Wictor Wilen

Updates! Updates! Updates! Yup, that would happen if Stevie B was still in the house rocking the Office Roadmap. Another round of updates, this time it looks like a fixup of the mess that happended last time. So some things are reported as NEW in here, but they aren’t really new, they just disappeared for a week or two… Changes 2016-02-13 Launched Apps for Project Pro for Office 365 write support: If you’re building Apps, sorry Add-ins, you can now do write back for Project Apps/Add-ins (from Rolling out) Auto Generated Project IDs in Project Online: more control of the ID’s generated in Project (from Rolling out) Cloud PBX in Skype for Business: Enterprise voice is now live (from In Development) Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in SharePoint Online: DLP features in SPO is now Launched, from Rolling out Designer: The new Designer feature in PowerPoint should be in your desktop application by now (from rolling out) DLP in SharePoint - Policy Management: It says private preview only and public in september 2015, we’re already way beyond that, so I guess nobody bothered update the text. Anyways - this is a great feature that allows you to control DLP and actions, triggers, reports etc for SharePoint Online and OneDrive. (from ROlling out) Events from email: Exchange Online will now automatically detect flight information (just like Cortana) and automatically block the time in your calendar (from In development). Note: this feature is ON by default but can be turned off. FastTrack | Data migration to OneDrive for Business from File Shares: File share to OneDrive FastTrack is live. (from in development) FastTrack | Data migration to SharePoint Online Team Sites from File Shares: File share to Team Sites is also live (from In development) FastTrack | FastTrack Center services coming to smaller customers: Great change for smaller customers, minimum number of seats are now 50 for FastTrack, instead of 150. (NEW) FastTrack | Office 365 ProPlus Upgrade Assistance: FastTrack for Office (from in development) First Release: Select People support for SharePoint & OneDrive for Business: SPO and OD4B is now first release enabled (from rollingout) Mobile offline files (read-only) for iOS: Offline support for the OneDrive app (from rolling out) Mobile PDF annotation support for iOS: Another great feature on IOS and not on Windows Phone (I’m just waiting for Satya to can this huge failed experiement). (from rolling out) Morph for iOS: Support for the new Morph PowerPoint animation on IOS (and not Windows Phone) (NEW) Multiple timeline bars in Project Pro for Office 365: I think this is one of the things that changes every time on the roadmap, it’s probably a huge deal for the Project people. (from rolling out) Next-generation OneDrive for Business sync client (PC & Mac): NextGen (LOL) sync engine is now fully launched. I sure hope they don’t think that this is a finished product!!! (from rolling out) Office 365 Groups: dynamic membership: Dynamic memeberships for Office 365 Groups. This is really awesome. It requires Azure AD premium though. (from Rolling out) Office 365 Groups: files quota management: support for file quota managment for the Office 365 Groups SPO sites (from In Development) Office 365 ISO 27001 and 27018 Audit Report: Some new reports in the Service Trust Portal, I’m not sure if they are new or just updated. Not that descriptive information (From Rolling out) Office 365 local datacenter in India: The 365 datacenter in India has opened its doors for tenants. Check your Message Center for information about when you are being moved (from In Developemnt) Office 365 Video - Yammer settings per channel: This new settings allows you to specify a Yammer Group for the Video Channel or even better you can disable it. (from rolling out) Office Online multi-user coauthoring in Yammer: Co-authoring in Yammer! When will they implement a feature that allows you to NOT store documents in Yammer? Prolly never. (from In Development) OneDrive for Business Web UX refresh: New UX in OneDrive for Business. It’s a great addition and I’m looking forward to see this new concept coming to other parts of SPO PowerPoint Designer - Desktop: This is exactly the same feature as above “Designer”. (from rolling out) PowerPoint Morph - Desktop: The Morpth animation on the desktop edition of PowerPoint. I actually like it (from rolling out) Preview_Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Refrence Guide: I’m not 100% sure on what this