One of the main challenges when using Microsoft 365 products and services is to stay aware of announcements, updates and upcoming features. This applies to all responsible roles at our customers as well as for IT Consultants or Engineers guiding others.
This article, written by two Microsoft Cloud Solution Architects (formerly known as Customer Engineers or Premier Field Engineers), provides an overview of choices, how to gain information and awareness on upcoming changes in Microsoft/Office 365. Different options, tools and services with their respective audience are compared with each other to help to decide what approach best suits the target audience’s needs.
At the end of this post we cover the official Microsoft 365 Change Guide. You will find background information to get a general understanding what continuous updates ("evergreening") mean, how they work and why you should adjust your service management processes.
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Wondering how you can stay ahead on what’s happening next in M365/O365? |
Possible options how to stay ahead
There are various ways to keep yourself informed about what is happening. Read about some of them below. Be aware that this list is not claiming to cover all existing options or information sources. This list is based on our experience as trusted advisors working for multiple customers in the field. Do you know about additional sources, tools or solutions that are missing in this post? Speak up in the comments and let the authors know about it.
Microsoft 365 Roadmap
Publisher:
Microsoft
Source:
Microsoft 365 Roadmap Website:
https://aka.ms/m365roadmap
Description:
The Microsoft 365 Roadmap Website is the official resource for all roadmap related information. Updates usually happen twice a week, related to all products, features and services released across Microsoft 365.
The intuitive website UI, that is offering filtering by certain options and categories, gives access to all roadmap items and their details.
Searching for and sharing of features is possible as well as a download (CSV Format) functionality. An RSS feed subscription is available and recommended for anyone professionally dealing with M365/O365.
Conclusion:
The Microsoft 365 Roadmap should be considered “the truth”. It is the official and main channel for all long-term change announcements and should be monitored by most roles dealing with M365/O365. Every roadmap item comes with a targeted release estimation, so this is the best way to get information about long term changes or feature updates.
One of the challenges with the Microsoft 365 Roadmap is the release date. Keep in mind that those dates are estimates and subject to change. This doesn’t mean the update or feature will be available within your Tenant at this specific date. The complexity or requirements of a feature, quality checks, feedback while in preview (and more) all those topics can affect the date when a feature will be “really” available within your tenant.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Developer
M365/O365 Consultant
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
IT-Change Coordinator
IT-Enthusiast / Power User
Recommended Action:
Create an RSS subscription. You can quickly consume the RSS feed within a Microsoft Teams channel as well (Using Teams RSS Connector or via Flow). If necessary, you can easily search and export roadmap items on the website.
Microsoft 365 Roadmap Watch
Publisher:
Joe Palarchio, Microsoft Employee
Source:
Project Website:
https://www.roadmapwatch.com
Description:
This project helps monitoring the Official Microsoft 365 Roadmap and tracks changes that occur with each roadmap update. Changes can be reviewed via the "Browse by Feature" section of the site. You can subscribe to an RSS feed to get notified when updates occur.
The website offers a great way to keep track of chances in the Roadmap. Author of the project is Joe Palarchio. He is a Microsoft employee, but the project itself is not affiliated with Microsoft.
Conclusion:
Keeping track of the official Microsoft 365 Roadmap alone can be challenging, due to the amount of changes. Roadmap Watch simplifies monitoring the roadmap. This solution helps to aggregate roadmap updates and does not provide further information on the roadmap item itself.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Developer
M365/O365 Consultant
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
IT-Change Coordinator
IT-Enthusiast / Power User
Recommended action:
Create an RSS subscription and use the Browse by Feature section of the project website.
Microsoft 365 Message Center
Publisher:
Microsoft
Source:
Microsoft 365 Message Center. Microsoft Documentation:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/manage/message-center
Description:
To learn about upcoming changes, including new and changed features, planned maintenance, or other important announcements affecting your tenant, go to the Message center within your tenants admin center. That's the channel where Microsoft communicates to you or posts official announcements and let you take a proactive approach to change management. Each post gives you a high-level overview of a planned change and how it may affect your users, and links out to more detailed information to help you prepare.
