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Changes to Our Public Roadmap and How We Communicate Access Feature Priorities

Michael_Aldridge's avatar
Michael_Aldridge
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
May 31, 2022

Today we are announcing a new approach to how we will communicate our new feature development priorities vs the Microsoft Public Roadmap.

 

Beginning this month the Access team are transitioning to a new model. New feature development priorities will be listed in regular blog posts but in the Microsoft Public Roadmap we will only list those new features that our engineering team has 90% confidence will be shipping in the month listed. 

 

Why? Because we don't want to create false expectations. The reality is that we can't be certain something will ship on a specific month, one year or even 6 months in advance.

 

  • We sometimes have security issues or other critical issues we need to address that require us to take time and attention away from new feature development.
  • Or in other cases we are dependent on teams for capabilities that get delayed due to surprises our internal partners face. 

Below are the changes we will be making on our public roadmap and our development priorities.

We will communicate these priorities every few months as plans evolve in this blog. Once we are 90% confident we can ship a feature, we will then also update it on the public roadmap to reflect its target month of release.

 

Note: you will see items listed on the public roadmap for a few weeks that are some important features we are working on or planning to work on and they say they are "cancelled". This does not mean we are not working on them anymore.  It just means they are cancelled from the public roadmap. This is only because we are removing a public date associated with them. These are not cancelled as our priorities.

 

So for example, the Inconsistent DB Fix is going to drop from our public roadmap this week,  but it is still one of our top priorities this Summer. We just don't have confidence yet in a solution so we are waiting until we have that confidence to list its expected rollout date. The same can be said for the Modern Browser Control for Chromium Edge, where work has already begun.

 

So if you see our public roadmap get shorter, fear not! Our priorities are still going to be here for you to see on the blog. So look for a quarterly priorities update here at our blog to stay fully up to date.

Updated May 31, 2022
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34 Comments

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  • dbWizard's avatar
    dbWizard
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 05, 2022

    I concur with isladogs!

     

    Knowing the items on the priority list is important, along with a target date for implementation.

    We are all developers, we know that targets slip for a variety of reasons, and the priorities occasionally change.  But if we cannot see what is on the priority list, you might as well join the "Access is dead" crowd.  If all we can see is 1/4 mile down the road (to the next item that you are 90% certain will deploy on a given date) then we might as well be driving blind.  Without meaningful targets on the roadmap, its like driving in the fog, without a map or navigation system.  With the roadmap, its like driving with a high tech navigation system, you can see what is coming (turns, intersections, ...) 1, 5, or 10 miles (months) down the road.

     

    MVP 2013-2016

  • isladogs's avatar
    isladogs
    MVP
    Jun 05, 2022

    I agree with the previous responses.

     

    Whilst it has been very frustrating watching roadmap dates slipping & being missed repeatedly, it is still far better than the new approach which gives a strong indication that development work is non-existent ... indeed it will encourage the endless rumours that Access is no longer being developed & will be killed off by MS.

     

    I urge you to reconsider this decision & fall back in line with the previous roadmap approach still in use by other Office apps such as Word / Excel.

     

    I also ask that you update both the Whats New section in Access Help and the What's new in Access for Microsoft 365 link available by clicking Office Updates....View Updates 

    The last entry in that article is almost 2 years out of date and states: There is nothing new in Version 2009 (Build 13231.20200), the September release. 

     

    Whilst the rate of development work is frustratingly slow (with little to show apart from Dataverse ... and the monthly bugs!), there have been changes/improvements & your team should be publicising these

     

  • GavinBlem's avatar
    GavinBlem
    Copper Contributor
    Jun 05, 2022

    @Michael_Aldridge This sounds like a particularly retrograde step, suggesting Access is dead, despite the probably millions of applications doing their job daily. The public roadmap well into the future, is the only way to counter arguments about Access being dead, and without it, you will blight thousands of developers’ sale process and hasten our unavoidable move to something else. Please think again and maintain the real evidence of your commitment, that the full roadmap represents.

  • Todd_E312's avatar
    Todd_E312
    Iron Contributor
    Jun 02, 2022

    Michael_Aldridge This is a backwards step. All you need to do is be more upfront with current issues pushing back release dates. If you push back quite far into the future that is fine.

     

    This change only serves to increase customers annoyance when compared to push backs, as now we have no idea whether you are even thinking of working on a specific feature without trawling blog posts. I.e. Roadmap is a roadmap, it gives some semblance of idea of what is going to become available in the future. I think we all understand slippages occur, the issue we have is when those are not communicated well. I.e. single month push-backs each month for a year.

     

    This change will cause a lot of wasted time for everyone involved. Also this then just completely goes away from what we are used to with the other teams within Microsoft.