I thought it would be interesting to have a look back at how Office 365 turned out this year with new features and developments. This is a far from an exhaustive list but it includes some highlights by month.
January
- Inking features added to Office for iPad and iPad Pro, Morph added to PowerPoint for iOS devices
- Real-time co-authoring in PowerPoint Mobile for Windows and Real-time presence added to PowerPoint 2016 on Windows desktop
- Office Insider builds became available on Mac
February
- Yammer integrating with Office 365, rolled out to all eligible customers, covered by the Office 365 Trust Center
- First Deferred Channel build became available for the Office 365 Client apps replacing branches -1509
- Improved Delve people profile experience launched
- Audit and reporting added for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business key activities
- 10 GB file limit increased for Team Sites, Office 365 Groups and OneDrive for Business, as well as for videos uploaded into the Office 365 Video portal
- Office 365 Groups integration with Outlook 2016
- Ink for Windows tablets— using pen, finger, naturally write, draw and annotate in Word, Excel and PowerPoint Mobile
March
- New Office 365 admin center launched
- Skype for Business PSTN Conferencing available in more countries, PSTN Calling Preview outside the U.S.,“Project Rigel” announced
- New reporting portal in the Office 365 admin center
- Office 365 Video improvements – Inc Video viewer statistics, better upload experience and capabilities, Easily insert a video into a SharePoint page or team site and New admin controls and management capabilities
- Office 365 Connectors for Office 365 Groups
April
- New usage reports for SharePoint, OneDrive, Yammer and Skype
- Safety Tips added to Exchange Online Protection
- New home page experience for Office 365 users
- Skype for Business Mac Preview announced
- Yammer external groups released
May
- The Future of SharePoint announcements - New SharePoint mobile app, a new SharePoint home in Office 365, modern team sites with Office 365 Groups, responsive page authoring and updates to document libraries and Lists
- Copy from OneDrive to SharePoint, OneDrive iOS app with SharePoint access, new Discover view
- Office 365 datacenters available in Canada
- OneDrive app for Windows 10
June
- Office 365 Advanced Security Management launched, is included in Office 365 E5 or as an add-on
- Microsoft Planner General Availability
- Modern document libraries in SharePoint rollout to all commercial customers worldwide
- Office 365 Groups administration improvements
- New version of the Office 365 admin app
- New Deferred Channel June updates for the Office 365 client now available - 1602
- SharePoint mobile app for iOS 'intranet in your pocket' is released
July
- The new 'Office 365 Network' is launched
- Microsoft Stream preview launched
- Modern SharePoint lists launched including integration with Microsoft Flow and PowerApps
- Researcher and Editor for Office 2016
- New Zoom feature for PowerPoint
- Focused Inbox for Outlook on Windows, Mac and Outlook on the web launched
August
- Service Assurance Dashboard as part of the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center announced
- Improved Outlook on the web people experiences announced
- Modern team site pages with web parts
- Office 365 Groups and team sites integration
- New site collection limit increased from 1 TB to 25 TB
- Office 365 Secure Score Released to Public Preview
September
- Microsoft Tech Community is launched, an evolution of the Office 365 Network
- Office 365 local datacenters available in the United Kingdom
- Guest access for Office 365 Groups introduced
- New usage reports for SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online
- Office Lens comes to Windows 10 and adds Office 365 support
- New LinkedIn Learning based Office training courses
- SharePoint Microsoft ignite announcements including OneDrive sync preview for SharePoint Online document libraries, Team news, Preview of the SharePoint mobile apps for Windows 10 Mobile and Android
- Outlooks for iOS and Android moves of Amazon AWS and becomes completely powered by Microsoft Cloud
- Delve app for Windows 10 desktop and mobile released
- Yammer is integrating with Office 365 Groups announced
- Delve Analytics evolves into Microsoft MyAnalytics with further improvements
- New Office 365 App Launcher announced
- Tap feature in Word and Outlook 2016 announced
- Yammer-based Office 365 Network community closed
October
- Create Office documents directly from Yammer and co-author them with their team
- eDiscovery Express Analysis and Export with analytics and view in Excel
- Export Power BI report to PowerPoint Preview
- Office for Mac adds Touch Bar support
- General availability of Microsoft Flow and PowerApps
- New Office 365 Reports - Active Users, Skype for Business clients used, Email clients used, Office 365 Groups activity
- Preview of the Office 365 adoption content pack in Power BI announced
- New Office 365 ProPlus Deferred Channel released - 1605
- Preferred Practices guide for Office 365 ProPlus deployments released
- Skype for Business 2016 new look and feel announced
- Skype for Business Mac became publicly available for download
November and December
- 30,000 members join the Microsoft Tech Community
- Microsoft Teams released in preview
- Real-time co-authoring available in PowerPoint on Windows desktops
- Transform traditional attachments in Outlook 2016 into modern attachments
- Shared with Me tab in Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2016
- Visio being released for the web and iOS
- Smart filters for SharePoint Modern Libraries and Lists
- Default Mailbox size increasing for E3/E5 users from 50GB to 100GB
- OneDrive admin center preview launched
- Office 365 Productivity Library released
That is quite a list! I was very impressed with Office 365 this year, what with the Future of SharePoint and Microsoft Ignite events. SharePoint especially, the execution of all the new features I think has been top notch. The pace of change has been phenomenal and admittedly can be a challenge to keep up at times but this community makes it that bit easier and if more people frequent the Change Alerts space, all the better.
