Forum Discussion

Bronze Contributor

Mar 08, 2017

Solved

New Features

Why does it take so long for Governement to get new features? For example Sway was announced in Oct 2014, and Planner in Dec 2015 and neither is in my tenant.

Kathleen Lynch
Mar 08, 2017
I agree on all of these frustrations for G-tenant releases.
While I completely understand the need to get to compliance before release, it is hard to have no sense at all of when we might get a product that is heavily promoted elsewhere.
For us we are in the process migrating/deploying into O365 and have no idea when some features will come to us - makes it hard to write requirements or sent timelines for roll out.
It would be ideal for there to be a release schedule for G tenants that is released at the same time as the other tenant types so we can get some sense of it. Currently we really have that "not YOU" feel when items are not released to us yet and then put in a black hole as to when.

It would also be SUPER helpful in Roadmap revisions to have tags/filters specifically for G releases, so we don't have to dig around to know if this relates to us or not.
To also align the notices in the Admin center similarly would help as well.

Really looking forward to some of these releases...so any help you can give is great.

Laurie Goodwyne

Copper Contributor

Apr 25, 2017

Another note for first release. I completely understand the reasoning for Microsoft not to release new products to G customers for compliance and other reasons. However, in Florida, Microsoft hasn't even been approved for CJIS compliance because of the lack of a lead agency, but we went ahead and deployed O365 with the understanding that no CJI or PII information would be emailed or saved in the cloud. Therefore, we have a hybrid setup and are extremely happy to use MS cloud offerings for everything we can...as long as there is no CJI and PII, we are golden. We just recently passed our audit with flying colors. My point being that even if Microsoft were to release things like Planner (which I desperately would like to see), G agencies know the risk of not having certain apps CJIS compliant and work with them accordingly so as not to put their agency in danger of non-compliance. We would jump on Planner train immediately knowing that we weren't going to store CJI or PII in that app. I would love to see Microsoft release apps and provide the caveat that it is not compliant in certain areas, giving agencies the choice of whether or not to utilize. I am a big fan of the MS cloud offerings and would love to get my hands on the new features sooner! Has anyone at Microsoft considered it from that point of view?

Brian Levenson
Former Employee
Apr 29, 2017
Hi Laurie,

We're working hard to deliver the new capabilities into the US Government offerings, but we really can't release non-compliant services. The US Gov products are predicated and differentiated by the compliance. Advertising and positioning a product based on compliance and then introducing applications that takes a user's data outside the compliance boundary is a liability for our customers and for Microsoft.

We are evaluating different models that would allow us to release services and apps before they're compliant with big disclaimers and potentially contract amendments, but the north star is to really provide the full suite of productivity services and tools with compliance. Doing awkward things in the meantime distracts and delays delivery of the compliant versions. It's a balance that we're trying to find.

If the Florida CJIS agreement was in place and services are appropriately accredited, would you prefer to move the rest of the content and users to the cloud? Or do you foresee an indefinite on-premises presence with hardware and software your org would manage?