Drafting business documents is a piecemeal process that sees text filled in and refined over a period of time, often with input from multiple users. Microsoft Corp. is looking to streamline the workflow with a set of new productivity features for Word that it unveiled today.

At the core of the update is a capability for managing how content is added to a file. According to Microsoft, it brings interactivity to the placeholder text that workers leave in a document to mark incomplete sections or provide input for colleagues.

The capability relies on a new specially created text format rolling out with the update. When a worker leaves a note such as “TODO: finish this section” or “<<insert closing here>>,” Word will recognize the text as a placeholder and display it on a sidebar in a list view. Users can click on items to navigate automatically to the relevant part of the document.

The feature addresses what Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Office 365, described as an important element of Word users’ workflow.  

“Technologies like Editor — Word’s AI-powered writing assistant — make it an indispensable tool for the written word,” Spataro wrote in today’s announcement. “But at some point in the writing process, you’ll need some information you don’t have at your fingertips, even with the best tools. When this happens, you likely do what research tells us many Word users do: leave a placeholder in your document and come back to it later to stay in your flow.”

Microsoft intends these placeholders to be much more than just shortcuts. According to Spataro, the feature will also enable users to @mention colleagues and have Word automatically send them an email notification. The people on the receiving end can then add the requested text or image to the document simply by replying to the message.

Further down the road, placeholders will be integrated with Microsoft Search, the universal search tool that the company recently introduced for Office 365, Bing and Windows. The tool will use artificial intelligence to automatically suggest relevant content. For example, it might bring up a financial chart with sales figures for the latest quarter if users write “<<insert quarterly sales figures>>” in their placeholder.

The interactive placeholders are currently available in preview. They’re the latest addition to the growing lineup of AI-infused features that Microsoft provides with Office 365.

Photo: Microsoft