Speak with a technology expert

Schedule your Free Consultation with 

the Data Magic Team.

Fill in your information below to schedule now.



Microsoft Delve: How to Use Delve to Increase Productivity and Gain Insights


This week, we’re showing you how to make the most of a lesser-known tool built into Microsoft 365: Microsoft Delve. Find out how to access this app, plus how you can use it to improve productivity and gain insights on your team and yourself.

How to Access Microsoft Delve

To access Microsoft Delve, simply launch your app launcher or click your image and navigate to My Profile. You should see Delve as a listed app in either of these ways.

You might not see Delve in the Start menu, though: it’s a lower-tier piece of the Microsoft 365 puzzle, so it doesn’t always show up as prominently as Word and Excel.

If you don’t find Delve using the methods here, it’s possible that your IT team has disabled this app or that you’re not using a current Microsoft 365 plan. Check with your IT contact (or your managed services provider) if Delve doesn’t show up where it should.

So, now that you’ve launched Delve, what can you do with it? Here are a few options.

Use Microsoft Delve to See What Your Team Is Working On

When you open Delve, you’ll see the people on your team listed to the left. Who exactly shows up on this list once again depends on governance and how your company’s Microsoft 365 and SharePoint ecosystem is configured. If you’re not seeing the right people, reach out to your IT support team.

On this main Delve screen, you can select a person in the list to see what documents they’ve been working on recently. Before you click on an individual, you’ll also see a “Popular documents” area that shows which documents in a workspace have had the most activity in terms of views and people contributing to the document.

Save Documents as Favorites for Easy Access

As companies move more fully to the cloud, the concept of a nested file structure (folders within folders) grows less and less relevant. This is a good thing in some ways, but it can lead to confusion. If you don’t know where a file actually lives and also can’t find it via search, you could be pretty stuck.

Within Delve, you can save files and documents as Favorites so you can easily access them later via your Favorites tab. Just click the little bookmark icon to favorite a file. Then you can quickly navigate back to that file from Delve at any point — even if it gets moved around or no longer shows on the Popular documents tab.

Use the “Me” Tab to Evaluate Your Own Productivity or Find Lost Files

Delve isn’t limited to checking in on your team members’ work. You can use it to check in on your own productivity, thanks to the “Me” tab. Navigate over there for a rundown on what you’ve been working on yourself. You’ll also find a bunch of other stats and fields that you can use if they make sense for your organization.

The “Me” tab is also a great place to find lost files. Say you were collaborating on a file with a coworker three weeks back, but you can’t remember the file name or where exactly it’s being kept. Finding it again can be a real hassle, but Delve makes it easy. No matter where you worked on the file, it will show up in your recent files as long as you were logged into Microsoft 365 when you did so.

Scroll back through a few weeks’ worth of files, and you’re sure to find the “missing” file — thanks to Microsoft Delve.

Any lingering questions? Reach out below!


Copyright 2021 Data Magic Computer Services. All Rights Reserved. Site Design: Digital Elevator Sitemap|Privacy Policy|Website Accessibility

Skip to content