Traditional enterprise network architecture revolves around the pre–cloud world. A world where data, services and applications generally live within the corporate walled garden and thus connectivity is simply from the user locations to where the data/services/applications are hosted. To exit this network we have a centralized, strict security stack to protect the corporate environment from the unknown, untrusted external world.
As the data & applications/services move to the cloud, this network model becomes less effective and thus network transformation needs to be at the heart of a company’s digital transformation to cloud based services such as Office 365.
As adoption and reliance on cloud services continues to grow, and as employees work from diverse locations around the world, legacy approaches to managing network traffic, such as backhauling and centralizing for inspection & egress creates latency and a leads to a poor end user experience and additional cost for enterprises.
This Pre-Day course is being hosted by Microsoft’s network architecture team and consists of hands-on labs on how to optimize network connectivity in the cloud era, with a specific focus on Office 365. You will hear the pros and cons of each connectivity model (Proxied, Direct and ExpressRoute), how Office 365 workloads connect, steps to improve network connectivity and performance by transforming the network model to the cloud era. We’ll also look in detail at the new method due to go live in October which Microsoft will use to publish the URLs/IPs for the service, allowing for greater automation and simplified usage. The day includes various labs of the topics discussed so you can gain first hand experience of what you’re learning.
Topics include:
- Office 365 Connectivity Principles
- Datacenter Infrastructure & your data
- Connecting to Microsoft’s network infrastructure
- Understanding & using the new RestAPI based URL/IP Publishing method
- Understanding & Troubleshooting Routing
- Understanding & Troubleshooting Latency
- Enterprise Connectivity Options
Connecting via a Proxy
Direct Connectivity
ExpressRoute
- Bandwidth Planning & Estimation
- Scoping & Data Gathering for Troubleshooting
- Major Workload Connectivity – Including Labs
- Exchange Online
- SharePoint Online
- Skype for Business Online
- TCP Connection Establishment
- Proxy Authentication – Including Lab
- Using OneDrive for Performance Baselining
How to register:
Add this Pre-Day Workshop to your registration for $500. Visit the Microsoft Ignite registration website and sign in to your registration record and select Pre-Day Workshop
We’ll give a Surface Laptop to one lucky attendee, so be sure to sign-up!
Office 365 gives you the latest updates and features as early as possible so you can continue doing your job productively. For Office 365 services, updates are run in the background as soon as they become available, instead of bundled updates scheduled months apart.
Shifting from a static Office suite to an evergreen one that enhances user productivity, creativity, and collaboration requires us to provide visibility into the updates that are coming for your users – you need the resources to navigate and guide these changes throughout your tenant. From the Office 365 Roadmap to the Message Center, Microsoft provides the information you need to stay on top of change.
Note: While Office ProPlus client apps are updated every six months, there is also the option to sign up for earlier releases to receive them sooner. See Targeted release section for more details.
Roadmap
The Office 365 Roadmap gives you a snapshot of upcoming changes as early as possible. Product groups post upcoming updates for features and services on the roadmap in one of several stages: in development, rolling out, and launched. The roadmap is designed to give a wider view into the future of Office 365 changes to come, so admins can get excited for new features, plan appropriately with Targeted release, and keep on the lookout for the Message Center post as the update nears its ship date. Visit the roadmap to get the first view of exciting updates and keep up-to-date on applications and services across Office 365.
Message Center
Message Center is the hub where we post official announcements about upcoming changes to your tenant as well as any actions required by admins to proactively manage the change. You can access the Message Center as a card on the admin center home dashboard or under Health in the left-hand panel.
Each post gives a summary of what’s changing, how it may affect users, and additional links to help you prepare your tenant. Message Center posts also provide important information on preventing and fixing issues in your tenant. Because not all admins may need to see all posts, each admin can set preferences to control which posts are displayed on Message Center. You can also opt in to receive a weekly digest of posts in email format delivered right to your inbox.
Change that is considered a major update is communicated at least 30 days in advance for those who have not opted in to early release opportunities. These announcements are highlighted at the top of Message Center as they are the most impactful to your organization. Major updates are defined as:
- Changes to daily productivity such as inbox, meetings, delegations, sharing and access
- Changes to the themes, web parts, and other components that may affect customized features
- Increases or decreases to visible capacity such as storage, number of rules, items or durations
- Changes to product branding that may:
- Cause end user confusion,
- Result in changes to help desk processes and reference material, or
- Change a URL
- A new service or application
- Changes requiring an admin action (exclusive of prevent or fix issues)
- Changes to where your data is stored
Click here for more information on Message Center and here for guidance on setting preferences in Message Center.
Targeted Release
Targeted release is an early release ring for select users within a tenant who will receive certain changes prior to the rest of their organization. For Office 365, new releases are first tested and validated by the feature team, then by the Office 365 team, and finally, by all of Microsoft. After internal validation is complete, customers can set individuals in the organization or the entire organization to receive available updates on Targeted release to see the latest updates and help provide early product feedback.
You can manage how your organization receives updates by utilizing Targeted release in many ways. Targeted release allows admins or anyone responsible for managing Office 365 changes within an organization to prepare by letting them:
- Test and validate new updates before they are released to all the users in the organization.
- Prepare user notification and documentation before updates are released worldwide.
- Prepare internal helpdesk for upcoming changes.
- Go through compliance and security reviews.
- Use feature controls, where applicable, to control the release of updates to end users.
For Office 365 ProPlus client applications, updates are deployed every January and July on the Semi-Annual Channel. However, admins can opt to deploy some of their users on Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) for the opportunity to receive updates a few months earlier every March and September. Additionally, admins can set certain users to receive more frequent updates on the Monthly Channel to further test the newest features available before deployment on the other channels.
For more information on Office 365 ProPlus update channels, see here.
We strongly recommend enabling Targeted release for admins to manage change within their tenants. However, keep in mind that there’s an option to set specific users, as opposed to entire tenants, to Targeted release. This functionality allows administrators and selected users to experience the new change earlier than the rest of the organization, giving them enough time to prepare the tenant before the change rolls out broadly.
You must be a global admin to set yourself and other users to Targeted release. If you choose not to opt into Targeted release, you will receive updates when they are release broadly in Standard release. For more information on Targeted release and setting it up for your organization, click here.
