Box announces deepened integrations with Microsoft 365

At BoxWorks 2021, Box today made several announcements including deepened integrations with Microsoft 365. First, Box will support real-time co-authoring on the Office desktop and mobile apps. Instead of OneDrive, customers can choose to save all their edits to Box storage. Second, Teams users can select Box as their default storage instead of OneDrive. Find the details below.

• An enhanced Box for Microsoft Office integration to enable real-time co-authoring on the Office desktop and mobile apps – including Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint – with all edits automatically saved to Box. Complementing the existing web-based Office Online integration, users will now be able to simultaneously collaborate on documents across desktop, web, and mobile.
• An updated Box for Microsoft Teams integration that will allow customers to default to Box as a storage option in Teams. Box and Microsoft have hundreds of thousands of joint customers, and this update will eliminate content fragmentation by unifying content in Box under a consistent security, compliance, and governance policy.
• Additional control and choice for IT organizations, including granular options at the individual, team, and organizational levels, to streamline the deployment process.

“We know teams need flexibility and integrated experiences that power collaboration and productivity—especially now with hybrid work,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, Chief Operating Officer & Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices Group. “We are delivering more streamlined experiences across our applications to make sure that customers using both Box and Microsoft 365 can easily and securely use our products together.”

The enhanced Box for Microsoft Office integration is expected to be available in early 2022 and the Teams integration is expected to be available by the end of the year.

Source: Box