The Office What’s New management Preview allows your organization to decide which features are shown to or hidden from end users in the What’s New panel of Office desktop apps, and it gives you visibility into new content for each release version and channel, along with the capability to hide or show each feature’s What’s New content.
Today, we’re announcing two updates to the Preview:
Previously, the Office What’s New management Preview was available only to users with the Global admin or Global reader role. As of today, the Preview can also be accessed by users with the Office Apps admin role. Global admins and Office Apps admins have full access to the Preview, while users with the Global reader admin role will have read-only access.
Admins will be able to see the What’s New content for the Semi-Annual update Channel, and pro-actively manage it using the Office What’s New management Preview.
Figure 1 - Semi-annual channel updates in Office What's New management Preview
As you can see from the above image, Semi-Annual content appears under version 1908, along with the Monthly and Semi-Annual (Targeted) content. Filtering has also been updated to include Semi-Annual content.
Figure 2 - Filtering update adds Semi-Annual release channel
You won’t have to wait for the release day to get visibility into the feature content available for a coming release version. New features will begin appearing for a given channel based on the criteria in the following table:
Channel |
Features in Management Preview |
Timing |
Monthly |
15th of the month |
1-3 weeks before WW release |
Semi-Annual (Targeted) |
Sept 1 and March 1 |
1-2 weeks before a Major release that brings new features |
Semi-Annual |
Jan 1 and July 1 |
Table 1 - Timing of features shown in Management Preview
We invite you to try the Preview today, and let us know what you think! We’d love to hear about your experience with the Preview and these updates.
--The Office What’s New Management team
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