MS turns into a Team player

Microsoft has announced Team Manager 97, a workgroup software product intended to help teams of between four and 20 people keep track of group progress by consolidating and co-ordinating team activities.

Jonathan Hulse, Microsoft Office product manager, said: 'This is an untapped opportunity. Our only real competitor is pen and paper.'

The software has a task organiser to consolidate information from multiple team members. It automatically prints tailored reports and has a deadline-based scheduling feature.

Team Manager is a member of the Office family of applications so users familiar with Office should find the product fairly easy to pick up. The software also integrates with Microsoft Project.

Microsoft has also licensed Roland's Sound Canvas sound set for inclusion in its latest Network, Direct X APIs and Internet Explorer software.

The company has combined the Sound Canvas instruments and GS extensions to General Midi with its forthcoming Microsoft Synthesiser.

The combination is aimed at developers, and Microsoft hopes this will result in audio quality that is attractive to customers used to sophisticated sound systems.

John Ludwig, Internet platform and tools division VP at Microsoft, said: 'This will enable content developers to leverage the power and flexibility of General Midi with the customisation features of downloadable sound samples.'

The product will ship later this year. Microsoft said the technology will appear in many of its Internet and desktop products.