exactly is, but it’s a new “Security Consideration Guide” linked to the Service Trust Portal. Gotta find it and read it (from Rolling out) PSTN Calling in Skype for Business: US only, call real phones from Skype. (from in development) PSTN Conferencing in Skype for Business Online: conferencing dial in option, US only so far (from in development) Real time presence for PowerPoint: You can see in real time who’s editing the same doc as you in PowerPoint (I guess this is for online, and the next one for desktop). (from in development) Real Time presence in PowerPoint for desktop: see above (from in development) Red Alert Autoposting: automatic detection of issues in Office 365, about time (from rolling out) Set an expiry date for a guest share: This one has jumped back and forth from rolling out and launched. But I have yet not seen it in any tenant! SharePoint Online uses Exchange Web Services to send mail: SharePoint e-mails should no longer be spam (from rolling out) Skype for Business One-time search notification: First time a user does a search in S4B they will get a help message (NEW) Skype Meeting Broadcast: Skype Meeting Broadcast is launched! Love it! (From in development) Sway recycle bin: Get yer Sways back (from in development) Task Notifications in Project Online: notifications from project, title says it all (from rolling out) Rolling out Embedded video in Universal app: When pasting a YouTube, Vimeo or Office Mix Video in OneNote (the Universal app only) you can directly in OneNote check out the video. Sounds cool, couldn’t verify since it doesn work… (NEW) Manage Yammer licenses in Office 365: I’m should just shut up on this one since there are to many sensitive people that would sacrifice their kids for this emabarrasing service. You knwo what, you can unassign licenses now for Yammer and it just removes the Tile from the Waffle. Users can still go to Yammer. Epic failure!!! (from in developemnt) Office 365 Groups: multi-domain support: One more of my requested features for Office 3365 Groups are now being rolled out (from in development) Office 365 ProPlus Consumption Reports: awesome reports for Office, including Visio and Project, activations (NEW) Office 365 Reporting Dashboard: the new admin portal will contain a highly customizable reporting center (from in development) Search on Yammer iOS app: No comments… (NEW, well it was there, then it wasn’t and now it’s back) In Development Allow/Deny list external sharing domains: white/blacklisting of external sharing domains. A welcome addition (NEW) Bitcoin Currency Format Support: fire up your Azure VM’s to mine some bitcoins (NEW) Delve People Experiences - Praise: This is one of the features that is actually being rolled back from In development. This is a good thing. I hope they add features so that you can control the Praise experience; that is turn it on/off, and also that you can delete Praises from an administrative side (from rolling out) Expiring Yammer Announcements: This should reduce the number of unread items in your Yammer inbox (NEW) FastTrack | Expanded language support: the additions of simplified chinese, Thai and Vietnames to the FTC (NEW) Improvements to Outlook Add-in Store: an in-client experience for finding Apps/Add-ins for Outlook. Great new feature (NEW) Intune Mobile Application Management and Conditional Access for Skype for Business: More control of Skype for Business on mobile devices (NEW) Office 365 Groups: guest access support: My number one feature I’m waiting for for Groups. When finally launched I see no single reason whatsoever to use Yammer. (NEW) Office Delve updated profile experience: The profile part of Delve will be improved over the next few months (NEW) Removal of Delivery Reports from Outlook on the web: Delivery Reports will no longer be a part of Outlook on the web (who uses that anyways!?) (rolled back from Rolling out) Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition: Connect your on-premises Skype for Business to the PBX/PSTN in Office 365! (NEW) Yammer service on by default: I complained about this stupid idea previously and now they moved it from Rolling Out to In Development! Not going to do a sarcastic comment this time, but if that is true that someone reconsidered this change it is a good thing for all enterprises that would like to control what their users use and what not to use. (From Rolling out) Cancelled Azure departmental template availability: Yup, it’s being cancelled over and over again (from in development)

