Take a look inside our approach to application compatibility. Compatibility by design, inventory and validation, and remediation assistance are three important pillars of our application confidence strategy. In this blog series, see how our investments in these different pillars facilitate your Windows deployment success.
Windows is built with compatibility in mind. Microsoft supports the broadest app, peripheral, and device ecosystem. Release over release, we have achieved 99.7% application compatibility to give you greater confidence as you update your Windows devices.
Note: Throughout this post and the series, you'll find application compatibility and app compat used interchangeably. |
We understand that you need extra reassurance that your apps will work as you update to Windows 11. That's why we set out to meet this need through:
This is our three-pronged approach to helping your organization deploy and consume Windows and Microsoft 365 app updates. If you ever have compatibility concerns, we facilitate the following steps:
In the 0.3% chance that you encounter an issue at any point in your process, App Assure engineers are ready to support you. And this blog series is here to walk you through each of these layers and recommendations for additional peace of mind.
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App inventory |
Testing |
Deployment health |
We ensure it |
App compatibility by design is a core tenet of our planning and development process to ensure high compatibility rates. |
App compatibility is determined by rigorous testing of business-critical apps during servicing and updates. |
App compatibility is a promise with assurance. Call on our App Assure engineers to support you in the 0.3% chance that you encounter any issues. |
You can double-check it |
Gain inventory insights with discovered apps and Upgrade Readiness reports in Microsoft Intune! |
If you need extra reassurance, test your critical apps with Test Base for Microsoft 365. |
To help monitor deployment health, leverage the Application reliability report in Intune. |
Every innovation, feature deprecation, and change we introduce is evaluated for the impact we have on compatibility. As a result, our compatibility rate at upgrading Windows 10 to Windows 11 is 99.7%. That's as high as updating from older to newer versions of Windows 10. We bet that's familiar to you!
We are the Windows Application Compatibility team — a large group of dedicated engineers who validate and investigate issues discovered in Windows 11 builds. It's clear that the OS needs to innovate over time to respond to your needs and to raise the security bar. That's why our team is committed to compatibility, balancing OS innovations with the impact on your apps.
Our work begins with obtaining insights. This includes static and runtime analyses that feed machine learning models, telling us what has changed in a Windows build (relative to Windows in-market). We also learn a lot from users in the Windows Insider Program. We use this data to predict the third-party apps that we should validate during Windows development.
While this data informs how we plan our validation efforts, the act of validating is a complex task. As the Compatibility team, we employ a large test matrix that includes multiple form factors, app categories, and API coverage to fully exercise the OS functionalities important to you. This test matrix includes two types of validation intended to discover issues before release:
Should an issue be discovered, we employ a team of experts who have deep experience in investigating issues and determining what should be adjusted to enable the third-party app to work correctly. Sometimes this means that a Windows feature team needs to make additional changes, or an independent software vendor (ISV) may need to adjust their app to align with OS innovation. In either case, we work directly with the corresponding feature team or ISV to resolve issues during development. That way, we can release with confidence that these apps will function as expected. A deep dive into the details of how we validate is provided in Application compatibility in the Windows ecosystem.
The full application compatibility quality process is akin to an iceberg. Our deep investments in this effort during the development process go well below the water line. This is also where we develop tools you can use for your own app confidence journey, through inventory, testing, deployment, and monitoring.
We don't just build new products with a commitment to compatibility. We also invest in rigorous testing to prevent introducing compatibility issues as we service and update our in-market products. And don't worry about those 0.3% of apps that might encounter an issue. We want you to feel confident that if anything goes wrong, there are App Assure engineers here to support you in the small chance that you find an application compatibility issue.
Ready for tips on how you can increase confidence in testing, deployment, and monitoring for app compatibility?
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