Why you should stop being afraid of Delve

I am quite surprised to hear when my clients and blog followers ask me to explain to them how to turn off Delve! The primary reason: the documents that surface up automatically on each user’s profile page. If you are one of these users, please don’t! Let me explain my position here, and hopefully, you will also stop being afraid of Delve.

Reason 1: Privacy concern is a matter of time

I remember when Facebook and LinkedIn first came out, lots of users shied away from both, being afraid to post their profile photos, not to mention share something private about them to the whole world. Today – it is a different story. I can’t spend a day without my Facebook and LinkedIn friends sharing something with the world that is meant to be private. It almost like it became mandatory! So if I can see private and intimate photos of you on Facebook, why not recent documents you worked on in SharePoint? :-)

If I can see private and intimate photos of you on Facebook, why not recent documents you worked on in SharePoint?

Reason 2: It is permission-driven

It is not like Delve is your teenage child with no manners. Delve is permission-driven, which means it only shows me documents and content others already have access to via a common SharePoint site or an Office 365 Group. Microsoft even put up this message front and center of each user’s Delve Page to put your mind at ease: “You only see documents that you have access to and email attachments sent to you.”

By the way, here is a helpful article from Microsoft answering some security-related questions.

Reason 3: Delve is so much more than Documents

Delve is not just about surfacing up common documents. It is also an employee directory where you can view the information of your colleagues, their skills, hobbies, etc.

Reason 4: Turning Off Delve disables personalization

If you do decide to turn off Delve globally, it will disable personalization that makes SharePoint Online so attractive and relevant. I explain this further in this post.

How to turn off Delve

If none of the reasons have convinced you to give Delve another chance, you can turn it off. I have written a detailed blog post on a few ways to do so previously.