In addition to the resources above, check out the official Microsoft 365 blog here and continue engaging here in TechCommunity. Be on the lookout for posts on the Microsoft 365 TechCommunity blog, as we will be announcing news there as well. As always, feel free to provide feedback in the admin center dashboard or in the comments below, as we love hearing from you and finding out ways to improve the Office 365 experience!
Following the success of last year, Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamp now becomes an annual event. It is a free, one-day, hands-on training event led by Microsoft MVPs with support from Microsoft and local community leaders. Developers worldwide are invited to attend the bootcamp to learn the latest on Office 365 platform including Microsoft Graph, SharePoint Framework, Microsoft Teams, Office Add-ins, Connectors and Actionable Messages and apply what you learn to your future projects.
Watch the video to hear from Jeff Teper and Microsoft MVPs on 2018 Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamp.
Global Office 365 Developer Bootcamp will take place between October 1 and November 30, 2018. New bootcamp events are being added every week at http://aka.ms/O365DevBootcamp. Check it out and register for a bootcamp in your region today!
Update: The rollout of these enhancements for Premier and Unified Support customers is expected to reach completion in August 2018. Once this rollout has completed, if you attempt to open a support ticket outside of the Office 365 Admin Center, you will be redirected to the Office 365 Admin Center to open that support request.
As an Office 365 customer, it’s important that you have reliable support from Microsoft that is flexible to your needs so that you can focus on your business. In September, we launched a new support experience for Office 365 customers to provide this service. After hearing initial customer feedback, we’re rolling out improvements to the support experience in admin center for all customers and to extend the enhanced experience to Premier customers as well. For Premier customers, we also understand the importance of being routed to Microsoft’s Premier-specific engineers for the most critical issues and have added features to deliver Premier tickets to the correct teams right away.
The new support experience will begin rolling out to Premier customers in the beginning of April and will be available to all Premier customers by July. Other non-Premier specific improvements made to the overall support experience are currently rolling out to all customers.
The updated support experience includes the following improvements:
Quick access to support – With Office 365 admin credentials, customers can quickly open a support ticket with Microsoft by accessing ‘New service request’ under ‘Support’ on the left side panel or simply clicking ‘Need help’ at the bottom right of the admin center. Both options will open an in-product fly-out to create your ticket.
Intelligent self-help solutions – We understand that some support issues can be resolved quickly with the right self-help solutions. The new support experience uses machine learning to classify the information you enter about your issue and surfaces any relevant information that may help you easily resolve the issue yourself, from current advisories in the Service Health Dashboard to specific solutions pulled from applicable support sources.
Flexible support tailored to you – If you want to request support from Microsoft directly, you can easily do so in a way that makes most sense to you, as different issues may require different types of support. In the ‘Let us call you’ tab, you can add relevant attachments and notes to your support ticket and we’ll get in touch over the phone as soon as possible at a time that is convenient for you.
Based on customer feedback, we’ve also added the option to receive support via email. Under ‘Email us’ you can opt to be contacted via email to communicate and receive support from Microsoft.
While the experience currently supports attachments up to 5MB, we have heard your feedback that bigger file size is needed for more efficient support. We are currently working to bring you larger attachments for support tickets soon.
Comprehensive view of ticket statuses and history – Once the ticket has been submitted, you will be able to view the status and history of all tickets, with the most recent tickets at the top of the list. Customers can quickly see the status of each ticket and click each one to see specific details of service.
Once tickets have been submitted, you can provide additional information by submitting notes or updating attachments. However, ticket details such as description of issue, email address, and person of contact for the ticket cannot be altered.
Specialized support for Premier customers – As a Premier customer, you expect more focused support for your most critical issues. We recognize this need in the Premier community and have added the ability to indicate an issue as Critical, directly in-product as you create the ticket. Critical designation allows Microsoft to provide the most efficient support that is focused on your issue. When you indicate a ticket as Critical, we will route the ticket to a Critical Situation management team that will manage your incident communications from beginning to end as it is being resolved by Premier engineers.
Let us know what you think!
Your feedback is crucial to improving the Office 365 experience. We read every piece of feedback that we receive to make Office 365 support meet your needs for better productivity. Provide feedback on the updated support experience using the feedback link in the lower right corner of the admin center or give us feedback on an individual ticket experience when you’re prompted after the ticket has been resolved.
We built Microsoft 365- a complete IT solution including Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security- to enable organizations to create and work together securely. In that same spirit, our goal is to offer a unified toolset to manage and protect those organizations. In March, we announced the Microsoft 365 admin center as your central location for managing and monitoring applications, services, data, devices, and users across your Microsoft 365 deployment.
Today, we are expanding this integrated and intuitive admin experience to users of Office 365. Users of both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 will now have access to the new Microsoft 365 admin center. For Office 365 admins, this means a simpler experience that easily integrates with you other Microsoft services – all without giving up capabilities or control.
What to expect
If you’ve used the Office 365 admin center before, the experience will feel very similar. The navigation is the same, and you’ll have the same granularity of control over your environment. There will be no change to your Office 365 subscription or billing. As you add new apps and services like device management, those will light up in your left navigation pane. Most importantly, you’ll receive all the latest admin center updates and features as they become available.
New URL, same great experience
To access your new admin center experience, point your web browser to admin.microsoft.com. This is your new front door for managing and monitoring all your Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services. Your new admin center still includes links to all your specialty admin tools for services like OneDrive and SharePoint conveniently linked in the left navigation pane. If you’ve previously created bookmarks for the Office 365 admin center or any of the specialty admin centers, those will continue to work.
Over the next few weeks, we will be updating the admin center links across Office 365 to use the new admin.microsoft.com address.
More to come
In the coming months, we’ll continue to evolve the Microsoft 365 admin center to provide a consistent and intuitive experience across all your Microsoft 365 products. As more information becomes available, we’ll post it here on Microsoft Tech Communities. In the meantime, join the conversation on the Microsoft 365 Tech Communities forums and Twitter.
We built Microsoft 365- a complete IT solution including Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security- to enable organizations to create and work together securely. In that same spirit, our goal is to offer a unified toolset to manage and protect those organizations. In March, we announced the Microsoft 365 admin center as your central location for managing and monitoring applications, services, data, devices, and users across your Microsoft 365 deployment.
