Forum Discussion
New app launcher / home mixed experience
I do not understand how the new home is made accessible to users.
I see all possible mixes of home and launcher experiences.
I am first release and have classic home and new launcher in Chrome but new launcher and new home in IE;
Some users have new home and new launcher in IE even though they are NOT first release.
Others have the classic app launcher but the new home.
It is really hard to manage change if regular users have updates before first release group.
I've learned that the flighting for Office.com has some cookie context, so an individual user experience could vary based on machine/browser. We are working to change this mechanism to a true user - based flight moving forward, so the experience for an individual user does not vary.
From the O365 app launcher perspective, a user outside of First Release should NOT be seeing the new experience. If you could message me directly with tenant information I am happy to investigate. This is unexpected behavior as the new launcher is only exposed to First Release.
26 Replies
- Katie Kivett
Microsoft
So sorry for the delay in responding to this thread.
While the new Office 365 launcher, Office 365 gallery and the new Office.com are complementary experiences, the gallery and Office.com roll out changes faster than the launcher due to fact that they are stand-alone experiences vs. being integrated across Office 365.
The new Office 365 app launcher is in First Release, which began on 11/7 (see MC 124492). Users in First Release tenants will see the new launcher, regardless of browser and/or OS. We plan to progress exposure to a small % of production before the end of this calendar year. We will notify on the Message Center accordingly when we do. There is an FAQ for the new launcher that we update according to feedback and questions available at this location (an update will be published with additional FAQs early next week).The new Office 365 gallery is currently available to all users in production. The new Office.com is currently rolling out to a % of the overall user base and is expected to be exposed to 100% of users within a few weeks. For Office.com, all users will have the same new experience by mid-December.
This is not what we experience.
SAME user will see different Office Home depending on browser (IE vs Chrome).
SOME users no mater if they are first release or not will see the new launcher. Others won't.
All that started a few days / weeks ago. We are rolling out Office 365 and try to prepare introduction / training content and we cannot.
We will tell users that it is a dynamic application and that it will constantly change but some stability or predictability would help.
Thanks
- Katie Kivett
I've learned that the flighting for Office.com has some cookie context, so an individual user experience could vary based on machine/browser. We are working to change this mechanism to a true user - based flight moving forward, so the experience for an individual user does not vary.
From the O365 app launcher perspective, a user outside of First Release should NOT be seeing the new experience. If you could message me directly with tenant information I am happy to investigate. This is unexpected behavior as the new launcher is only exposed to First Release.
Terrible situation made worse by no response from Microsoft.
If and when they do, they'll say sorry and they'll pinky swear that they'll do better in the future.
Yeah right, hasn't been the case for years.
We’re seeing the same thing happen, so at least they’re consistent in that regard. Perhaps this is a kind of A/B testing scheme?
Then, it's A/B/C/D testing. We have all possible combinations ;-)
It's best if you set expectations by telling your users that Microsoft is consistently inconsistent with everything. Expect nothing intuitive. That way, the one time they do something right, people will be happy. Same behavior here. Thanks again microsoft.
The same in our tenant. We use a first release tenant. Most users have the new app launcher, but the appearance of the office.com home-page is 50/50 I would say. And that is the case for more than a week now.
- I found that if I kept clicking on it, eventually it turned to the new look and then eventually use my pinned tiles/apps. Not sure why it seems to be so slow at doing this. Even in the same browser, I wasn't seeing tiles or 'apps' that I had just pinned.
Agreed! We have been talking about some of these things here as well. I've got the app gallery, new app launcher and the old office home experience on selective FR. Changing web browsers for me doesn't make a difference.
The new web experiences shouldn't be crossing over to standard users as I understand it. The Office 365 App launcher is designated as a major update and has 16 days to go (at least) before it goes into general release, according to the Message center.
Just tagging Brian Levenson in case there is anything we are missing!
Adding Tom Batcheler and BinduPillai to help with this.
Now that Thanksgiving is over, I was expecting a reaction from MSFT. From what I read here, I am not the only one affected by this strange behavior.
Is it a bug or it is working as expected? It's not the ideal situation when updates are visible outside of first release users before official availability date.
Thanks
Yeap, I have seen this and I agree is very inconsistent how the launcher and new home page are being rolled put Anne Michels can you point us to the right person to talk about this?
Could not agree more, on my Surface I see all new and on my Windows 10 Desktop I see a mix of the new App Launcher and the old home page. The disconnect in consistency make it difficult to let others know what the changes are or when the are coming. Even if you are using your "First Release Group" in your tenant.
