Central Desktop is a SaaS collaboration platform primarily aimed at the small to mid-size business market. I have covered them a number of times including these posts (Central Desktop Releases its 2.0 Version and Central Desktop Using Twitter for Sales, Service, and Brand Monitoring Conversations). I saw them at the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference and then spoke with CEO Isaac Garcia afterwards.

Isaac said that 65% of the documents stored on Central Desktop are Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) files and they decided to more directly address these users. They recently announced details about Central Desktop for Office, a new cloud-enabled document collaboration tool for Microsoft Office users that will be available later this summer. Central Desktop for Office allows users to simultaneously co-author Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in real time, as well as open and save files directly into the cloud.

I asked Isaac how the simultaneous co-authoring works. Central Desktop’s co-authoring feature enables multiple users to edit Office files simultaneously, by conveniently tracking and syncing all changes made by collaborators and merging them correctly into one updated version. It is not exact real time like Google Wave but rather a back and forth capability that operates like chat. I like this better as control is swapped rather than inviting the potential chaos of simultaneous real time edits. Below you can see a Word document opened with the tool bar at the top and the editing participants in the left column.

What I especially liked was the ability to have a comment dialogue occur around the document editing. It makes the Office docs social. Each participant can see the comments and others can be alerted to them if they request to see such updates. Central Desktop for Office leverages technology from OffiSync and is compatible with any version of Microsoft Office including 2003, 2007 and 2010. So you can make older versions of Office more social, as well as Office 2010. Below you can see the commenting feature in the lower left column.

Once installed, Central Desktop for Office adds a new toolbar in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint that enables users to open, save, edit and co-author files stored in the cloud – directly from within Office. The new tool also brings additional collaboration capabilities into Office including the ability to comment on files, manage subscribers and track version history.

Isaac said they are considering more features for the toolbar such as the ability for Skype calls and micro-blogging.  Central Desktop already supports micro-blogging but they may add the capability directly into the new Office toolbar.

Central Desktop for Office’s co-authoring capabilities are very useful for business teams that need to create and collaborate on documents such as project plans, budget forecasts and sales presentations. Rather than waiting for each person to edit the document in a sequence, Central Desktop for Office allows users to simultaneously make changes and each version is automatically merged. This eliminates review cycles and can drive faster, more efficient document collaboration.