Microsoft Monthly August - September

Welcome back to another Microsoft Update where we summarise some of the latest headlines from Microsoft, so that you don’t have to. 

AI is the topic of the month with a new report for Microsoft forecasting that Generative AI could add a massive $76 billion/ year to New Zealand’s GDP by 2038. As some of the world’s fastest adopters of AI, workers could be set to save an average of 275 hours PER YEAR by using generative AI. Word for Windows has also taken a leap forward in accessibility with their ‘Quick Fix’ functionality, and new Sharepoint features enable collaboration and restoring of content from version history.

Generative AI expected to more than double New Zealand’s productivity

A recent report by Accenture looked at more than 19,000 tasks performed across 400 occupations in New Zealand to model how their productivity might be improved by generative AI. The analysis found that 24% of tasks could be augmented by using AI and 14% could be automated. This culminates in a saving of ~1 hour per day, adding up to 275 hours each year. It is also projected to add $76 billion to NZ’s GDP by 2038, equivalent to twice the size of the current construction sector.

Realising these gains is not without its challenges. Despite New Zealand workers being the 3^rd fastest adopters of generative AI tools globally, there is still a significant ‘BYO AI’ culture as organisations catch up and introduce their own AI solutions.

“For many organisations, the focus to date has been “how can AI reduce costs”, which is understandable in the current environment. But we can’t just be looking at generative AI as an opportunity to save money – it’s our chance to do more than we ever dreamed was possible, experiment and take risks, to take our whole economy to the next level,” said Vanessa Sorenson, Managing Director of Microsoft New Zealand.

Read the article here.

Quick Fix tool to resolve accessibility issues in Word documents

Microsoft recently introduced a one click ‘Quick Fix’ tool in Word for Windows that supports users to create more inclusive documents.

To launch the Accessibility Assistant, select Review > Check Accessibility

This will group all of the accessibility issues present within the document in a ‘Quick Fix’ pane, allowing you to select and resolve them all at once!

Check out Microsoft’s feature deep dive for more information.

Coauthoring on a page or news post

You can now edit a SharePoint page or news post at the same time as others. Once you’ve shared your page or news post, you’ll see who else is working on it and what changes they’re making. This feature is called coauthoring or real-time collaboration.

Learn more about co-authoring, see Collaborate on Sharepoint pages and news.

Reverting changes using Version History

To undo changes, Sharepoint authors can use ‘Undo’ to undo the most recent changes by the current user in the current browser session. To undo more changes or changes made by other users, authors can restore a prior version from Version History. ​​​​

Note: The Discard changes command has been removed as it is no longer needed. Authors can use Undo and Version History to revert to a previous version.

You can see the version history of a Sharepoint page or news post and compare versions, including comparing changes visually on the page. You can see when a page was changed and who changed it. If you need to, you can restore a previous version or delete a previous version.

For details on how to use version history, see Compare page versions in SharePoint.