Today, we are expanding this integrated and intuitive admin experience to users of Office 365. Users of both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 will now have access to the new Microsoft 365 admin center. For Office 365 admins, this means a simpler experience that easily integrates with you other Microsoft services – all without giving up capabilities or control.
What to expect
If you’ve used the Office 365 admin center before, the experience will feel very similar. The navigation is the same, and you’ll have the same granularity of control over your environment. There will be no change to your Office 365 subscription or billing. As you add new apps and services like device management, those will light up in your left navigation pane. Most importantly, you’ll receive all the latest admin center updates and features as they become available.
New URL, same great experience
To access your new admin center experience, point your web browser to admin.microsoft.com. This is your new front door for managing and monitoring all your Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services. Your new admin center still includes links to all your specialty admin tools for services like OneDrive and SharePoint conveniently linked in the left navigation pane. If you’ve previously created bookmarks for the Office 365 admin center or any of the specialty admin centers, those will continue to work.
Over the next few weeks, we will be updating the admin center links across Office 365 to use the new admin.microsoft.com address.
More to come
In the coming months, we’ll continue to evolve the Microsoft 365 admin center to provide a consistent and intuitive experience across all your Microsoft 365 products. As more information becomes available, we’ll post it here on Microsoft Tech Communities. In the meantime, join the conversation on the Microsoft 365 Tech Communities forums and Twitter.
Microsoft 365 partnered with the American Association of Inside Sales to bring sales end-users content focused on key priorities for sales professionals.
Getting Organized with Outlook
Spend less time drowning in administrative tasks and focus on what’s important: building relationships with your customers, garnering insights, and delivering superior client services. Learn how you can spend more time on selling using Outlook effectively.
Enable Seamless Collaboration with SharePoint
The partnership between marketing and sales is essential. Learn how you can ensure you always have the most up to date content from marketing using SharePoint.
Draw Insights Across Your Organization with Yammer
Learn how to leverage the power of your co-workers: they have worked in similar industries, have similar customers and comparable challenges. Reach across your organization, to find best practices and experts using Yammer.
Strengthen Customer Relationships with Microsoft Teams
Don’t just become an email address for your customer. Create a connection using video calls in Microsoft Teams.
Optimize Sales Performance with PowerBI
Learn how to leverage data visualization to uncover industry and customer insights. You will make smarter business decisions using powerful analytical capabilities within PowerBI.
Discover content to empower effortless sales achievements in the Sales Innovation Hub: https://www.aa-isp.org/sales-innovation-hub
Microsoft 365 partnered with the American Association of Inside Sales to bring sales end-users content focused on key priorities for sales professionals.
Getting Organized with Outlook
Spend less time drowning in administrative tasks and focus on what’s important: building relationships with your customers, garnering insights, and delivering superior client services. Learn how you can spend more time on selling using Outlook effectively.
Enable Seamless Collaboration with SharePoint
The partnership between marketing and sales is essential. Learn how you can ensure you always have the most up to date content from marketing using SharePoint.
Draw Insights Across Your Organization with Yammer
Learn how to leverage the power of your co-workers: they have worked in similar industries, have similar customers and comparable challenges. Reach across your organization, to find best practices and experts using Yammer.
Strengthen Customer Relationships with Microsoft Teams
Don’t just become an email address for your customer. Create a connection using video calls in Microsoft Teams.
Optimize Sales Performance with PowerBI
Learn how to leverage data visualization to uncover industry and customer insights. You will make smarter business decisions using powerful analytical capabilities within PowerBI.
Discover content to empower effortless sales achievements in the Sales Innovation Hub: https://www.aa-isp.org/sales-innovation-hub
We released new Office 365 training last year. Since then we’ve heard positive feedback and requests for more!
So now we’ve made it easy to find the latest training direct from the Office 365 or Microsoft 365 admin center – choose the training option that interests you.
New training way-finder
Choose “Train yourself” to get training for business owners, admins, or IT Pros. You’ll also find new training for Teams and Yammer plus Microsoft 365.
Visit the Admin center or: aka.ms/OfficeAdminTraining.
Office 365 training for small businesses
For small business owners or admins, learn how to set up Office 365 for your business, use communications tools for email and meetings, store and share files in the cloud, and manage your employees and the service in the Admin center.
Visit: aka.ms/365smallbiz
Short videos help you get started with Office 365.
For routine admin tasks like reassigning licenses, you’ll find a series of short videos under Management tasks.
Visit: aka.ms/OfficeAdminTraining and choose Management tasks.
Training options
Office 365 training for IT pros
For enterprise admins or IT pros, ramp up on critical skills for Office 365 deployment, administration, and internal help desk support. Choose the LinkedIn Learning option in the admin center to view over 7 hours of premium video training for free in partnership with LinkedIn Learning. There you will find the option to get a LinkedIn Learning trial or paid subscription if you like.
Choose Advanced training in the Admin center, or visit: aka.ms/365enterprise
Video training brought to you by LinkedIn Learning
Office 365 training for end users
For everyone else, including employees and end users, get the most out of Office 365 with training, Quick Start guides, templates, infographics, cheat sheets, and more. Choose Train your people in the Admin center or visit: aka.ms/learn365
Office 365 Training Center
Let us know what you or your customers think. What did we miss? What could be better?
Thank you! Susan Potter & Tom Werner, Office 365 Content
We released new Office 365 training last year. Since then we’ve heard positive feedback and requests for more!
So now we’ve made it easy to find the latest training direct from the Office 365 or Microsoft 365 admin center – choose the training option that interests you.
New training way-finder
Choose “Train yourself” to get training for business owners, admins, or IT Pros. You’ll also find new training for Teams and Yammer plus Microsoft 365.
Visit the Admin center or: aka.ms/OfficeAdminTraining.
Office 365 training for small businesses
For small business owners or admins, learn how to set up Office 365 for your business, use communications tools for email and meetings, store and share files in the cloud, and manage your employees and the service in the Admin center.
Visit: aka.ms/365smallbiz
Short videos help you get started with Office 365.
For routine admin tasks like reassigning licenses, you’ll find a series of short videos under Management tasks.
Visit: aka.ms/OfficeAdminTraining and choose Management tasks.
Training options
Office 365 training for IT pros
For enterprise admins or IT pros, ramp up on critical skills for Office 365 deployment, administration, and internal help desk support. Choose the LinkedIn Learning option in the admin center to view over 7 hours of premium video training for free in partnership with LinkedIn Learning. There you will find the option to get a LinkedIn Learning trial or paid subscription if you like.
Choose Advanced training in the Admin center, or visit: aka.ms/365enterprise
Video training brought to you by LinkedIn Learning
Office 365 training for end users
For everyone else, including employees and end users, get the most out of Office 365 with training, Quick Start guides, templates, infographics, cheat sheets, and more. Choose Train your people in the Admin center or visit: aka.ms/learn365
Office 365 Training Center
Let us know what you or your customers think. What did we miss? What could be better?
Thank you! Susan Potter & Tom Werner, Office 365 Content
Today we are announcing a preview update to the Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run, which provides desktop admins with a simple user interface to customize their deployment of Office.
With this update, you can now customize Office application settings as part of your configuration file, which means you can build a single configuration file that installs Office and configures preferences for Office applications. You can search for Office application settings based on Office application, category, and title to quickly find the settings you’re interested in:
For this preview release, we’ve provided a limited set of Office application settings to choose from. We plan to include the full set of application settings later this summer.
In addition to application settings, we have been listening to your feedback and since we introduced the Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run we have made a few changes to the preview experience; adding Organization Name as a setting that is included as part of the deployment configuration, an update to the language selection experience, and an update to the Automatically accept the EULA option.
In our next update we plan to add many additional enhancements including; an update to the product selection experience to allow you to have more control over the products you can select from and the apps that you exclude, an update to the language selection experience including support for MatchOS, AllowCdnFallback, Proofing Tools and more.
Please try out the new application settings feature as well as the new enhancements and let us know what you think using the Send-a-Smile feature (button in the upper right-hand corner or this web page) — your feedback helps us plan future updates.
As always, make sure you download the latest version of the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) to enable this new feature during deployment.
Chris Hopkins
Senior Program Manager – Office Engineering
Today we are announcing a preview update to the Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run, which provides desktop admins with a simple user interface to customize their deployment of Office.
With this update, you can now customize Office application settings as part of your configuration file, which means you can build a single configuration file that installs Office and configures preferences for Office applications. You can search for Office application settings based on Office application, category, and title to quickly find the settings you’re interested in:
For this preview release, we’ve provided a limited set of Office application settings to choose from. We plan to include the full set of application settings later this summer.
In addition to application settings, we have been listening to your feedback and since we introduced the Office Customization Tool for Click-to-Run we have made a few changes to the preview experience; adding Organization Name as a setting that is included as part of the deployment configuration, an update to the language selection experience, and an update to the Automatically accept the EULA option.
In our next update we plan to add many additional enhancements including; an update to the product selection experience to allow you to have more control over the products you can select from and the apps that you exclude, an update to the language selection experience including support for MatchOS, AllowCdnFallback, Proofing Tools and more.
Please try out the new application settings feature as well as the new enhancements and let us know what you think using the Send-a-Smile feature (button in the upper right-hand corner or this web page) — your feedback helps us plan future updates.
As always, make sure you download the latest version of the Office Deployment Tool (ODT) to enable this new feature during deployment.
Chris Hopkins
Senior Program Manager – Office Engineering
Organizations of all sizes win customers and create trust with a consistent and recognizable brand. Web and email addresses that match your organization’s name build brand equity and establish credibility. If your business is called Fourth Coffee, a web address of fourthcoffee.com makes you easy to find online, and email addresses that end in @fourthcoffee.com reassure your customers that they are dealing directly with you.
Microsoft makes it easy to integrate your custom domain with comprehensive collaboration tools like email from Office 365. Let’s look at your options.
Purchase a custom domain with your Office 365 subscription
For organizations creating their online presence for the first time, Microsoft makes it easy to purchase a custom domain and integrate it with Office 365. This new domain will instantly be linked with your Office 365 account, meaning that all your email addresses will include your new custom domain where you can also host your website. You can purchase this new custom domain from Microsoft at the same time as your subscription to Office 365 or later.
We’ve posted step by step instructions on how to purchase a custom domain directly from Microsoft in our support documentation.
Automatically join your own GoDaddy or 1&1 domain with Office 365 (UPDATED)
Many organizations will purchase a domain as soon as they have a name. As they grow and implement more advanced IT solutions, it can be challenging to integrate that custom domain. Microsoft makes it easy to join some domains to Office 365 services through an open standard called Domain Connect. Domain Connect automates many of the manual processes typically required for configuring web hosting and email service. Microsoft has enabled this standard in Office 365 to make it easy to integrate your Domain Connect enabled domains with your Office 365 subscription.
We’re excited to announce today that 1&1, a leading domain provider, has integrated the Domain Connect standard. This new partnership makes it easy to integrate your custom domain from 1&1 with your Office 365 subscription. 1&1 and GoDaddy are the first domain providers to offer compliance with the Domain Connect standard, with more on the way.
If you’re currently using another provider for your organization’s email service, it’s easy to migrate those email addresses and messages to your Office 365 subscription.
Check out the support documentation for more on how you can automatically join your existing domain to your Office 365 subscription and migrate your messages.
Manually join your domain with Office 365
You can still join your custom domain with your Office 365 services if you did not purchase it from Microsoft or a Domain Connect compliant provider. There are a few more steps to take, but it’s straight forward. The outcomes and benefits are the same.
The support documentation contains a step by step procedure for manually joining your domain to your Office 365 services.
Easier to manage; easier to focus on your goals
Automatically connecting your custom domain with your Office 365 services is another example of how we want to simplify your IT management experience so that you can focus on your actual work. Join the Office 365 Tech Community to stay up to date on the latest news and releases.
Organizations of all sizes win customers and create trust with a consistent and recognizable brand. Web and email addresses that match your organization’s name build brand equity and establish credibility. If your business is called Fourth Coffee, a web address of fourthcoffee.com makes you easy to find online, and email addresses that end in @fourthcoffee.com reassure your customers that they are dealing directly with you.
Microsoft makes it easy to integrate your custom domain with comprehensive collaboration tools like email from Office 365. Let’s look at your options.
Purchase a custom domain with your Office 365 subscription
For organizations creating their online presence for the first time, Microsoft makes it easy to purchase a custom domain and integrate it with Office 365. This new domain will instantly be linked with your Office 365 account, meaning that all your email addresses will include your new custom domain where you can also host your website. You can purchase this new custom domain from Microsoft at the same time as your subscription to Office 365 or later.
We’ve posted step by step instructions on how to purchase a custom domain directly from Microsoft in our support documentation.
Automatically join your own GoDaddy or 1&1 domain with Office 365 (UPDATED)
Many organizations will purchase a domain as soon as they have a name. As they grow and implement more advanced IT solutions, it can be challenging to integrate that custom domain. Microsoft makes it easy to join some domains to Office 365 services through an open standard called Domain Connect. Domain Connect automates many of the manual processes typically required for configuring web hosting and email service. Microsoft has enabled this standard in Office 365 to make it easy to integrate your Domain Connect enabled domains with your Office 365 subscription.
We’re excited to announce today that 1&1, a leading domain provider, has integrated the Domain Connect standard. This new partnership makes it easy to integrate your custom domain from 1&1 with your Office 365 subscription. 1&1 and GoDaddy are the first domain providers to offer compliance with the Domain Connect standard, with more on the way.
If you’re currently using another provider for your organization’s email service, it’s easy to migrate those email addresses and messages to your Office 365 subscription.
Check out the support documentation for more on how you can automatically join your existing domain to your Office 365 subscription and migrate your messages.
Manually join your domain with Office 365
You can still join your custom domain with your Office 365 services if you did not purchase it from Microsoft or a Domain Connect compliant provider. There are a few more steps to take, but it’s straight forward. The outcomes and benefits are the same.
The support documentation contains a step by step procedure for manually joining your domain to your Office 365 services.
Easier to manage; easier to focus on your goals
Automatically connecting your custom domain with your Office 365 services is another example of how we want to simplify your IT management experience so that you can focus on your actual work. Join the Office 365 Tech Community to stay up to date on the latest news and releases.
In order to drive consistent protection for US Government information, employees, and infrastructure, the Department of Homeland Security issued requirements for Federal agencies using email and web services. The “Enhance Email and Web Security” Binding Operational Directive (BOD 18-01) outlines specific controls and configurations to be applied to email servers and web services within 30, 60, and 120 days of issuance.
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for developing and enforcing binding operational directives under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA) (Id. § 3553(b)(2)), and BODs are mandatory for federal, executive branch, departments and agencies (44 U.S.C. § 3552(b)(1)). While the BOD 18-01 is not compulsory for the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, or State and Local Governments, these policies and security protocols are strongly recommended and should be heeded by all agencies in public sector, as well as commercial companies.
The cybersecurity requirements issued by the Department of Homeland Security will help protect information by enforcing encryption and more secure connections when government employees use internet systems for email and websites. Additionally, emails will require a digital signature that makes it harder to fake an email address to deliver malware or trick users into providing passwords. (Learn more in Dan Lohrmann’s cybersecurity blog on govtech.com)
Microsoft’s cloud makes it easy to enhance email and web security to comply with BOD 18-01.
(Action may be required to configure SPF/DMARC policies. Resources can be found below.)
All agencies are required to:
- Within 30 calendar days after issuance of this directive, develop and provide to DHS an “Agency Plan of Action for BOD 18-01” to:
- Enhance email security by:
- Within 90 days after issuance of this directive, configuring:
- All internet-facing mail servers to offer STARTTLS, and
- All second-level agency domains to have valid SPF/DMARC records, with at minimum a DMARC policy of “p=none” and at least one address defined as a recipient of aggregate and/or failure reports.
- Within 120 days after issuance of this directive, ensuring:
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)v2 and SSLv3 are disabled on mail servers, and
- 3DES and RC4 ciphers are disabled on mail servers.
- Within 15 days of the establishment of centralized National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) reporting location, adding the NCCIC as a recipient of DMARC aggregate reports.
- Within one year after issuance of this directive, setting a DMARC policy of “reject” for all second-level domains and mail-sending hosts.
- Enhance web security by:
- Within 120 days after issuance of this directive, ensuring:
- All publicly accessible Federal websites and web services provide service through a secure connection (HTTPS-only, with HSTS),
- SSLv2 and SSLv3 are disabled on web servers, and
- 3DES and RC4 ciphers are disabled on web servers.
- Identifying and providing a list to DHS of agency second-level domains that can be HSTS preloaded, for which HTTPS will be enforced for all subdomains.
- Upon delivery of its Agency Plan of Action for BOD 18-01 within 30 days of this directive per required action 1, begin implementing that plan.
- At 60 calendar days after issuance of this directive, provide a report to DHS on the status of that implementation. Continue to report every 30 calendar days thereafter until implementation of the agency’s BOD 18-01 plan is complete.
Source: https://cyber.dhs.gov/
Email security with Exchange Online:
- Uses opportunistic TLS and possible to force TLS
- SSLv2 and SSLv3 are disabled
- RC4 cipher is disabled
- 3DES cipher will be disabled in the future
- Configuring DMARC and SPF within Office 365 is simple
Dynamics 365 (all environments and offerings):
- SSLv2 and SSLv3 are disabled
- RC4 cipher is disabled
- 3DES will be disabled by the end of January
Resources:
On disabling ciphers via GPO:
This entry does not exist in the registry by default. For information about ciphers that are used by the Schannel SSP, see Supported Cipher Suites and Protocols in the Schannel SSP.
Registry path: HKLM SYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSecurityProvidersSCHANNEL
To disable a cipher, create an Enabled entry in the appropriate subkey. This entry does not exist in the registry by default. After you have created the entry, change the DWORD value to 0. When you disable any algorithm, you disallow all cipher suites that use that algorithm. To enable the cipher, change the DWORD value to 1.
Source: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn786418(v=ws.11).aspx#BKMK_SchannelTR_Ciphers
Want to stay up to date on technology trends in government, Microsoft 365 for US Government product updates, and the musings of a Microsoft product manager? Follow @brian_levenson on Twitter.
In order to drive consistent protection for US Government information, employees, and infrastructure, the Department of Homeland Security issued requirements for Federal agencies using email and web services. The “Enhance Email and Web Security” Binding Operational Directive (BOD 18-01) outlines specific controls and configurations to be applied to email servers and web services within 30, 60, and 120 days of issuance.
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for developing and enforcing binding operational directives under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA) (Id. § 3553(b)(2)), and BODs are mandatory for federal, executive branch, departments and agencies (44 U.S.C. § 3552(b)(1)). While the BOD 18-01 is not compulsory for the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, or State and Local Governments, these policies and security protocols are strongly recommended and should be heeded by all agencies in public sector, as well as commercial companies.
The cybersecurity requirements issued by the Department of Homeland Security will help protect information by enforcing encryption and more secure connections when government employees use internet systems for email and websites. Additionally, emails will require a digital signature that makes it harder to fake an email address to deliver malware or trick users into providing passwords. (Learn more in Dan Lohrmann’s cybersecurity blog on govtech.com)
Microsoft’s cloud makes it easy to enhance email and web security to comply with BOD 18-01.
(Action may be required to configure SPF/DMARC policies. Resources can be found below.)
All agencies are required to:
- Within 30 calendar days after issuance of this directive, develop and provide to DHS an “Agency Plan of Action for BOD 18-01” to:
- Enhance email security by:
- Within 90 days after issuance of this directive, configuring:
- All internet-facing mail servers to offer STARTTLS, and
- All second-level agency domains to have valid SPF/DMARC records, with at minimum a DMARC policy of “p=none” and at least one address defined as a recipient of aggregate and/or failure reports.
- Within 120 days after issuance of this directive, ensuring:
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)v2 and SSLv3 are disabled on mail servers, and
- 3DES and RC4 ciphers are disabled on mail servers.
- Within 15 days of the establishment of centralized National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) reporting location, adding the NCCIC as a recipient of DMARC aggregate reports.
- Within one year after issuance of this directive, setting a DMARC policy of “reject” for all second-level domains and mail-sending hosts.
- Enhance web security by:
- Within 120 days after issuance of this directive, ensuring:
- All publicly accessible Federal websites and web services provide service through a secure connection (HTTPS-only, with HSTS),
- SSLv2 and SSLv3 are disabled on web servers, and
- 3DES and RC4 ciphers are disabled on web servers.
- Identifying and providing a list to DHS of agency second-level domains that can be HSTS preloaded, for which HTTPS will be enforced for all subdomains.
- Upon delivery of its Agency Plan of Action for BOD 18-01 within 30 days of this directive per required action 1, begin implementing that plan.
- At 60 calendar days after issuance of this directive, provide a report to DHS on the status of that implementation. Continue to report every 30 calendar days thereafter until implementation of the agency’s BOD 18-01 plan is complete.
Source: https://cyber.dhs.gov/
Email security with Exchange Online:
- Uses opportunistic TLS and possible to force TLS
- SSLv2 and SSLv3 are disabled
- RC4 cipher is disabled
- 3DES cipher will be disabled in the future
- Configuring DMARC and SPF within Office 365 is simple
Dynamics 365 (all environments and offerings):
- SSLv2 and SSLv3 are disabled
- RC4 cipher is disabled
- 3DES will be disabled by the end of January
Resources:
On disabling ciphers via GPO:
This entry does not exist in the registry by default. For information about ciphers that are used by the Schannel SSP, see Supported Cipher Suites and Protocols in the Schannel SSP.
Registry path: HKLM SYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSecurityProvidersSCHANNEL
To disable a cipher, create an Enabled entry in the appropriate subkey. This entry does not exist in the registry by default. After you have created the entry, change the DWORD value to 0. When you disable any algorithm, you disallow all cipher suites that use that algorithm. To enable the cipher, change the DWORD value to 1.
Source: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn786418(v=ws.11).aspx#BKMK_SchannelTR_Ciphers
Want to stay up to date on technology trends in government, Microsoft 365 for US Government product updates, and the musings of a Microsoft product manager? Follow @brian_levenson on Twitter.
We’re incredibly lucky to have millions of passionate OneNote users around the globe, and we love learning how we can help you remember, think, and organize better. In spending time with you, we heard a recurring theme: you want a single version of OneNote on Windows that combines all the benefits of the modern Windows 10 app with the depth and breadth of capabilities in the older OneNote 2016. We took that feedback to heart, and over the last few years we’ve been focused on making OneNote for Windows 10 the best version of OneNote on Windows.
Beginning with the launch of Office 2019 later this year, OneNote for Windows 10 will replace OneNote 2016 as the default OneNote experience for both Office 365 and Office 2019. Why OneNote for Windows 10? The app has improved performance and reliability, and it’s powered by a brand new sync engine (which we’re also bringing to web, Mac, iOS, and Android). You don’t need to worry about being on the latest version since it’s always up-to-date via the Microsoft Store, and it lets us deliver updates faster than ever before. In fact, over the last year and a half we’ve added more than 100 of your favorite OneNote 2016 features based on your feedback (thank you!), with more improvements on the way including tags and better integration with Office documents.
We’d love for you to start using OneNote for Windows 10 today, however we know some of you might not be ready yet. Maybe you rely on a feature we don’t yet support on Windows 10 (please let us know using the Feedback Hub), or you don’t want to store your notebooks in the cloud. If so, you’re more than welcome to continue using OneNote 2016.
What’s happening to OneNote 2016?
While we’re no longer adding new features to OneNote 2016, it’ll still be there if you need it. OneNote 2016 is optionally available for anyone with Office 365 or Office 2019, but it will no longer be installed by default. If you currently use OneNote 2016, you won’t notice any changes when you update to Office 2019. We’ll continue to offer support, bug fixes, and security updates for OneNote 2016 for the duration of the Office 2016 support lifecycle, which runs through October 2020 for mainstream support and October 2025 for extended support. For more details, please refer to this FAQ.
A preview of what’s to come
We’ve been listening to your feedback about what you like—and what you don’t—and working hard to address it in the product. Your opinions, feature requests, and, yes, complaints have been critical in helping us shape the current experience. Today, we’d like to walk you through some of the work we’ve done to bring your favorite features from OneNote 2016 to OneNote for Windows 10, highlight some of the capabilities that are only available in the Windows 10 app, and give you a sneak peek at a few of the improvements coming this year.
Your favorite features, improved
OneNote for Windows 10 was designed to feel natural with any input method, from mouse and keyboard to pen and touch, and it contains numerous improvements under the hood for better performance, reliability, and battery life. It also has a number of new features not available in OneNote 2016, including ink effects* and dramatically improved ink-to-text (check it out—it’ll even preserve your ink color, size, and highlights!), Researcher*, a notification center, deep integration with Windows 10, and much more.
