mentioned that Delve uses AI and ML to find the content you need. ML helps you understand the types of content you need when searching. AI helps interpret your search terms and applies them broadly.

Delve searches both the title and the document’s body. This is useful when you can’t recall the document’s name. You can search for phrases or keywords related to the document. You can also search by people to see their profile page and anything they have shared with you.

Content cards

Delve shows content in cards. Each card has a user’s name, photo, and latest activity. This helps others find relevant documents and understand why they appear in search results, such as if many colleagues viewed or edited the document recently.

Your Delve homepage

Each Delve user has a home page they can personalise by updating their profile. A profile page shows the user’s photo, contact details, skills, education, and projects. Person B can connect using the contact information provided when they visit Person A’s page. Person B can also see who Person A is collaborating with and what documents they are working on.

Boards

Delve users can create boards to save related documents. Adding a favourite document to a board makes it easy to find later. They can also create a board to organise documents for a specific project, allowing everyone involved to access and contribute to it.

Delve boards, like documents and people, are searchable. When an admin disables Delve, users can still search for people but not for documents or boards.

View content related to you

Delve’s AI and ML features show you relevant documents before you even search. It uses Office graph data to analyse your interactions with people, tools, and files in Microsoft 365. This helps provide content tailored to your needs. You will see this content as cards in your “Popular Documents” feed at the top of your Delve page.

My Analytics

Delve reviews the last four weeks of your activity to offer insights for better productivity and well-being at work. These insights are divided into four sections:

• Focus—Shows your available focus time and helps plan additional focus periods by scheduling them in your calendar and muting notifications.
• Wellbeing—Displays the number of “quiet” days in the past four weeks, which are days without significant activity outside work hours.
• Network—Identifies the people you interact with most often through emails, chats, and shared documents, including co-workers and colleagues in other organisations.
• Collaboration—Details the time spent collaborating via email, chats, and meetings and provides some analytics.

Collaborative space

Delve allows users to streamline their work by creating personal spaces within their accounts. They can curate the documents and files they use daily and find new, relevant content. Users can easily search for colleagues and collaborate by sharing, editing, and presenting information through Delve boards. Delve is a powerful tool for collaboration with other Microsoft Office users.

Security

If you’re a Microsoft 365 or SharePoint admin, you might worry about Office Delve’s security. But there’s no need. Delve tracks user data but doesn’t change your SharePoint permissions.

Delve respects existing permissions and blocks content users can’t access. Private activities, like accessed files and emails, remain private.

Delve’s data is stored in Microsoft’s Office Graph within your organisation’s SharePoint Online and Exchange Online partitions. This data enjoys the same protection and security as all other Microsoft cloud services.

Privacy

Delve maintains user privacy. Users control who can access their linked content. They choose who can see documents stored in Delve or any boards they’ve curated. Default permissions for files and folders follow the user’s settings.

SharePoint administrators set what users can view in Delve User Profiles through the SharePoint User Profile Service. Users can add personalised information like interests, hobbies, skills, and experience to their profiles based on these settings.

How to Use Microsoft Delve?

Access Delve from your Microsoft 365 app launcher. To maximise Delve’s benefits, teach users how to use it and encourage regular engagement. Microsoft offers guidance to Microsoft 365 and SharePoint administrators on introducing Delve to their organisation.

Microsoft Delve Benefits And Challenges

The main benefit of Delve is that it helps users find relevant content quickly. They can easily access documents they are working on and use its search features to connect and collaborate with others in the organisation. Users can also get updates on colleagues’ profiles and projects and organise project-related documents. Private activities, such as recently read documents and emails, remain hidden from others.

Another benefit of Delve is its ability to pull content from other Microsoft and third-party products like Office, Yammer, SharePoint, and Google Drive. For example, an employee who watched a PowerPoint presentation during a meeting scheduled through Microsoft Outlook can review the presentation later through Delve. They can also view Word documents that a coworker recently viewed or is working on for a project.

A challenge with Delve is that it requires users to maintain their profiles, which can be burdensome. Organisations must encourage regular use of Delve for it to be truly useful. This can be difficult, especially in organisations that use other collaboration tools and do not emphasise Delve as much.

Is Delve the Same as SharePoint?

SharePoint users might be confused about what Office Delve is, which is understandable. On the surface, SharePoint and Delve seem to offer many of the same features, and they both function as websites within the Microsoft Office environment. However, unlike SharePoint, Delve can anticipate what you’re looking for and return a broader array of results, increasing the likelihood that you’ll find what you need, as well as other relevant or related documents.

The key difference between Delve and SharePoint is you, the user. While Delve and SharePoint have some features in common, Delve offers an experience tailored to the individual user as opposed to a team or other group of users. In Delve, you can set up your own customised website within your organisation’s Microsoft 365 environment to quickly find the information you need, collaborate and share documents with colleagues, curate content, discover new, relevant documents and information, and streamline your workflows.

How to Access Delve?

Any Microsoft 365 user can access Delve in two ways:

1. Select Delve in the app launcher.
2. Open Delve in the browser.

Sign in with an official work account to use Delve. After signing in, a user can:

• See documents others are working on by clicking their name or picture.
• Add a document to favourites or a board by clicking the bookmark icon.
• Search for people, documents, or boards.
• Open, edit, copy, and share documents if they have permission.

Delve sends notifications when colleagues update or upload new documents. These notifications appear in the device’s Action Center and the notifications/people panel in the Office Delve app.

F.A.Q.s

What is replacing Microsoft Delve?

Microsoft is shifting focus to Microsoft Viva. Viva integrates well with Teams and SharePoint. It offers features similar to Delve, such as content discovery and employee engagement tools. Viva also includes insights and topics to improve productivity and collaboration. Users can expect a seamless experience with Microsoft Viva as it builds on Microsoft’s existing infrastructure. This transition aims to provide a more modern and cohesive approach to workplace tools.

Can you turn off Microsoft Delve?

If your organisation uses Delve, you can’t fully disable it, but you can hide documents. Choosing to hide documents means others won’t see any on your profile, and you won’t see documents on theirs.

Is Microsoft Delve going away?

Delve is set to retire in December 2024. Microsoft Viva will eventually replace Delve. Viva integrates with Teams and SharePoint. It helps users find content and stay engaged. Viva also offers insights and productivity tools, making online collaboration easier and more efficient. Viva builds on Microsoft’s current cloud services. Users will have a seamless experience tr