The Message Center preferences offers the ability to send out weekly email digest as well as emails for major updates and data privacy messages. Administrators with access to the Message Center should subscribe this type of emails. A best practice is to create an email distribution list, that receives weekly digest mails. Members of this email distribution list, that have no access to the Message Center itself, can participate from this channel as well.
You can also use the Microsoft 365 Admin app on your mobile device to view Message center, which is a great way to stay current with push notifications.
Conclusion:
Depending on your role and permissions, you should monitor your tenants Message Center constantly. Check the list of administrative roles, that do not have access to the Message Center. Even though you can configure Email alerts and digest messages, the amount of data available can make it difficult not to lose the overview. A general monitoring strategy should be discussed with other administrators in your organization.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Developer (Weekly Digest Email)
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
IT-Change Coordinator (Weekly Digest Email)
Business- / IT-Decision Maker (Weekly Digest Email)
Recommended Action:
Get familiar with the Message Center and its features. Go to the Message Center Preferences and configure a weekly email digest and email alerts for major updates. Discuss possibilities to monitor Message Center content within your organization. Review additional tools and solutions (mentioned in this article), that can help to implement an efficient Message Center monitoring.
Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph
Publisher:
Microsoft
Source:
Overview for accessing service health and communications in Microsoft Graph:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/service-communications-concept-overview
Description:
Microsoft offers an API, that provides access to various information of Microsoft cloud services, including service health status and message center posts. This enables developers and IT pros to build custom solutions to gather events and messages as well as to get the current state of M365/O365 services. You can use this API to:
- Get service health for a tenant
- Get message center posts for a tenant
- Integrate service communications data into custom workflows
- Build customer-facing dashboards
Developers who want to learn more about the capabilities of this API should read the Microsoft Documentation: Working with service communications API in Microsoft Graph.
Conclusion:
The Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph offers an additional source of information that can be used by administrators or developers to create your own solution and help your organization to get the information you need to be prepared for upcoming changes.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Developer
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
Recommended Action:
If you are looking for possibilities to build a custom solution that is supporting your change management process, Developers or IT pros should take a look at the Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph and its documentation.
365 Message Center Show
Publisher:
Darrell Webster (MVP)
Daniel Glenn (MVP)
Source:
YouTube Playlist:
https://youtube.com/365mcs
Description:
A weekly review of the Microsoft 365 Message Center that is published every Monday by two MVPs (Darrell Webster and Daniel Glenn). Recent Message Center items are discussed by the hosts in the 30-45 minute episodes by adding context or real-world examples.
Conclusion:
The weekly episodes of the 365 Message Center Show are a good way to get further details and context for new Message Center items.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Consultant
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
IT-Enthusiast / Power User
Recommended Action:
Schedule 45 minutes in your calendar each week to watch the videocast and catch up with what recently was announced in the Message Center and to clarify how you can benefit from those updates.
Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub
Publisher:
Microsoft Services
Source:
Available for Microsoft Premier/Unified Support Customers.
Contact your Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM) for more information.
Description:
The Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub (formerly known as Office 365 Service Health Hub) project is about building a fully automated solution around Azure DevOps (alternatively Planner) and Microsoft Teams as a central collaboration platform within an organization to provide tools to take control and be fully prepared for the changes in Microsoft 365. Administrators, developers, and other responsible roles automatically get the information they need for their workload responsibilities by tasks that are automatically created and assigned to them through this solution.
Message Center, Service Health and Microsoft 365 Roadmap Notifications can get posted to Teams for general awareness, even for roles with no access to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Notifications can be routed to dedicated channels based on the communication metadata, to target specific teams within the organization and inform them about changes within the workloads important to them. Teams is also used to inform about new work items that are linked in the post within the Teams channel:
How about Azure DevOps automatically creating work items for any new Message Center, Service Health and Microsoft 365 Roadmap notifications? Assign tasks to people in charge and never miss important changes. Not using Azure DevOps? Tasks can alternatively be saved in a Planner bucket as well. Integration with 3rd party systems like ServiceNow or Jira is also an option; however, it’s not offered directly out-of-the-box but can be implemented via LogicApps.
The Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub also offers a Teams App, which includes following features:
- Dashboard presenting most important information about the events in your tenant
- Detailed information about service health state, active incidents and advisories, and calendar representation of those events for the past 6 months
- Extensive advisory and incident reports which provide a great level of insight and analysis of the service health events for the past 6 months
- Extensive list of updates through Message Center communication and roadmap communication
The Teams App is one-stop-shop for everything regarding tenant service health and upcoming features. It’s bringing all available information to one single place and provides you with the flexibility of defining the target audience, even for the roles without direct access to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
Conclusion:
The solution is an excellent way to automatically create tasks for relevant roles involved in M365/O365 Change Management. Organizations that aim for operational excellence and try to improve processes to minimize risks and bad surprises, are recommended to have a look at this project. The solution needs to be implemented and customized by Microsoft Services. The minimal implementation effort pays off immediately.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Developer
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
IT-Change Coordinator
Recommended Action:
If you are Microsoft Services, Premier/Unified Support Customer and interested in implementing this solution, please talk to your Customer Success Account Manager, formerly known as Technical Account Manager (TAM) to get more information about it.
Microsoft 365 Message Center Planner Syncing
Publisher:
Microsoft
Source:
Microsoft 365 Message Center. Microsoft Documentation:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/planner/track-message-center-tasks-planner
Description:
Non-Global Admins or Non-Service Administrators are not able to see the Microsoft 365 Message Center. How about an automated way, that reads the Message Center and posts relevant information to Planner? Message Center Synchronisation to a Planner Plan can be set up in a few minutes.
The idea is reminding us of the Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub solution mentioned earlier in this article. Compared to the Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub solution this is a more simplified approach that just covers basic functionality but is very easy to implement.
Bring over notifications from the Message Center automatically into workload related Planner buckets:
Conclusion:
Similar like the Office 365 Service Health Hub solution from Microsoft Services, Microsoft 365 Message Center Planner Syncing is an easy way to automatically manage changes by syncing Message Center items to a Planner Plan. In the Plan, synced tasks can be assigned to people in charge.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Developer
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
IT-Change Coordinator
Recommended Action:
Work through the Microsoft Message Center Planner Syncing documentation and review the step-by-step implementation guide. Adopt it to fit your organization’s needs.
Monthly Technical Update Briefing
Publisher:
Microsoft Services
Source:
Available for Microsoft Premier/Unified Support Customers.
Contact your Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM) for more information.
Description:
Change management has never been so important as of today when consuming cloud technology. There is no way to stop features from being released, however by staying proactively informed you can act accordingly.
The Office 365 monthly Technical Update Briefing (TUB) is a monthly recurring presentation, delivered by skilled Cloud Solution Architect (CSA). The CSA explains the feature, addresses the impact for your organization so that you can act accordingly if needed. The Technical Update Briefing sessions contain all our Office 365 collaboration and communication applications such as: Teams, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Viva and others. It provides IT professionals with proactive information on new announcements or updates needing change management attention.
TUB delivers the short-and long-term roadmap of future Office 365 capabilities and features:
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Ensures new features can be evaluated, planned, implemented and adopted in your organization
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Enabling ongoing value of Office 365 investment by receiving guidance on new features and updates
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Understanding administrative and/or user impact of announcements
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Highlights changes and updates that might require special attention by your organization
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Understand infrastructure updates to consider in your hybrid environment
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Provides best practices and examples on upcoming updates
-
Understand service updates and fixes to train your helpdesk staff
Presented by one or more Microsoft Cloud Solution Architects (CSA), the monthly recurring WorkshopPlus consists of multiple hours of delivery. It contains information on new Office 365 features, feature updates and service changes, rollout timelines and further roadmap information. The delivery is adjusted based on customer needs, priorities, and license and application usage. There are Demos, Q&A and Post-Delivery follow-ups included in this service as well. It really creates an opportunity to be informed about what's coming and to discuss this with relevant roles within your organization facilitated by a Microsoft CSA.
Due to growing demand from our customers and with increasing number of updates, there are other TUB variants available with a different focus, such as Security&Compliance Update Briefing and Azure Update Briefing.
