Ok, let me first start by saying that I might have overreacted in the last blog post about the roadmap. I still don’t think it is ok to have this kind of chaos on such an important and official document/page. But stuff happens, we all know that (I’ve done some pretty serious dumba** stuff with my blog posts over the years).
So back to the good news. We have an Office Roadmap update. And this time around it looks all fine! It’s a bit long this time, due to stuff getting back to where they are supposed to be, but there are some really hidden gems in here. Have a nice read y’all.
Changes 2016-03-03
Launched
- Android: Android for Work compliance with multi profile support: Office now supports Android for Work. (from rolling out)
- Archive button in Outlook 2016: An archive button for archiving should be available (=launched) in the Outlook 2016 client. It isn’t on mine at least. (from development)
- Archiving in Office 365 for 3rd-party data: support for archiving information from external sources such as Tweetface, Chatter, BlackBerry, Dropbox. (from in development)
- Auto Generated Project IDs in Project Online: The project id’s again… (from rolling out)
- Browse and join Groups in Outlook 2016: Another launched feature that I don’t have in my Current Branch Outlook 2016. It looks like a great feature. (from in development)
- Circular Yammer User Profile Pictures: Without further comments I’d like to quote this from the Yammer team: “Yammer is excited to announce the modification of its user profile picture”. (My emphasis). (from in development)
- Cloud PBX in Skype for Business: Watch out you old school landline phone operators (from in development)
- Dark theme: aka developer theme. It would be cool but imo it looks awful since the e-mails, document backgrounds etc are all white so the dark theme doesn’t work as well as in Visual Studio for instance (from rolling out)
- Designer: The demo looks nice, it has never given me any advice on my PowerPoint decks though (from rolling out)
- Easy Enable for Data Analysis Add-Ins: Power<View|Pivot|Map> at your fingertips in Excel (from rollin gout)
- Embedded video in Universal app: Youtubein the OneNote universal app (new, directly to launched, but was actually rolling out before the mishap)
- Exchange Online Protection- Zero Day auto-purge: I am impressed with all the small and large security and protection features the Office team adds (from in development)
- FastTrack | Data migration to OneDrive for Business from File Shares: Onboarding center now offers file share migration (from in development)
- FastTrack | Data migration to SharePoint Online Team Sites from File Shares: and they do it not only for OneDrive (from in development)
- FastTrack | FastTrack Center services coming to smaller customers: and even if you’re a small customer you get stuff for free (this one was launched, then gone and now launched)
- FastTrack | Office 365 ProPlus Upgrade Assistance: and if you want help with your Office, that is for free too! (from in development)
- Learning Tools for OneNote: There’s two of them (new)
- Learning Tools for OneNote: And here’s the other one (also new)
- Making it easier to share files and collaborate: The Share Pane in the Office client has been updated. It’s a great feature that I use almost every day when collaborating with my colleagues (from rolling out)
- Morph for iOS: It’s the Morph animation (PowerPoint) on iOS - but what is more interesting is that I’m with the cool kids now sporting an iPhone so I actually care about new iOS features (more about that another day)
- Multi-select Attachments in Outlook 2016: I thought you could do this before, but apparantley not. (from rolling out)
- New Chinese and Japanese Default Fonts: a “Unified modern look” - wonder if they reinvented Mandarin as well? (from rolling out)
- New Forecasting Capabilities: Some new really advanced Excel features, probably need a PhD in economics to use them (rom rolling out)
- November Improvements in Excel Mobile for Windows: November(!) updates are here (from rolling out)
- Office 365 Admin app - Push Notifications for Message Center filters: better control of your push notifications in the admin app (from in development)
- Office 365 app launcher refresh: the new customizable app launcher is live. I like the idea but unfortunatley it only is customizable on half of the O365 services, so it doesn’t make sense (from in development)
- Office 365 Domain Purchase Experience: it’s soo easy nowadays (from rolling out)
- Office 365 Groups: naming policies for aliases: Some things here I really wonder about. This has worked since day 1 of Groups and the roadmap item points to an Exchange Technet article from 2012… (from rolling out)
- Office 365 Groups: Outlook on the Web and Outlook Groups app user interface improvements: continued improvement of the Groups UX. I do hope that we see some of that UX trickel down to SharePoint for instance (from in development)
- Office 365 help pane updates: better search with results from the applications and tell me support. Not launched in any of my tenants (from in development)
- Office 365 Multi-Channel Catalog Support: the special segments (Edu, Gov etc) can now buy the commercial service as well (from rolling out)
- Office 365 My Account updates: For me a very valuable page, but for normal end-users, this page is a bit to technical with app permissions and stuff (from rolling out)
- Office 365 ProPlus Consumption Reports: A great new report to see how the ProPlus adoption goes (from rolling out)
- Office 365 Video - Channel Recycle Bin: Never loose a video (from in development)
- Office 365 Video - Deploy in US Government zone (GCC) & China datacenters: perfect for Mr Trump when he fiddle with his belly button in the oval office (from in development)
- Office Online multi-user coauthoring in Yammer: I’ve complained about this one before - there should be no authoring in Yammer. Period. Btw, can you disable this, please? (from in development)
- PowerPoint Designer - Desktop: The desktop edition of the PowerPoint Desighern (from in development)
- PowerPoint Morph - Desktop: The desktop edition of Morph (from in development)
- PSTN Calling in Skype for Business: was launched a month ago and back at launched
- PSTN Conferencing in Skype for Business Online: was launched a month ago and back at launched
- Quick Access Toolbar customization: Hmm, haven’t you always been able to do this? (from in development)
- Quick Shape Formatting: more shapes in Office (from rolling out)
- Read-only mode for Excel: Another hmmm. “Open up an Excel workbook within SharePoint quickly in read-only mode to quickly get to what matters most.” This happens all the time, don’t it? (from rolling out)
- Real time co-authoring in Word: We’re getting there! (from rolling out)
- Skype for Business One-time search notification: back at launched
- Smart Lookup for Office: Sounds like the normal Research Pane in Office? (from rolling out)
- Storage and file upload improvements for Sites and OneDrive for Business: 10GB file upload and minimum of 1TB of storage! (from in development)
- Support for multi-selection of Slicer items using touch: Touch your Excel (from rolling out)
- Tell Me: Ok, not new at all.. (from rolling out)
Rolling out
- Delve Analytics: Supercool Delve feature, E5 or separate subscription required (from in development)
- Improved image attachment viewing in Outlook on the web: OWA is being more and more capable, when will we stop using the Outlook client? (from in development)
- Office 365 Groups: multi-domain support: Was on my wish list last year. Good job! (from in development)
- Office 365 Video - Analytics, phase one: Stats on your vids (from in development)
- Office 365 Video - Improved upload experience: responsive and more intuitive upload of videos (from in development)
- Office 365 Video - Insert video from SharePoint edit page ribbon: Awesome! (NEW)
- OneNote Universal app: sign-in update: Only org id required for the universal app. Previously you needed an MS account for the first time setup (NEW)
- OneNote Universal app: sign-in update: Such a good feature it is mentioned twice
- OneNote Universal app: sign-in update: Such an awesome feature it is mentiond three times
- Sites Tile Page Update - Recent and Suggested Sites: The Sites tile has recieved a well welcomed update (from in development)
- Updated people profile experience in Office 365: Oh, I just love this new Delve profile page!!! More like this (NEW)
- User Activity Reports: better auditing in SharePoint, now with view auditing as well. In the compliance center only though, not the SP auditing thingie (from in development)
In development
- Archive: An archive feature for Outlook 2016 for Mac (NEW)
- Enhanced editor: Enchanced e-mail editor, similar to Word, for the Maclook (Outlook for Mac) (NEW)
- FastTrack | Expanded language support: more language options for the onboarding center (NEW)
- FastTrack | Power BI onboarding support: Get them PowerBI things on board (NEW)
- New AutoCAD file format support in Visio: this is really cool. Visio will support the new AutoCAD formats including massive drawings. (NEW)
- OFFLINE MESSAGES: Must be a superimportant feature since it is all caps. You will be able to send messages to people on Skype for Business even if they are not online.
- Skype for Business Mac Preview: I wonder if this will make AC more happy, and get him on the beta program for it! (just a name change on the imte)
- Sway *.sharepoint.com embed support: title says it all (NEW)
Cancelled
- Office 365 Message Encryption: End-User Triggered Encryption in OWA: :-(
Moved off the list into the previously released
- Android: Deeper Integration with Outlook:
- Android: Easy Sign-in, Sign-up:
- Android: Presenter view:
- Apps for Project Pro for Office 365 write support:
- Colorful Office theme:
- Configurable push notifications for Office 365 Admin app:
- Contact sync for Outlook for Android:
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in SharePoint Online:
- DKIM Outbound for Exchange Online Protection:
- DLP in SharePoint - Policy Management:
- EU Model Clauses and HIPAA BAA Availability for All Yammer Customers:
- Events from email:
- FastTrack | Data migration to OneDrive from Google Drive:
- First Release: Office 365 ProPlus and Office 365 Business:
- First Release: Select People support for SharePoint & OneDrive for Business:
- Higher DPI support for 250% and 300%:
- Inline OneDrive attachment preview for Outlook on the web:
- Korean language support:
- Math Input Control:
- Mobile offline files (read-only) for iOS:
- Mobile PDF annotation support for iOS:
- Multiple timeline bars in Project Pro for Office 365:
- New per-user licensing for Sway:
- Next-generation OneDrive for Business sync client (PC & Mac):
- Office 2013 Windows client modern authentication public preview:
- Office 365 ISO 27001 and 27018 Audit Report:
- Office 365 local datacenter in India:
- Office 365 Video - Yammer settings per channel:
- OneDrive for Business Web UX refresh:
- OneNote Online: Record Audio clips & Insert File:
- Open OpenDocument files:
- Pan and zoom while loading large charts/SmartArt:
- Preview_Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Refrence Guide:
- Project Online content pack for PowerBI:
- Real time presence for PowerPoint:
- Real Time presence in PowerPoint for desktop:
- Red Alert Autoposting:
- Set an expiry date for a guest share:
- Skype Meeting Broadcast:
- Sway admin controls over Insert tab content sources:
- Sway recycle bin:
- Task Notifications in Project Online:
- Word Online: Improving feature capabilities: