Best and Most Comprehensive Office 365 Book Updated Again

Microsoft Reports Over 300 Teams Changes in the Last Year

During his remarks to analysts following Microsoft’s FY21 Q3 results, CEO Satya Nadella observed that Teams had added “over 300 features over the past year.” Although you can’t help but be impressed at the volume of new features created, tested, and deployed by Teams engineering, the sheer number of updates threatens to overwhelm Office 365 tenants at times. Every time you turn around, Teams has changed.

The problem is compounded by the volume of changes flowing for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Planner, Yammer, Microsoft 365 Groups, Forms, Whiteboard, Azure AD, and anything else which might contribute to Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem. Collectively, a tenant might face dealing with over five hundred updates annually.

Both Small and Large Changes

It’s not as if the changes are small updates either. Some, like the introduction of Viva Topics, represent important new functionality. Others, like the transition of video storage from Stream to OneDrive for Business, affect the way people work, while it’s hard to put a value on other changes like the increase in Planner labels from six to 25.

It’s certain that change with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem will continue. When we started on the road to build the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook in 2014, we could already see that the cloud versions of Microsoft server applications developed faster than their cloud counterparts. Change became faster when Microsoft cut the ties between the on-premises and cloud code bases for Exchange and SharePoint in 2016 or thereabouts and began to develop cloud-only apps like Teams and Planner. We can confidently predict that what tenants see today won’t be the same that they will see in a year’s time. Or even in six months.

May Update for Office 365 for IT Pros

The degree of ongoing change within the ecosystem is why we update the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook every month. We believe that we are the only team covering Office 365 using a monthly republishing cycle for our eBook. Now spanning over 1,300 pages, Office 365 for IT Pros is packed full of practical and most importantly, up-to-date knowledge and guidance about Office 365, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Teams, Planner, Azure AD, PowerShell, the Microsoft Graph, and many other topics.

We have just released the May 2021 update for Office 365 for IT Pros (2021 edition). Subscribers to our EPUB/PDF version can download the refreshed files from Gumroad using their account or the link in the receipt emailed to the address provided at the time of purchase. We have not updated the companion volume for May. Buyers of the Amazon Kindle version must ask Amazon support to make the new file available. See our FAQ for more information about how to download updates.

The May 2021 update contains changes to 20 of the 24 content chapters. Details of the change are available in the change log.

The writing team is moving forward with plans for the 2022 edition. We believe that we will release this edition on July 1, 2021. Before then, we will deliver the last (June) update for the 2021 edition early next month.

Happy reading!