Sample content from a former TUB announcement:
Conclusion:
TUB is a very detailed way to get relevant information to the right audience and making sure you stay ahead. The interactive format offers more than just plain news about What’s New. Unique selling point is the possibility to ask the experts (Cloud Solution Architects) during the delivery. Demos, Q&A and follow-ups add the value which Microsoft Enterprise customers are looking for.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
IT-Change Coordinator
Recommended Action:
If you are Microsoft Services, Premier/Unified Support Customer and interested in monthly Technical Update Briefings, please talk to your Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM), formerly known as Technical Account Manager (TAM) about the offering: WorkshopPlus: Office 365 - Technical Update Briefing (Dedicated Session 1 Day).
Microsoft Tech Community Blogs
Publisher:
Microsoft
Source:
Microsoft Tech Community Blogs:
- Copilot for Microsoft 365 Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/copilot-for-microsoft-365/bg-p/Microsoft365CopilotBlog - Security, Compliance, and Identity
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/bg-p/MicrosoftSecurityandCom... - Microsoft Teams Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftTeamsBlog - Microsoft Viva Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-viva-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftVivaBlog - Microsoft SharePoint Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-sharepoint-blog/bg-p/SPBlog - Microsoft Exchange Team Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/bg-p/Exchange - Viva Engage / Yammer Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/yammer-blog/bg-p/YammerBlog - Planner Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/planner-blog/bg-p/PlannerBlog - Microsoft 365 Blog
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/bg-p/microsoft_365blog
Description:
Microsoft Tech Community Blogs are a great source for best practices, news, and trends. The product groups as well as other experts from the field (e.g. Engineers from Microsoft Services) publish content that is relevant for everyone dealing with Microsoft 365.
Conclusion:
There is a variety of relevant blogs on Microsoft Tech Community. All workloads are covered by their product groups.
Articles that are published here are not just announcing latest updates or the availability of important features, but also delivering other must-know content. For that reason, you should not miss the pieces created by subject matter experts.
Recommended Audience:
M365/O365 Consultant
M365/O365 Global Administrator
M365/O365 Security Administrator
M365/O365 Service Administrator
IT-Service Owner
Business- / IT-Decision Maker
Recommended Action:
Create RSS subscriptions. You can quickly consume the RSS feed within a Microsoft Teams channel as well (Using Teams RSS Connector or via Flow).
Role Guide: How can you stay ahead?
Different roles and responsibilities, different access to information sources, different point of view. In this section you find typical roles involved in the M365/O365 game.
Select to find out which options could make sense for you:
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M365/O365 DEVELOPER |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Microsoft 365 Message Center Weekly Digest Email Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub |
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M365/O365 Developers design, create and maintain solutions for M365/O365 workloads |
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M365/O365 CONSULTANT |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Office 365 Consultants support customers or advise within the own organization |
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M365/O365 GLOBAL ADMINISTRATOR |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Microsoft 365 Message Center Weekly Digest Email Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph Monthly Technical Update Briefing Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub |
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Global Administrators have access to administrative features in all Microsoft 365 services |
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M365/O365 SECURITY ADMINISTRATOR |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Microsoft 365 Message Center Weekly Digest Email Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph Monthly Technical Update Briefing Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub |
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Security Administrators manage security related policies and features within the organization |
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M365/O365 SERVICE ADMINISTRATOR |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Microsoft 365 Message Center Weekly Digest Email Service Communications API in Microsoft Graph Monthly Technical Update Briefing Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub |
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Service Administrators are responsible for configuring and supporting M365/O365 workloads (e.g. SharePoint, Teams) |
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IT-SERVICE OWNER |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Microsoft 365 Message Center Weekly Digest Email Monthly Technical Update Briefing Microsoft 365 Service Health Hub |
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Service Owners are responsible for delivering certain M365/O365 workloads (e.g. SharePoint, Teams) |
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IT-CHANGE COORDINATOR |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Microsoft 365 Message Center Weekly Digest Email Monthly Technical Update Briefing |
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IT-Change Coordinators handle M365/O365 related changes |
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IT-ENTHUSIAST / POWER USER |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Power Users and IT Enthusiasts use advanced M365/O365 features and adopt changes early |
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BUSINESS- / IT-DECISION MAKER |
RECOMMENDED OPTION |
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Responsible for IT related decisions at a high level in an organization or business unit |
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Conclusion
As you might have guessed by now, there is simply no one-fits-all solution for this topic. Different M365/O365 customers use multiple ways to deal with upcoming changes.