Here we go again! The Office team keep a steady pace of updates coming to the Office Roadmap. This time it’s a bit weird, but we have a lot of things being rolled back!? Also I noticed that the site was down today for maintenance. So, is this just a DR solution and they lost data or have they just messed things up? I smell that someone actually MANUALLY updates this list, but hey, they can’t be that crazy, can they?

Time for some updates on the Office Roadmap again, these updates was actually published yesterday, but since writing these blog posts isn’t what pays for the bread on my table I needed to do other stuff before writing this. Last week the location of the Roadmap changed and today there seems to be some issues with the site; you can now find it at https://fto365siteprod.azurewebsites.net/roadmap. There are some real highlights here and as usual some Yammer funkiness…

Hello and welcome back to an awesome new year – 2016 is here and we have our first Office Roadmap update. First things first; the Office Roadmap URL has changed. The new home for the Office 365 Roadmap is: http://fasttrack.office.com/roadmap. As usual when it comes to changes on the Office level - the communication is kinda poor. Ye olde URL just now gives you an error. Didn’t someone think about having a redirect or something from success.office.com to the new home at fasttrack.office.com. Anyways, let’s take a look on what has changed since the last post in December.

Wow, 2015 has been one really interesting year for me! For the 9th year I will do my summary post (here’s the olde ones: 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006). 2015 started really cool with me joining Avanade here in Sweden and boosting the Collaboration efforts. It is an incredible team we have here and some amazing customers and opportunities ahead and I don’t regret this move for a second. And now in December I internally switched role to an even more interesting position – Nordic Digital Workplace Architect. Avanade has really understood what a Digital Workplace is and I’m really looking forward to focusing even more on this. Enough of Avanade talk, but if you’re interested in working in the front line of the future Digital Workplace and with us, contact me!

A christmas update to the Office Roadmap! It looks like Microsoft has abandoned their bi-weekly update schedule and is now updating whenever they can (please, I got a job to do!). This time it’s a few new thingies but mostly a clean up of old released stuff. Happy holidays everyone! Changes 2015-12-18 Now Launched Analyze Office 365 data with Equivio Zoom: the eDiscovery features now allows you to integrate Equivio machine learning capabilities. This is some cool stuf that I need to experiment with. The compliance and eDiscovery fetaures of Office 365 is just getting stronger and stronger. (From in development) FastTrack | Improving Intune onboarding with MDM: Get on board the Office 365 train even faster with improved Intune onboarding stuff (from in development) Rolling out Office 365 Protection Center: The Compliance center is renamed to Protection Center. A very good move since the features of the Compliance center is expanding so much. Also a new and improved UI is on the way. (New) Removal of Delivery Reports from Outlook on the web: Delivery reports of mail will be removed from OWA. It will remain in the Outlook client though. I don’t mind if they kill of this feature totally. It’s just annoying and since you can always decline to send a delivery report it has no purpose. (new) Unlimited storage for OneDrive for Business: Unlimed, limited, unlimited…the story goes on. Read the full post here. That post is written by the Office chieftain Jeff Teper, compared to previous OneDrive posts, so it might be true… (from in development) Work Management in Office 365: Planner is rolling out to all First Release customers. Wohoo. Note that it is a preview rolling out. More info. (from in development) In Development Manage Yammer licenses in Office 365: Yammer licensing on a per user bases. I interpret that as we can turn off Yammer for most of our users. This is not a new thing or changed thing, just a rename of the title and description. New Yammer User Onboarding and Sign Up Experience: Yet another of the things we complained about for years are now being fixed in Yammer. Somehow I think the Yammer team are feeling how they slowly are being drowned and now finally with the last bits of air they have are trying to get their head over the surface, trying to survive… (new) Office 365 Groups: Outlook on the Web and Outlook Groups app user interface improvements: A better UX for Groups – very welcome, especially for large organizations (new) Real time presence for PowerPoint: No description available (new) Real Time presence in PowerPoint for desktop: No descriotion available (new) Skype Meetings: This one is interesting. “Free online meetings from Skype for Business…”. What does this mean? At least I can set up meetings using Skype today…Anyone? (new) Moved off into the Previously Released list Add-in deployment via Click-to-Run Automatic Relationship Detection Automatic Time Grouping Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) integration for Click-to-Run Click-to-Run manageability gaps addressed for IT pros Clutter for your inbox on by default Create and collaborate on Visio diagrams using Office-like experience Create and Edit Comments in Excel Modile for iPad Custom Tiles Deferred Updates ExpressRoute for Office 365 FastTrack | Providing the customer success service FastTrack | Request Service Onboarding Getting started experience in Visio Improved sync slider and lean storage footprint on small devices in Outlook 2016 Information Rights Management (IRM) protection now added for Visio files Keyboard access for Pivot Tables and Slicers in Excel Keyboard access for Shape Panel in Visio Mark emails as Clutter in Outlook 2016 Modern Attachments in Outlook 2016 New and Modern Charts New capabilities for Yammer iOS app October 2015 Improvements in Excel Mobile for Windows October 2015 Improvements in Excel Online Office 365 Groups: mobile app Office 365 Help Pane Office 365 Notification Pane Office 365 Video Office 365 Video – Embed Office 365 Video Update OLAP Connection Support in Power View Optimized file picker in Outlook on the web Organization support card Outlook for Android opens IRM protected emails Outlook for iOS opens IRM protected emails PivotChart Drill-Down Navigation (this one was never on the list previous to this) PivotTable Field Search Producer controls for Skype Meeting Broadcast Purchase & Subscriptions Experience Refresh Quick data linking in Visio Real-time Co-authoring in Skype for Business Real-time Yammer group activity indicators Refreshed stencils and smart shapes in Visio Search Refiners in Outlook Web App SharePoint Online will start to transition to using TLS to send email securely in our datacenters Skype for Business for iOS Smart Rename in Power Pivot Subscription Management Experience refresh Support for small screen portrait layouts in Outlook 2016 Sway for Windows Document Import Top teacher-requested features added to OneNote Class Notebooks UserVoice coming to Outlook on the web Video Based Screen Sharing Yammer for Apple Watch Yammer Next Group Notifications Yammer to use Azure Media Services for Video Encoding

