Viewing and filtering the roadmap

Microsoft 365 Roadmap lets you know what's in development and being released in Office 365 for all subscription types. You can filter the roadmap to identify only the changes and releases relevant to your environment and purchased licenses, then use that news to coordinate change management and communicate with your organization's leaders and users. In this recipe, we will explore the roadmap and learn how to maximize its usage.

Getting ready

The roadmap is publicly available and only requires internet access.

How to do it…

Go to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap site at http://roadmap.office.com.

Under Filters > Products, select Office 365:

Figure 1.8 – The Microsoft 365 Roadmap filter pane's Products section

If you know your organization's chosen release phase, select it from under Release Phase to narrow down the results to only those relevant to your schedule:

Figure 1.9 – The Microsoft 365 Roadmap filter pane's Release Phase section

Lastly, choose your organization's subscription type (Education, GCC, Standard, and so on) from under Cloud Instance as they each have different schedules and available features.

Now, you can view and download (as a comma-separated values (CSV) file) the relevant releases and developments that affect your organization's tenant:

Figure 1.10 – A view of the Microsoft 365 roadmap when filtered to show O365 Targeted Release for GCC

How it works…

After accessing the roadmap online, you can filter, search, download, and share its contents that pertain to your environment and needs.

The roadmap is constantly updated and contains much more information than is relevant to any single organization. Using the filters in the filter pane to narrow down results first makes sure you're only consuming and sharing the updates that apply to your available apps and services included in your specific subscription and release phase. For example, GCC (Microsoft 365 Government) customers may never see certain features released to standard customers. This is because GCC tenants involve strict government data compliance, which may disallow utilization or potential risk of using certain features, connectors, and tools.

There's more…

You can use the Roadmap's Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed to be alerted when new items are added, just as you might use to subscribe to a blog.

Also, utilize the search bar to find updates related to a specific app or service (such as SharePoint):

Figure 1.11 – The Microsoft 365 Roadmap's search function

See also

Check out the What's New with Microsoft 365 playlist on Microsoft Office 365's YouTube channel for quick, monthly videos reviewing the latest developments and news: https://tinyurl.com/NewInM365.

You can also stay up to date with the Microsoft 365 blog: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog.