Discovering upcoming changes

The Microsoft 365 Message center, found within the Microsoft 365 admin center, is a place to keep track of all upcoming changes, new features, and planned maintenance relevant to your environment. Official announcements from Microsoft are released through the Message center, giving a high-level overview and links to additional information. In this recipe, you'll access upcoming changes via the Message center.

Getting ready

You must have been assigned to an appropriate admin role in Office 365 or assigned the Message center reader role.

How to do it…

Go to the Microsoft admin center for your tenant at https://admin.microsoft.com/.

Under Health, select Message center.

Now, you can see a list of active messages, messages filtered as being of high importance, or a filtered view of unread or archived messages:

Figure 1.12 – The Office 365 Message center All active messages view

Click on any message title, and a right-side pane will open with the message details:

Figure 1.13 – An example message provided in the Office 365 Message center

How it works…

Accessing the Message center will give you the information you need to stay on top of changes and enhancements and provide you with other information that may impact your business and its processes. In this recipe, we discovered available messages in the Message center and opened a message as an example.

Once each message loads, you are given several options. You can share the message (click the blue Share button or the Copy link button). Click the Mark unread button to leave the message as active/unread, which keeps it bold on the main Message center page.

Additionally, you can like/dislike announcements, mark for archive, or click on various information links for additional details.

There's more…

Using the Message center reader role is a smart way of keeping superusers or technology champions in the know about what is coming and how to prepare for it.

And for mobile-centric admins, the Microsoft Admin app for your mobile device will give you access to the Message center, on the go: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=627216.

See also

For a list of admin roles that do not provide access to the Message center: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/manage/message-center?view=o365-worldwide#admin-roles-that-dont-have-access-to-the-message-center