Almost a month has passed since we had the last update on the Office Roadmap and quite a lot of things has happened. There are some new things this time and also some clean up of the items. Make sure you read through the In Development section, there are some hidden gems as well as the stuff that has disappeared!!

Changes 2015-10-20

Now Launched

  • Automatic Relationship Detection: Make it easier to detect relations between two models with no relationships configured
  • Automatic Time Grouping: All these new Power* are rolling out now.
  • Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) integration for Click-to-Run: A great update to optimize network traffic for C2R. New.
  • Click-to-Run manageability gaps addressed for IT pros: More of the Office 2016 updates to optimize C2R is now “officially” launched.
  • Configurable push notifications for Office 365 Admin app: What no Apple Watch integration yet?
  • Custom Tiles: A fantastic idea but worst implementation ever. Yes, you can create custom Tiles for the App Launcher - but each and every user needs to manually pin it to their App Launcher #fail
  • Deferred Updates: Only allow monthly security updates and defer feature upgrades
  • ExpressRoute for Office 365: Improve the SLA of your network connection to Office 365 by having a dedicated route for your traffic
  • Improved sync slider and lean storage footprint on small devices in Outlook 2016: Sync slider, just the name of it sounds cool.
  • Keyboard access for Pivot Tables and Slicers in Excel: You can now use the keyboard with pivot tables and slicers in Excel!
  • Keyword & People search suggestions in Outlook 2016: Better search in Outlook 2016.
  • Mark emails as Clutter in Outlook 2016: Directly tag e-mails as Clutter from Outlook 2016, if your inbox has Clutter enabled.
  • Modern Attachments in Outlook 2016: Best productivity feature in the Office 2016 suite
  • New and Modern Charts: Modern charts, such as Waterfall…
  • New Office 365 Admin Center Preview: Interesting. This preview is said to be launched - that is ON ALL TENANTS - but I have yet not seen it on any of mine. Mayhaps one of the US only things.
  • Office 365 Help Pane: I really like the “What’s new” thing. Keeps you and your users up to date with changes.
  • Office 365 Notification Pane: Notifications everywhere in Office 365 - now if only we had an API for this.
  • OLAP Connection Support in Power View: OLAP and PowerView - a wet dream for the BI people
  • Organization support card: Get your helpdesk details into the Office 365 Help pane. Really great feature.
  • PivotTable Field Search: Can’t get enough of these PivotTable and BI stuff…
  • Producer controls for Skype Meeting Broadcast: A surprise to me. Is this really launched?
  • Purchase & Subscriptions Experience Refresh: I’ve said it before, the refresh is not as fresh as you want, specifically it is not very user friendly
  • Real-time Co-authoring in Skype for Business: co-author like a champ!
  • Search Refiners in Outlook Web App: Not only better search in the Outlook 2016 client but also in Outlook on the web.
  • Skype for Business for iOS: I’ve seen people cheer in joy for this!
  • Smart Rename in Power Pivot: Rename stuff smart…
  • Subscription Management Experience refresh: A good and intuitive UI
  • Support for small screen portrait layouts in Outlook 2016: Great update for all you Windows 10 7" screen users
  • Top teacher-requested features added to OneNote Class Notebooks: I have not tried the OneNote class things, but I’m sure this is really awesome!
  • Video Based Screen Sharing: P2P sharing of video content

Rolling out

  • Advanced administrative controls for archiving: Support for SEC 17a-4 record retention (new)
  • Android: Android for Work compliance with multi profile support: support for Android for Work (don’t know what this is, but I bet it’s useful) (new)
  • Android: Android M Enterprise compliance: More Android stuff (new)
  • Android: Easy Sign-in, Sign-up: Never a bad idea to make things easy, especially when it comes to the Android platform (new)
  • Android: Presenter view: Present your deck from your Droid (new)
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in SharePoint Online: This has been in the works for a long time, now finally rolling out.
  • DLP in SharePoint - Policy Management: Public preview targeted for September 2015
  • Optimized file picker in Outlook on the web: A smarter file picker that allows you to automate steps when saving attachments
  • Task Notifications in Project Online: Project Online gets task notifications and daily digests
  • Unique Project IDs in Project Online: Auto generated unique and readable Project IDs (new)

In Development

  • Android: Deeper Integration with Outlook: quick edit of e-mail attachments (new)

  • Events from email: This one sounds interesting, also it points to a link: http://tba. Basically events sent to your inbox is automagically dropped (shown?) into the calendar

  • FastTrack | Skype for Business Onboarding Expansion: Back on the list, was dropped a couple of weeks ago

