Introduction to Sway by Microsoft – Know About this Office App

One of the most recent programs that have been developed by Microsoft Corporation is Office Sway, which is used for the creation of web content. In the following blog, we will be giving introduction to Sway by Microsoft along with the overview of how much easy it is to create & share anything with Sway’s interactive and colorful canvas.

Introducing Microsoft Sway! – What is Office Sway App?

Let’s take a brief on what is Microsoft Sway/ introduction to Sway in this section and discover what is Microsoft Sway used for. Office Sway is the new application in the Microsoft Office family of products that comes with a tagline “Reimagine the way your ideas come to life”. It is a dynamic and interactive web canvas, which is used to create and share interactive reports, personal stories, presentations, etc. Since it resides in the cloud, it allows any user having Microsoft account to work across in any platforms i.e. mobile phones, tablets, desktop, laptops, etc. Nowadays, people needs to use various types of content such as text, images, hyperlinks, etc. while sharing the information or expressing the ideas.

Sway is the solution that has been made for those users that needs to work with project or problem-based learning. Teachers can use Sway for the creation of interactive web-based lessons, assignments and project info that can be shared to the Students. On the other hand, team reports or study materials can be created by students using Sway.

Benefits of Microsoft Sway – Why to Use it?

After the introduction to Sway App, let’s discover some unique features that makes Office Sway an efficient & appropriate solution.

• Users of Sway do not have to choose a pre-designed template like traditional authoring tools making your presentations similar to others
• No design skills are needed for using Sway as it has inbuilt advanced algorithms to auto-arrange the contents
• The built-in design engine makes the creation of content really fast saving lots of time of the users
• Freedom to change the privacy settings to control over what user share after the creation of Sways
• Freely available for use with any person having Microsoft account and Sway is also a part of an Office 365 subscription

How to Create Sway Presentation? – Create Stories

In the above sections we discovered about introduction to Sway & various benefits, now learn how to create Sway presentation.

• Firstly, we will visit www.sway.com in any browser of the device you are using. Now, Select Sign-in option on the top right side corner
• If you have a Microsoft or organizational account assigned by your work/school, you can log in with that account credentials
• If you do not have an account, sign up using the email address & password that you need to use in creation of Sway
• After login, Click on Create New that appears on My Sways page to create a new sway
• Storyline Column will be used by the user to type, insert and edit the contents that will be included in the story. Cards will store all types of content like heading, text, image, etc., which will be rearranged according to user’s requirements
• Click on ‘Title Your sway’ text given in first card on Storyline to add a title for the sway
• Select (+) icon of any existing card to add the content like images or text. Then, click on Cards to see all options. Additionally, user can drag and drop content to add them on the storyline
• It offers multiple sources from where user can add content for the creation of sway like OneDrive, Flickr, Bing, YouTube, etc. It also allows user to search web for any desired content and add them to sway
• Sway supports a preview option to let users view their work in progress at any time by selecting arrow near Preview tab or click on Play button to check the sway
• After the sway has been previewed, click the arrow near storyline to return to the storyline

Changing Design and Layout of the Sway

After discussing introduction to Sway, its features & how to create a presentation in Sway; in this section we will discuss how to change the design & layout of the story/ presentation created on Office Sway. User can change the design of the sway by clicking on Design present on the top menu and choose any desired theme according to user’s choice. In order to check the random look for the sway at any time, click on Remix button and keep on changing until the desired design of your choice is not obtained. It also allows user to adjust some part of the applied theme such as font, color and emphasis of animation using the Customize button under the Designs Pane.

User can use Layout button on the top menu to control how others will view & search for our Sway after it has been shared. Sway also allows user to choose whether the content should scroll horizontally, vertically or look like a presentation.

Once the sway has been finalized, click on Share option at the top menu and select the preferences to select which user you would like to view your sway.

Conclusion

In conclusion to the blog on introduction to Sway by Microsoft/ what is Sway app, it can be said that Office Sway app is a dynamic authoring tool for web content that works independently on any mobile browser, iOS or Windows platform. Hence, it allows user to create tutorials, reports, dashboards, newsletters or presentations in a very interactive way. Although Sway is a recently launched application by Microsoft, it is inbuilt with several attractive features that will help user build quality web-content. In addition to the above benefits, another benefit of Office Sway app is that it’s cloud-based & can be easily accessed from anywhere.