Your browser does not support the video tag.
For many of you, shifting our focus to the Windows 10 app won’t come as a surprise. Aside from a handful of targeted improvements, we haven’t added any new features to OneNote 2016 in some time. Instead we’ve been focusing on consistency, ensuring that nearly all your favorite features in OneNote 2016 are also available in OneNote for Windows 10. We’re almost there, and in the coming months we’ll be adding even more top-requested features.
Top-requested features coming soon to OneNote for Windows 10
Here’s what you can expect later this summer:
-
Insert and search for tags: OneNote 2016’s popular tags feature is coming to OneNote for Windows 10! Soon you’ll be able to insert, create, and search for custom tags, making it easy to mark key information and find it later. Tags you create will now roam with you to across your devices, and OneNote will even show you tags other people have used in a shared notebook so you don’t have to recreate them yourself. The new tags experience was designed based on your feedback, and it will be available later this summer.
-
View and edit files: See live previews of Office files in OneNote, work together on attached documents, and save space in your notebooks with cloud files. You’ll get all the benefits of saving a file on OneDrive with the context and convenience of an attachment or preview on a OneNote page.
These are just a few of the improvements coming soon to OneNote for Windows 10. The app is updated every month with new functionality, and we have a lot of cool stuff in the works—including page templates. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements.
An improved sync experience
We’ve been hard at work making sync faster and more reliable on OneNote for Windows 10, as well as on Mac, iOS, Android, and web. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a look at the new sync engine in action:
Your browser does not support the video tag.
You can try the first set of improvements today by opening a OneDrive notebook in OneNote for Windows 10, Mac, iOS, or Android. These improvements will be rolled out to OneNote Online in the coming months, as well as notebooks on OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.
Improving the user experience
Last year, we unveiled a new look and feel for OneNote on Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Android, and OneNote Online that aligned the disparate designs into a single, unified interface. In addition to bringing consistency to our apps, the new user experience scales much better for large notebooks and significantly improves accessibility for those who rely on assistive technologies. To learn more about the new design, check out our help article.
This is just a quick look at OneNote for Windows 10, but we’re not done yet. We’ll continue listening to your feedback and incorporating it into our future plans, so leave us a comment below or add your feature request using the Feedback Hub. You can also join the Office Insider program for early access to the latest updates. And before we sign off, we want to say a huge thank you for your support. We really hope you love the new OneNote for Windows!
—OneNote Team
*Requires Office 365 subscription
We’re incredibly lucky to have millions of passionate OneNote users around the globe, and we love learning how we can help you remember, think, and organize better. In spending time with you, we heard a recurring theme: you want a single version of OneNote on Windows that combines all the benefits of the modern Windows 10 app with the depth and breadth of capabilities in the older OneNote 2016. We took that feedback to heart, and over the last few years we’ve been focused on making OneNote for Windows 10 the best version of OneNote on Windows.
Beginning with the launch of Office 2019 later this year, OneNote for Windows 10 will replace OneNote 2016 as the default OneNote experience for both Office 365 and Office 2019. Why OneNote for Windows 10? The app has improved performance and reliability, and it’s powered by a brand new sync engine (which we’re also bringing to web, Mac, iOS, and Android). You don’t need to worry about being on the latest version since it’s always up-to-date via the Microsoft Store, and it lets us deliver updates faster than ever before. In fact, over the last year and a half we’ve added more than 100 of your favorite OneNote 2016 features based on your feedback (thank you!), with more improvements on the way including tags and better integration with Office documents.
We’d love for you to start using OneNote for Windows 10 today, however we know some of you might not be ready yet. Maybe you rely on a feature we don’t yet support on Windows 10 (please let us know using the Feedback Hub), or you don’t want to store your notebooks in the cloud. If so, you’re more than welcome to continue using OneNote 2016.
What’s happening to OneNote 2016?
While we’re no longer adding new features to OneNote 2016, it’ll still be there if you need it. OneNote 2016 is optionally available for anyone with Office 365 or Office 2019, but it will no longer be installed by default. If you currently use OneNote 2016, you won’t notice any changes when you update to Office 2019. We’ll continue to offer support, bug fixes, and security updates for OneNote 2016 for the duration of the Office 2016 support lifecycle, which runs through October 2020 for mainstream support and October 2025 for extended support. For more details, please refer to this FAQ.
A preview of what’s to come
We’ve been listening to your feedback about what you like—and what you don’t—and working hard to address it in the product. Your opinions, feature requests, and, yes, complaints have been critical in helping us shape the current experience. Today, we’d like to walk you through some of the work we’ve done to bring your favorite features from OneNote 2016 to OneNote for Windows 10, highlight some of the capabilities that are only available in the Windows 10 app, and give you a sneak peek at a few of the improvements coming this year.
Your favorite features, improved
OneNote for Windows 10 was designed to feel natural with any input method, from mouse and keyboard to pen and touch, and it contains numerous improvements under the hood for better performance, reliability, and battery life. It also has a number of new features not available in OneNote 2016, including ink effects* and dramatically improved ink-to-text (check it out—it’ll even preserve your ink color, size, and highlights!), Researcher*, a notification center, deep integration with Windows 10, and much more.
Your browser does not support the video tag.
For many of you, shifting our focus to the Windows 10 app won’t come as a surprise. Aside from a handful of targeted improvements, we haven’t added any new features to OneNote 2016 in some time. Instead we’ve been focusing on consistency, ensuring that nearly all your favorite features in OneNote 2016 are also available in OneNote for Windows 10. We’re almost there, and in the coming months we’ll be adding even more top-requested features.
Top-requested features coming soon to OneNote for Windows 10
Here’s what you can expect later this summer:
-
Insert and search for tags: OneNote 2016’s popular tags feature is coming to OneNote for Windows 10! Soon you’ll be able to insert, create, and search for custom tags, making it easy to mark key information and find it later. Tags you create will now roam with you to across your devices, and OneNote will even show you tags other people have used in a shared notebook so you don’t have to recreate them yourself. The new tags experience was designed based on your feedback, and it will be available later this summer.
-
View and edit files: See live previews of Office files in OneNote, work together on attached documents, and save space in your notebooks with cloud files. You’ll get all the benefits of saving a file on OneDrive with the context and convenience of an attachment or preview on a OneNote page.
