Now that we have seen the theory, let's go
to the lab and check out the Microsoft 365
Roadmap, and the Office 365 Message
Center. We are now in the lab environment,
and let me open up the browser here where
I have already opened up the Microsoft 365
Roadmap. The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is the
place where you can go and see all of the
features that Microsoft plans that are in
development, rolling out or launched. You
can filter by the different products in
Microsoft 365 so EMS, Office 365, or
Windows Services 10. The platform, which
is either for Online, Android, iOS, Mac,
the cloud instance, so this depends if
you're in enterprise, Education, GCC, GCC
High, as well as filter that. Let's say
you only want to see all of the features
that are new within the last week. You can
filter by that and it's automatically
going to show you that five features have
been added in development and two of them
are now rolling out. If you click on one
of them, let's click for example on
Updated SharePoint start page experience.
We're going to get that the SharePoint
start page previously known as the
SharePoint home is getting a UX refresh,
and we're also adding new experiences to
the start page to help users discover and
give back to their content. We can view
that the release is planned for October,
calendar year 2019, and we can view the
feature id, when it got added to the
roadmap, as well as different tags. Some
of the items and let's see if I pick
another one here, if I ever have any extra
information, some of them might have links
to different blog posts or things like
that where you can get more information,
but that only usually happens as they get
closer to the rollout or have been
released. It's a good idea to look at the
RSS feed or try to follow it every week,
and then my favorite view is Changed
within the last week. So I can really see
what are the different things that are
happening Microsoft 365, and I really
highly advise you to take a look at the
roadmap at least once a week, if not
bi-weekly. This way you get a feeling of
what Microsoft is shipping and try to
anticipate if there are any big changes or
any big features that impact your company
so you're ready for them, and you can see
if there is any training that needs to be
planned or any change management
activities. Now let's go to the Office 365
message center. I'll go into the Microsoft
365 admin center here. I have already done
Show All inside the navigation, and I have
the Message center over here. In the
Message center, I will really see what are
the changes that are happening to my
tenant right now? Let me scroll to the
right a bit, and you will see the
category. So for example, this one that's
at the top, Prevent or Fix Issues. So this
one is pretty important, and I need to act
by September 30, because that's probably
when the change will hit my tenant. Some
of them are not exact on when it will
actually hit so unless it's a prevent or
fix changes, you're usually not going to
have the date, especially on the Stay
Informed ones. Let me click on an example
here. I will use the Update Feature Site
Swap. So here we got this on September 6,
and you will see that we're updating
SharePoint Online Site Swap. We're now
ruling this out to Office 365
organizations, up to 10, 000 or fewer
licenses. So remember that organizations
that probably have more than 10, 000
licenses will not actually get this
message because the Message Center is what
applies to my tenant. So if Microsoft has
features that it rolls out depending on
the number of licenses, it will only show
in there when it actually planned to hit
my tenant. A lot of the times, you will
also see that this message is associated
with Office 365 Roadmap ID and the ID
number. So this way you can click on it,
and it'll bring you to the Microsoft 365
Roadmap, and it should filter. Right now I
see that it actually did not work, but let
me try to copy the id from here, and let's
search for it. It will show me the roadmap
ID that it talks about, and here I can get
more information about the roadmap. And as
you see, right now this one is planned to
really be completed at by Q1 calendar year
2020. So as I say, the Microsoft 365
Roadmap, you should look into it every
week; however, the Message Center, I
highly recommend it as an Office 365
admin, you look into it every day, because
the sooner you know about a change or
about something important, the more time
you have to plan and to act on it. So I
really recommend that you look at it every
single day. That is it for the Microsoft
365 Roadmap and Office 365 Message Center.
Now let's go back and talk about the tech
community and social media and conferences.