Microsoft releases Office 365 Connectors to First Release customers, preparing to push them out to the rest of the users as well.

Back in November 2015, the company unveiled a limited preview version of these Connectors at the Microsoft Connect (); // 2015 Developer Event. Since then, it presumably has been working on getting it ready for the public through numerous tests and feedback.

Now, Office 365 Connectors allow users to access various Microsoft and third-party apps and services without the need to close Office 365 or switch from it to another app. That means that users can significantly improve productivity, as they are on an efficient, apps-packed platform, where they can keep tabs on notifications in one place.

"Whether you are tracking a Twitter feed, managing a project with Trello or watching the latest news headlines with Bing - Office 365 Connectors surfaces all the information you care about in the Office 365 Groups shared inbox," the Office 365 team says.

In other words, the Connectors allow Office 365 to be much more than a collection of productivity tools, not to mention that its cloud security just got beefed up late last month.

Microsoft already has more than 50 Office 365 Connectors available, including Twitter for social media, Trello for project management, MailChimp for marketing and Bing News for news sources. Other notable mentions include Aha, Asana, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Salesforce, UserVoice and Zendesk.

If it sounds familiar, that's probably because it is. These Office 365 Connectors are arguably similar to Slack integrations, but the difference is that these bear the Microsoft brand.

To get Office 365 Connectors up and running, the user will need an Office 365 work or school account to start using the Office 365 Groups shared inbox. Just to be clear, they're available on three platforms: desktop, mobile and the Web.

Hit up the video below to see what Office 365 Connectors have to offer.