SaaS Updates for April 15, 2016

Spring is clearly a time for new releases and feature updates. In today’s SaaS updates, Box announces a new regionally focused cloud solution, Microsoft introduces Classroom, a new Office 365 app, and Google furthers integrations in Microsoft Office with Google Drive.

Introducing a new home page experience for Office 365 users – Over the past month, Microsoft has been updating the Office 365 welcome page. The new welcome page has a new design and layout of all of the Office 365 apps. You can view your recently opened documents, whether you were last working in Word or in OneNote. Also, there’s a search bar at the top for you to easily scour through your library.

Asana for Android is now available in offline mode – The Asana app for Android recently turned one year old! To celebrate, Asana announced offline accessibility. If you’ve lost internet connection, you can still be productive and create tasks in Asana, check notifications, comments and conversations, adjust due dates and collaborators, and complete tasks. At the bottom of your screen, the app will keep count of your actions and when you’re back online, it will re-sync and upload your changes.

Box introduces Box Zones to enable regional cloud storage – See a cloud above Europe? You might just be looking at a Box Zone. With the introduction of Box Zones, organizations can store data in the cloud and honor a region’s data privacy and control policies.

Microsoft graduates to next level in education support – Microsoft has announced “Classroom,” an app available for Office 365 education users. The app functions as a learning management system. Teachers can create classes, assignments, and reminders, and send all of the information through reminders in Outlook. Also of note of the new platform, OneNote Class Notebook is tightly integrated with Classroom.