Body:
Today, we are excited to announce that our digital storytelling app, Sway, is moving from Preview to General Availability! Sway is also moving beyond First Release and rolling out to all eligible Office 365 for business and education customers worldwide.* This makes it possible for many additional businesses, schools and other organizations to start using Sway to create and share interactive reports, presentations, assignments, lessons, projects and more. And of course, any consumer can use Sway with a free Microsoft account. Today, we are also introducing Sway for Windows 10, along with new layout and publishing capabilities.
We introduced Sway as a member of the Office family 10 months ago. Sway helps you create professional designs in minutes. You bring your ideas and raw content, and Sway’s intelligent design engine creates a polished, cohesive layout that helps your images, text, videos and other media flow together in a way that enhances your story. Sway makes sure your creations look great no matter what device they’re being viewed on—phones, tablets, laptops, PCs or even the largest Microsoft Surface Hub!
During Sway Preview, we’ve learned from the hundreds of thousands of amazing Sways you’ve built. Your invaluable feedback has helped us improve Sway to meet your needs—from adding fundamentals like multi-user collaboration, to the very “Sway” way we addressed photo cropping.
Sway for Windows 10 is now available
Sway for Windows 10 is now rolling out to the Windows Store. Sway for Windows combines the full richness of Sway on the web with additional capabilities on your PC or tablet.** This means you can use all of Sway’s integrated content sources along with the power of the built-in design engine to build, edit and share your Sways, whether you’re on the go with your Windows tablet or working at your desk with a PC or laptop. Want to capture the moment? Snap photos right into Sway using the built-in camera on your Windows device. And if you’re ready to present at a conference or to students and classmates, the Sways you’ve already loaded will be available offline when you don’t have Internet access or Wi-Fi is spotty. While some elements of your Sway may still need the Internet (such as interactive maps or cloud-hosted videos), this is a first step in addressing one of the most common feedback requests we heard during Sway Preview. Sway for Windows also allows you to stay logged in with multiple accounts at once if you use the same device for both work and home.
Sway for Windows offers a rich, consistent experience that integrates with your PC/tablet.
This initial release of Sway on Windows 10 is for PCs and tablets. We’re working on Sway for Windows Phones, which will arrive in the coming months. Stay tuned for more!
Present with confidence
Sway’s built-in design engine makes sure your creations look great not only on any device they’re viewed on but in whatever layout you’ve chosen as well. Sway already offers vertical scrolling and horizontal panning layouts where your content flows continuously as you swipe. One of the most popular requests we heard during Sway Preview was for another layout that lets you better control the timing of when content is revealed, particularly for presentation scenarios.
So, today we’re rolling out a new layout in the Navigation pane, which displays groupings of content (images, text, videos, tweets, etc.) one screen at a time. Whether it’s a few words with a knockout background image, a set of images and supporting bullet points, or a cluster of interactive elements, now you can deliver a killer presentation in-person or for viewing across many devices. Check out this interactive example:
Sway now has a layout for grouping collections of content, one screen at a time.
Share your Sways with the world using Docs.com
You’ve also been asking for a place where you can publish collections of your Sways to share with friends, fans and the rest of the Internet community. We’re excited to announce that with just a tap or click of the Share button, you can now choose to publish Sways directly to the newly relaunched Docs.com, an Internet destination to publish Office documents in full fidelity for the world to find, browse and share. Along with adding support for Sway, we’ve also improved the overall Docs.com experience for publishing, managing and consuming content.
Docs.com lets you organize your Sways and other Office content into collections. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Office Mix files are displayed interactively and with full fidelity. You can also add PDFs and web links. Create a stylish Docs.com profile page using a Sway to share more about your passions and expertise. On Docs.com, Sways, documents, collections or profiles can be discovered by search engines, browsed on Docs.com, and shared in social media or on the web. Docs.com provides data on how many views you’re getting, and it’s easy for anybody viewing your Docs.com files to add comments and discover your other published work as well.
With just a tap or click, you can publish your Sways to Docs.com for the world to find, browse and share.
Sway is being used by so many people in such amazing ways
It’s been wonderful to see people use Sway in ways we anticipated, and it’s been incredible to watch them use Sway in really cool and inspiring ways we hadn’t even imagined.
For example, teachers have been using Sway to reimagine class lessons, recap class projects, provide supplemental material for parents, provide new accessible storytelling tools to their students and more. Sway has helped students breathe new life into school projects, class reports and even personal portfolios. Sway is helping even the youngest students become “active producers of their own original content” at the Bureau of Fearless Ideas (BFI), a local non-profit after-school program in Seattle. Watch this video to learn more:
As Sue from BFI explains, with Sway, students are “learning without realizing they’re learning, which is […] the gold standard.”
In business, professionals have been using Sway to save time at work and easily create engaging, eye-catching interactive reports, presentations, newsletters, trainings and more. Sway can help you showcase a custom solution your IT services company built or demonstrate your industry thought leadership. Use Sway’s new format to blog publicly or share expense report training with your employees. Pitch prospective clients or attract customers with marketing materials that stand out and flow responsively across devices. Here at Microsoft we’re using Sway ourselves for internal trip reports, presentations, newsletters, corporate storytelling pieces and more—we even used Sway to share and collaborate on our plans for today’s announcements!
Check out the following video on how Sway has helped the interaction design firm Potion work together with clients and show off their work in new ways:
Potion Design Principal, Phillip Tiongson, explains how his firm uses Sway professionally.
As you can see in the video below about singer/songwriter Daria Musk, Sway has been a hit with musicians as well as digital artists and creatives of all sorts to combine mixed multimedia in a living digital collage or virtual portfolio that is easy to share with others. Sway has been helping talented and passionate hobbyists, foodies, travelers and even families stay in touch, share their adventures, and highlight their pursuits in meaningful new ways!
Singer/songwriter Daria Musk demonstrates how she uses Sway creatively to make a “living, breathing mood board” for her music.
Get started with Sway today
Professionals, teachers, students and consumers can all get started right away using your work, school or Microsoft accounts to log in to Sway.com, the new Sway for Windows 10 or updated Sway for iPhone and iPad. Sway is also integrated into the web-based Office Online, so it’s easy to switch between Sway and other familiar Office apps and Office 365 services in your browser and at Office.com.
Quickly access Sway alongside your other Office 365 apps and services and at Office.com (not shown).
Sway Preview has been an amazing journey over the last 10 months, but in many ways the journey really gets going today. We’ll keep listening to your feedback and rapidly update the product with your help. Drop us a line on UserVoice to let us know what you think of Sway, how you use it, and how you’d like to see it improve!
—Sway team, @Sway
*Sway is available to most customers with an Office 365 plan that includes Office Online, Office 365 Business, or Office 365 ProPlus. For Government Community Cloud (GCC) customers and customers in certain geographies, Sway will be made available at a later date. Some legacy Office 365 plans that are no longer in market as of August 2015 may also not have access to Sway.
**Sway for Windows is now available in 214 markets: Åland Islands, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antarctica, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bonaire, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bouvet Island, Brazil, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Colombia, Republic of Congo, Congo (DRC), Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Croatia, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Faroe Islands, Fiji Islands, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Gabon, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Channel Islands – Guernsey, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Honduras, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Channel Islands – Jersey, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau SAR, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Pitcairn Islands, Poland, Portugal, Réunion, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sint Maarten (Dutch part), Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Spain, Sri Lanka, Saint Helena, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, United States Minor Outlying Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Venezuela, Vietnam, Wallis and Futuna, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Source: https://blogs.office.com/2015/08/05/sway-general-availability/