  • FastTrack | Adoption planning assistance: Also back on the list

  • FastTrack | Azure Rights Management Onboarding: Another come back

  • FastTrack | Project Online Onboarding: I guess someone fat fingered the roadmap a couple of weeks back

  • Group Updates feed and Direct Messages for Yammer mobile apps: Updates to the mobile apps. Android and iOS only. Looks like features that are already available in the web version…Nothing new just a modification of a previous entry, move on… 

  • Improved image attachment viewing in Outlook on the web: Big thumbnails and side by side viewing (new)

  • Inline OneDrive attachment preview for Outlook on the web: The OneDrive and OWA integration is just getting better. Do people bother about the thick clients anymore? (new)

  • Korean language support: Congrats to all Koreans, on November 2015 you can use Office on a Mac in your native language (new)

  • Lync Room Systems User Experience Update to Skype for Business: “In November 2015, all Lync Room System software will be updated to the Skype Meeting experience of Skype for Business”

  • Office 365 custom themes update: An important feature in Office 365 and we’re getting some improvements to it. As it looks by the description it is more focused on how the end-users can configure their theme, not the corporate theme, unfortunately. (new)

  • Office 365 help pane updates: Tell Me integration in the help pane (new)

  • Office 365 My Account updates:  The new My Account page is great, and actually already rolling out (new).

    Love the new #Office365 “My Account” pages. Good job Office team! pic.twitter.com/q6vYnwIAEJ

    — Wictor Wilén (@wictor) October 19, 2015

  • Open OpenDocument files: Support for ODF in Office for Mac (new)

  • Outlook for Android opens IRM protected emails: IRM mails in Android. (new)

  • Quick Access Toolbar customization: The ability to modify the Quick Access Toolbar in Office - I though you already could do that? Is this a Mac thing or a WAC/OOS thing or a Office mobile thing? (new)

  • Ribbon extensibility: Extend the Ribbon on Office for Mac (new)

  • Sway *.sharepoint.com embed support: Allows you to embed documents and videos from SharePoint Online in Sway (new)

  • Sway admin controls over Insert tab content sources: Governance is coming to Sway - it might actually be enterprise ready one day. (new)

  • Sway author analytics: Who doesn’t want to see stats. “Your Sway had 1 view”. (new)

  • Sway copy/paste Cards: Shuffle them Sway Cards (new)

  • Sway for Windows Document Import: Easily create Sways from existing PDFs or Word documents (new)

  • Sway in new Azure datacenters: This is a significant milestone for Sway. Sway will be enabled in other data center than in US. So now customers can actually use it. (new)

  • Sway in Service Health Dashboard: Check the Health of Sway in the admin portal (new)

  • Sway onboarded to Office 365 Auditing for Office 365 protection center: We’re going for Enterprise grade with Sway. Now, we just need to figure out what to use it for? (new)

  • Sway recycle bin: Ever thrown your Sway away? Well, now you never get rid of it! (new)

  • Sway sharing with specific people: Longing for a private Sway party? Wait no more (new)

  • Sway supports videos via upload and OneDrive for Business for Office 365 work/school accounts: Video upload support in Sway.(new)

  • Sway will add SharePoint to Insert tab: SharePoint stuff can be inserted into Sway (new)

  • Sway: Office 365 work/school accounts can publish Sways to Docs.com: I love Docs.com…to publish PowerPoints. (new)

  • Yammer to use Azure Media Services for Video Encoding: And last but not least a Yammer update….yawn….

Things no longer on the list

  • Azure AD Sync for Yammer:  this one has disappeared from the list totally, was previously Launched

Moved into the Previously Released list

  • About Me Update and New Authoring Tool
  • Compliance search
  • Cortana & Office 365 Productivity Scenarios
  • Major update to Outlook Web App
  • Manage Yammer User Lifecycle in Office 365 (aka: AzureAD sync for Yammer)
  • New Intune capabilities for Outlook on iOS and Android
  • OAuth and MFA for Outlook for iOS & Android
  • Office 365 Admin app updates
  • Office 365 Admin App Updates for June
  • Office 365 Admin Center June Updates
  • Office 365 Groups: Power BI integration
  • Office 365 Setup Enhancements
  • Office 365 Setup Wizard
  • Office 365 Store
  • Office Online Edit in Yammer
  • Public Folders: adding and removing favorites in OWA
  • Save to OneDrive for Business
  • Search Suggestions in Outlook Web App
  • Weather Bar in Outlook Web App
  • Yammer Private Content Mode (this is a funny one, it’s brand new on the list but already moved into the previously released ones. Yammer!)