In our experience customers use a mixture of the options above to stay ahead of upcoming changes. Important factor to mention is not only to getting the information ahead of the update but to leverage this information proactively. Customers tend to “ignore” updates which first is not a proper way to deal with it. Furthermore, it is a bad decision because every month new features and updates will appear on top of the ignored ones within the tenant. And don’t forget, your users will use those features so staying aligned and proactive is in your organization and your users’ best interest.
Our hope is that every one of you will take action to
- Consume the information from Microsoft Tech Community Blogss, roadmap, and Message Center etc.
- Review the communications for business benefit and to avoid adversity with your business users
- Drive and measure business benefits of each new feature because success begets success like nothing else
Background Information: The Microsoft 365 change guide
Microsoft published an excellent online resource that is a must read for the audience of this article.
The Microsoft 365 change guide helps understanding the concept of rapid feature release and adoption and why it is necessary to develop and implement a robust change management strategy. The documentation is structured in chapters to provide background information as well as giving advisory for customers to implement modern IT service and change management:
Continuous change in the cloud
Introduction to the Microsoft agile development model and how customers benefit from Microsoft being committed to constantly enhance, improve, and evolve cloud services.
Read more (Continuous change in the cloud)
Controlling change: challenges and strategy
An overview of challenges customers are facing with the continuous release policy of Microsoft 365. Learn about the impact your strategy can have on evergreen IT. Three categories of customers can be identified based on their observed change strategies. Read about these common approaches and what Microsoft is advising.
Read more (Controlling change: challenges and strategy)
Service release channels and controls
Microsoft 365 customers can control the release of features they receive in two different options: “Standard Release” and “Targeted Release”. The implications of these different types are covered in the guide. Furthermore, Microsoft develops and releases new features in a ring deployment model while every ring reaches a broader audience.
Get familiar with the service release channels and how to set up the release option in the admin center.
Read more (Service release channels and controls)
Figure taken from the Microsoft 365 change guide
Client release channels and controls
To be able to manage changes on client devices, organizations must understand the concept of client release channels. The documentation compares the differences of Microsoft 365 Apps channels (Current Channel, Monthly Enterprise Channel and Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel) and how to modify update channels for devices in your organization.
Read more (Client release channels and controls)
Change evaluation democratization
Get insights about options on update evaluation and testing and how Microsoft IT internally is dealing with this topic.
Read more (Change evaluation democratization)
Microsoft change plans, policies, and procedures
Updates are necessary to keep products and services secure, up to date, and working as expected. The M365 change guide is transparent in explaining the Microsoft 365 change management plan, disclosing details on the three phases of a change. The article explains how changes are classified and about Microsoft’s commitment to notify customers before updates are rolled out.
Read more (Microsoft change plans, policies, and procedures)
The Microsoft 365 change guide
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/fieldnotes/microsoft-365-change-guide
Version History
Version 1.14 (2024-02-29)
Version 1.13 (2023-10-27)
Version 1.12 (2023-05-25)
Version 1.11 (2023-04-26)
Version 1.10 (2022-11-11)
Version 1.9 (2022-10-05)
Version 1.8 (2022-09-03)
Version 1.7 (2021-10-12)
Version 1.6 (2021-08-20)
Version 1.5 (2021-02-26)
Version 1.4 (2021-01-28)
Version 1.3 (2020-11-19)
Version 1.2 (2020-04-30)
Version 1.1 (2020-03-13)
Version 1.0 (2020-03-02)
About the Authors
This content was published by Christian Heim and Christian Keller. Both work for Microsoft in Germany in their role as Cloud Solution Architects.
Disclaimer
The authors of the Office 365 Update Scout online article are a group of Microsoft Cloud Solution Architects (CSA-Es), formerly known as Customer Engineers (CEs) or Premier Field Engineers (PFEs). The Office 365 Update Scout should not be considered an official (Microsoft) product. It was created and published to help M365/O365 Administrators to stay aware of announcements, updates and upcoming features. All information provided in the Office 365 Update scout online article and offline PowerPoint document is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights. The Office 365 Update Scout online article does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of Microsoft. All content is solely the opinion of the authors and provided with a best effort to be based in reality. All content, code samples, demonstrations, or anything resembling a "how-to" are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.
