Office 365 Recap 2016

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.