Share via

How to prepare for changes in Office 365 with Major Updates

  • Article

Office 365 gains new features all the time, the challenge is how to best manage those changes and now with major updates, it’s a much easier task.  Learn how major updates works in Office 365 and how to get the most from this option.

Change Management in Office 365

There are lots of resources to learn about new or updated features in Office 365, here are just a few examples

  • Message center
  • Office Blogs
  • Microsoft Tech Community
  • Office 365 Roadmap
  • Weekly digest emails

While these offer a lot of information, what most Office 365 administrators and implementers want is a predictable way to prepare for significant new features or product changes.  This gives them time to test these new features, prepare users through the appropriate communication channels and update documentation etc. 
With major updates, customers will get advanced notice of certain features and have time to prepare for these changes.

What are major updates in Office 365?

Major updates are those bigger changes or updates in Office 365 that have a more significant impact to users or how Office 365 is used. Here is the full list of what qualifies as a major update as specified by Microsoft:

  • Changes to daily productivity such as inbox, meetings, delegations, sharing and access. 
  • Changes to the themes, web parts and other components that may impact customizations. 
  • Increases or decreases to visible capacity such as storage, number of rules, items or durations.   
  • Rebranding that may cause end-user confusion or result in help desk / collateral changes or URL changes. 
  • A new service or application.
  • Changes requiring an admin action (exclusive of prevent / fix).
  • Changes to where data is stored.

How does major updates help with Office 365 change management?

With major updates, these changes will be communicated at least 30 days in advance.  Major updates are integrated with the Office 365 message center.  In the message center administrators can find major updates, with release information and