Third update in about a week on the Office Roadmap, and just as the last update this one isn’t that big. A couple of “fixes” and two new things Changes 2015-12-11 Rolling out Multi-select Attachments in Outlook 2016: This was “Launched” a couple of weeks ago, but now it’s not. Perhaps a new category – “Rolling Out”? (from Launched) Public Folder eDiscovery & In-Place Hold: Compliance search on public folders. Wasn’t public folders dead? (from In Development) In Development Office 365 Connectors: One of my absolute favorite new features as of lately. I blogged about this one a couple of weeks back. Keep an eye on this one peeps! (new) Yammer user profile update from Azure AD: “All key properties from Azure Active Directory users will be one way synchronized to Yammer. “. I quoted it directly. So, is this a one way, as in one time, or can you override the profile properties? At least they are listening on stuff we asked for years ago… (new)

More updates on the Office Roadmap! This time around just a few ones but also some interesting things to notice. But before we list the updates let’s take a look at the actual roadmap site that has received an update which should make it easier for you to filter and find out what’s new. This is a very welcome update and could possibly make the roadmap site useful, but I’m sad to say unless they have a proper change log. I’m not going to bother that much but instead rely on my own blog :-)

December updates incoming! The Office Roadmap has once again been updated and this time with quite a few new additions to the roadmap. Note that there is very anticipated and important updates to Office 365 Groups - have a read and enjoy!! Changes 2015-12-14 Now Launched Capacity Management capabilities in Project Online: Colored heatmaps and stuff in Project Online (from Rolling out) Compliance Search Conditions: Improved search experience in the compliance center (from Rolling out) Data Loss Protection (DLP) for Office desktop: Data loss prevention features in the Office client (Excel, PowerPoint and Word). Cool! (from Rolling out) DKIM Outbound for Exchange Online Protection: outbound validation of e-mails (from Rolling out) FastTrack | Data migration to OneDrive from Google Drive: Fast track center now offers migration from Google Drive to OneDrive (from In Development) FastTrack | Skype for Business Onboarding Expansion: onboarding guidance for PSTN Conferencing and Calling Plans, Cloud PBX etc (from In Development) FastTrack | Azure Rights Management Onboarding: RMS Onboarding, isn’t this just checking a check box? (from In Development) FastTrack | Project Online Onboarding: Get them projects in the cloud (from Rolling out) New per-user licensing for Sway: license Sway per user! Which essentially means, we can now shut down Sway on a per user basis. (from In Development) Office 2013 Windows client modern authentication public preview: ADAL based sign in for ye old Office client (2013) is now in PUBLIC PREVIEW. (From Rolling out) Office 365 Groups: auditing: Office 365 audit reports now includes changes in Office 365 Groups. This is huge in making Office 365 ready for enterprises. Go Groups! (NEW) Office 365 Groups: Support compliance requirements: Another awesome Groups update. You can now put holds on Groups - which will put a hold on mailboxes, files, calendars etc in the Group! (From In Development) OneNote Online: Record Audio clips & Insert File: OneNote Online is a bit more pimped with Audio clips (NEW) Project Online content pack for PowerBI: Project Online data in PowerBI - a match made in the clouds (from In Development) Resource Engagement Workflow in Project Online: improvements for Resource Managers in Project Online (from Rolling Out) Sway admin controls over Insert tab content sources: Important enterprise focused update of Sway that allows admins to control from where the Sway users can insert data (from In Development) Sway in Service Health Dashboard: Sway traffic lights in the