These are just a few of the improvements coming soon to OneNote for Windows 10. The app is updated every month with new functionality, and we have a lot of cool stuff in the works—including page templates. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements.
An improved sync experience
We’ve been hard at work making sync faster and more reliable on OneNote for Windows 10, as well as on Mac, iOS, Android, and web. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a look at the new sync engine in action:
Your browser does not support the video tag.
You can try the first set of improvements today by opening a OneDrive notebook in OneNote for Windows 10, Mac, iOS, or Android. These improvements will be rolled out to OneNote Online in the coming months, as well as notebooks on OneDrive for Business and SharePoint.
Improving the user experience
Last year, we unveiled a new look and feel for OneNote on Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Android, and OneNote Online that aligned the disparate designs into a single, unified interface. In addition to bringing consistency to our apps, the new user experience scales much better for large notebooks and significantly improves accessibility for those who rely on assistive technologies. To learn more about the new design, check out our help article.
This is just a quick look at OneNote for Windows 10, but we’re not done yet. We’ll continue listening to your feedback and incorporating it into our future plans, so leave us a comment below or add your feature request using the Feedback Hub. You can also join the Office Insider program for early access to the latest updates. And before we sign off, we want to say a huge thank you for your support. We really hope you love the new OneNote for Windows!
—OneNote Team
*Requires Office 365 subscription
By meeting compliance requirements of the US and State Governments, Office 365 US Government empowers agencies to realize a modern workplace supported by devices and services. Increased collaboration breaks down siloes within and across agencies, and secure mobility allows civil servants to remain productive in the field and away from desks. Cost savings and data center footprint reduction can be re-invested into digitizing citizen services.
Microsoft delivers Office 365 secure productivity and communication services like email, document creation apps and storage, intranet sites, and instant messaging/telephony to the US Government from three environments designed to meet the unique data handling regulations for controlled unclassified information. Architected according to NIST controls, FedRAMP requirements, and the DISA Security Requirements Guidelines, these environments store content in the continental United States, are operated by US citizens, and are authorized to hold Federal, criminal justice, Federal tax, and covered defense information.
We want to answer a few questions about the Office 365 US Government environments and offerings: What services and applications are included, why is the roadmap different from Enterprise offerings, and what services will be released in the future and when?
To answer this question in a meaningful way, we must explain the compliance commitments, audit process, and accreditation requirements. But if you want to skip ahead, the roadmap for Office 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC), Government Community Cloud (GCC) High, and DoD can be found at the end of this post.
The Office 365 GCC environment is designed for Federal, State, and Local government and has been available for about five years. With millions of monthly active users, agencies across the country are benefitting from cloud productivity and security services that meet their compliance requirements.
The Office 365 GCC High environment is designed for Federal agencies, defense industry, aerospace industry, and other organizations holding Controlled Unclassified Information. Introduced more recently, the GCC High offerings are ideal for national security organizations and companies with International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) data or Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement (DFARS) requirements.
The Office 365 DoD environment is designed for the US Department of Defense exclusively.
Office 365 US Government environments and associated compliance commitments
Every service introduced into the US Government offerings has undergone a third party review to ensure that we meet our compliance commitments to you. We complete audits regularly to make new capabilities available as frequently as possible. Release cycles differ from Enterprise offerings for new services, but once available, the service will align with the commercial user experience.
The October audit is complete, and Microsoft has received the 3PAO report, so we can confirm what will be released in the coming weeks. We will be sharing an updated roadmap at the Microsoft Government Tech Summit taking place in Washington DC on March 5-6, so stay tuned and don’t hesitate to register to attend! Information will be published online also.
Upcoming Events:
Learn More:
Engage:
Technical:
Brian Levenson is the product manager for Microsoft 365 for US Government. Follow him on Twitter (@brian_levenson) and LinkedIn (Brian Levenson) for the latest in government technology and Microsoft 365 news.
By meeting compliance requirements of the US and State Governments, Office 365 US Government empowers agencies to realize a modern workplace supported by devices and services. Increased collaboration breaks down siloes within and across agencies, and secure mobility allows civil servants to remain productive in the field and away from desks. Cost savings and data center footprint reduction can be re-invested into digitizing citizen services.
Microsoft delivers Office 365 secure productivity and communication services like email, document creation apps and storage, intranet sites, and instant messaging/telephony to the US Government from three environments designed to meet the unique data handling regulations for controlled unclassified information. Architected according to NIST controls, FedRAMP requirements, and the DISA Security Requirements Guidelines, these environments store content in the continental United States, are operated by US citizens, and are authorized to hold Federal, criminal justice, Federal tax, and covered defense information.
We want to answer a few questions about the Office 365 US Government environments and offerings: What services and applications are included, why is the roadmap different from Enterprise offerings, and what services will be released in the future and when?
To answer this question in a meaningful way, we must explain the compliance commitments, audit process, and accreditation requirements. But if you want to skip ahead, the roadmap for Office 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC), Government Community Cloud (GCC) High, and DoD can be found at the end of this post.
The Office 365 GCC environment is designed for Federal, State, and Local government and has been available for about five years. With millions of monthly active users, agencies across the country are benefitting from cloud productivity and security services that meet their compliance requirements.
The Office 365 GCC High environment is designed for Federal agencies, defense industry, aerospace industry, and other organizations holding Controlled Unclassified Information. Introduced more recently, the GCC High offerings are ideal for national security organizations and companies with International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) data or Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement (DFARS) requirements.
The Office 365 DoD environment is designed for the US Department of Defense exclusively.
Office 365 US Government environments and associated compliance commitments
Every service introduced into the US Government offerings has undergone a third party review to ensure that we meet our compliance commitments to you. We complete audits regularly to make new capabilities available as frequently as possible. Release cycles differ from Enterprise offerings for new services, but once available, the service will align with the commercial user experience.
The October audit is complete, and Microsoft has received the 3PAO report, so we can confirm what will be released in the coming weeks. We will be sharing an updated roadmap at the Microsoft Government Tech Summit taking place in Washington DC on March 5-6, so stay tuned and don’t hesitate to register to attend! Information will be published online also.
Upcoming Events:
Learn More:
Engage:
Technical:
Brian Levenson is the product manager for Microsoft 365 for US Government. Follow him on Twitter (@brian_levenson) and LinkedIn (Brian Levenson) for the latest in government technology and Microsoft 365 news.
