Microsoft Delve is set to retire in December 2024 - here's everything you need to know on why hasn’t it worked out, what could it have done better, and is there a better way achieve the right outcomes? 

This blog covers:

• What Microsoft Delve did well 
• Where Microsoft Delve let itself down 
• What gap will Microsoft Delve leave? 
• Microsoft Delve replacement: how to leverage your people expertise information better
• Key recommendations for Microsoft Delve retirement
• Key outcomes for Microsoft Delve

The announcement that Microsoft Delve was going to be deprecated didn’t come as a surprise, Delve – December 2024 retirement. 

Conceptually it was grounded in rational thinking. A social engagement tool to learn more about your colleagues, what they are working on, who you and your colleagues engage with, and what content may be relevant to you.  

A cross between LinkedIn and Facebook for your organisation. Both very successful tools, whether you agree to like them or not.  

So, why hasn’t it worked out, what could it have done better, and is there a better way achieve the right outcomes? 

As soon as the concerns of content being shared due to incorrect permissions applied on the source material made its way into every conversation and the flexibility of what information someone could add about themselves, Delve struggled to keep up and clearly define its purpose. Was it an inward or outward facing tool? Was it for you or for others in your organisation? 

This article covers its good ideas, weaknesses, the gap left behind and the problem not addressed with a way to do so. 

What Microsoft Delve did well 

As a tool for “you”, it  

• Gave you a place to find and discover people and information that might be relevant to your work.  
• Provided a place to share information about yourself.

As a tool for “others”, it 

• Enabled them to understand a little bit more about you. 

• Showed them who you worked with and what you were working on. 

Where Microsoft Delve let itself down 

As a tool for “You” 

• It was competing against “line of business” applications, where you go to do your work, such as MS Office products and MS Teams/SharePoint. So, where you go to do the actual work, rather than going somewhere else first to then navigate back to the work. 

• It did not give you the ability to filter by metadata relevant to the items displayed. 

As a tool for “Others” 

• It was impossible to compare/analyse information about people to find out who could help with a subject. Compounded by the fact that there was no consistency in the information people could add about themselves and no ‘enforced’ relationship with what the business did. 

• It did not create a relationship between business information and what an individual may have contributed to or being involved in. 

What gap will Microsoft Delve leave? 

One of the most important aspects of engagement within an organisation is understanding what your colleagues know and do.  

Delve never truly addressed the need for managing and presenting expertise.  

The introduction of the Microsoft Profile Cards, which leverages the same backend information used by Delve, provided through the SharePoint User Profiles and Entra ID, provides enough capability around find and locating people and details of where they sit within an organisation. The Profile Card is “omnipresent”, in that every MS Office product uses it. Embedded into the “line of business” applications.  

However, we believe this still does not address the gap of managing and presenting expertise to “others”.  

Noting that for some organisations, the management of expertise may be done within a Human Resources (HR) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Those often do not include the relationship to content contribution, and in many cases the presentation and accessibility of this information is less than ideal. 

Microsoft Delve replacement: how to leverage your people expertise information better

Expertise information can be generated in several ways: 

1. Subjects that I say I am an expert in. 
2. Subjects that my organisation recognise I am an expert in.
3. Evidence of expertise through my contributions to items published regarding specific subjects.

Microsoft Delve replacement: how Atlas brings together three key elements 

• People data 

• Expertise information 

• Content contribution 

Key Benefits of Atlas

Atlas sits within your existing MS 365 tenancy so it can leverage information already available in SharePoint User Profiles and Entra ID, be connected to the content in MS Teams/SharePoint and if required, content from an HR or ERP system.  

•  Atlas people data can continue to be provided by SharePoint User Profiles and Entra ID, where relevant, such as telephone numbers, email address, job title, assistant, department, and location. 
• Atlas expertise information can come from an existing HR/ERP system or managed directly from within a central SharePoint list that Atlas searches.  
• Atlas content contribution relationship is delivered using content types that include the ability to add multiple contributors to any item and the work it relates to from within any MS Teams/SharePoint site. 
•  We deliver this by providing a People Expertise Directory from your Atlas knowledge intranet from within your MS Teams and SharePoint environment.  
• People can access a person’s Microsoft Profile Card from People Expertise Directory as they can with any Microsoft product and access a person’s profile page, if created. 
• Atlas provides relationships to the content a person has contributed to and the subjects that they have recognised expertise about, previous projects related to specific industry sectors, levels of qualifications, specialisms, etc. that you have captured.  

To achieve this, our recommendations are: 

1) Ensure you have a centrally managed source of ‘up to date’ expertise information that uses your organisations taxonomy, your language about the type of work, the sectors, jurisdictions, service lines, subjects, topics, qualifications, certifications, etc. that are relevant to what you may need to find out about people.

Think about the: 

• Bids/pitches/proposals you do and the kind of information you need to present.  
• Teams you need to put together for a project/matter/delivery and getting the right skills together. 

2) Decide what content you want people to be able to add themselves versus what needs to be managed/controlled for consistency.  

3 Have an easy process for people to submit their expertise, review and update the source of this information. When people move, then review and update accordingly. 

4) Link a person’s expertise page to one or more biographies that they might have about themselves. Including any external profile on the organisation website, LinkedIn, or other professional profile services. 

5) Ensure people are added to content as contributors, as the person who added or last modified a document is not always the “best” or most involved person in the creation of the actual content.  

6) Tag content with the same taxonomy and language you tag your people expertise with to create relationships across content. 

 What is the outcome of all of this? 

• Centrally managed expertise content. 

• Content contribution based on expertise rather than seeing “everything” someone may have added or modified. 

• Controlled lists so consistent use of terms rather than variations to easily find people who can help. 

• Searchable from one place and linked together. 
• Integrated with existing applications.