A month on from the SharePoint Virtual Conference

Question

Right upfront, if it needs saying, I have the highest respect for the Microsoft folk who collaborate with us in this community. Their openness is refreshing and a step change for those of us who remember the 'old' Microsoft. However, I'm slightly confused that one month on from the SharePoint Virtual Conference (SVP), none of the innovations launched have yet made First Release. The observation that I, like all of us, want to get our hands on the new stuff isn't entirely misplaced but my 'stand back' view is more objective. There, is to my mind, loss of momentum. With such an event, promoted ahead of it's landing date, I'd have expected some of the functionality demonstrated to be available within a couple of weeks. From a timeline perspective, Microsoft clearly plans to launch more functionality at Microsoft Ignite in late September. Taking account of summer holidays (in the northern hemisphere :-)).this is actually a relatively short period of around a quarter, before the next roadmap updates. I'm genuinely interested in others views here: is this a general perception or just a view from someone too close to something?

cian allner · Answer

Yeah, I understand what you mean, they demos looked great and we all want to try it out in our own tenants. Is a month too long a gap before seeing more of this stuff? I am not sure but I know almost immediately after SPSummit the Office 365 roadmap got a huge update with many of the items to track.

The roadmaps from the summit, which I have included for convenience below, were divided between stuff we would see sooner and the rest by year's end. Sooner in this context, I'd hazard a guess could mean anything up to a few months going into the MS Ignite sort of timeframe.

Some of these things are starting to be delivered though like the OneDrive Files On-Demand feature and I assume more of them are starting to see the light of day. Could Microsoft be clearer and a bit more precise, probably but we know it doesn't always work that way!

benoit fournier · Answer

What annoys me is that there is a lot of noise from officials Microsoft accounts that keep announcing these same things: the soon available new features. I know that it is the new way of communicating but when you are expecting an update you tend to jump on the links thinking that it is now really available.&nbsp;But as you said, we like and want to be informed early and regularly but please use the "in case you missed it".&nbsp;Please help us managing our monitoring time.&nbsp;&nbsp;

cian allner · Answer

I just came across this presentation for anyone interested, it's full 24 slide recap of SP Summit:

Getting back to your point John, perhaps if the Office 365 Roadmap supported tags (like the new Azure Roadmap does), then you could find all the items from events like this and their progress. Here are some of the items from the summit that were on the O365 Roadmap right after the summit.

john wynne · Answer

Thanks Cian, like you I have picked up on the resources you shared today. The Office 365 roadmap needs a tidy up and noted that In Development has swollen to 202 items (with some duplicates in there).&nbsp; As always happens I noticed that Andy Haon mentioned on Twitter that the 'updated' News web part - the multiple column layout was released but this is still to show up for me. As it stands in my 'objective' stand back view, those of us who can micro-manage the roadmap through the Office Blog, Roadmap and this community whilst following the relevant Microsoft folk on Twitter etc can keep up with planned delivery but those customers who may only rely on 'headline' resources such as the Office Blog will see significant elapsed time from announcement to even preview delivery. To me, this implies that Marketing and Engineering need to sync their plans more! I'll get off my soapbox now 🙂

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A month on from the SharePoint Virtual Conference

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