admin portal (from In Development) Rolling out Multiple timeline bars in Project Online: a new and pimped and more efficient timeline bar in Project Online (from In Development) Office 365 Groups: creation policy in Azure Active Directory: A new policy option in Azure AD that allows admins to restrict group creation to certain users. Previously this could only be controlled through the Exchange policy settings - but that policy only affected creation through Exchange, Outlook and the Outlook Groups app. This new policy applies to all endpoints (read Microsoft Graph, PoSh etc). (NEW) Office 365 Groups: dynamic membership: AWESOME! We will be able to create Office 365 Groups and base them on dynamic memberships, for instance have all users with the value “Project Manager” in their title in one group etc. (NEW) Office 365 Groups: naming policies for aliases: the naming policies only applied to the display name of the group previously, now it will also apply to the e-mail alias. (NEW) Office 365 Multi-Channel Catalog Support:: Improvement to the Education, Government (Public), and Charity sections allowing them to purchase any commercial service (NEW) In Development FastTrack | Office 365 ProPlus Upgrade Assistance: Onboarding center will help ProPlus customers to upgrade to the 2016 version. **giggles** (NEW) Office 365 Admin app - Group functionality: Group Administration is coming to the Admin App (from In Development, previously this one was called Office 365 Admin app updates October 2015) Office 365 Admin app - Push Notifications for Message Center: opt-in or out to push notifications (NEW) Office 365 Groups: data classification & extensible policy: This one is HUGE folks. And it just explains how important Office 365 Groups is for Microsoft and Office 365. This update states that we will be able to classify Groups (secret, confidential, unclassified etc) AND we will have the option to specify an endpoint that is called whenever a Group is created! BOOM! Take that Yammer! (NEW) Office 365 Groups: deletion recovery: get them Groups back from the dead with a single click (NEW) Office 365 Groups: expire inactive groups: Awesomeness just keep coming! (NEW) Office 365 Groups: files quota management: Get better control of the amount of data your groups use (NEW) Office 365 Groups: general usage reporting: Usage and Engagement reports in the Admin Center (NEW) Office 365 Groups: hidden membership support: Currently the membership is open, this update will allow you to have hidden memberships, very good for privacy reasons (NEW) Office 365 Groups: mobile application management: The Outlook Groups app will be a managed app in Intune (NEW) Office 365 Groups: multi-domain support: This one has been high on my whish list. Have control of the e-mail domain used by the Groups (NEW) Office 365 Groups: naming policy in Azure Active Directory: the description on this one is a copy of the dynamic membership one, see above, but I do think it is about having the naming policies not only in Exchange but also in AAD. (NEW) Office 365 Groups: Office Delve discovery & insight: Groups in Delve! Can’t beat that! (NEW) Office 365 Groups: usage guidelines: Better options for you to have guidelines about the usage of Groups within your organization. I’m thinking like the TOU in Yammer. So one more feature from Yammer is moving into Groups (NEW) Outlook on the web: Addition of “Distribution Groups” Option and Removal of “Other” link: Just a re-org of the menus in OWA. (NEW) Per user licensing for Yammer: I see this as we can now turn of Yammer and only let the handful of people that still likes it use it… (NEW) Project Online - Portfolio Dashboard: More reports based on best practices and industry standards (NEW) Project Online - Portfolio Dashboard for iPad: Same as above but for the illiterate. (NEW) Skype for Business Mac Client Preview: Them Appleheads will love this, we gotta give them a chance to participate in our meetings sometime :). (NEW)