Welcome to Microsoft Mechanics.
On today's show we'll explore the streamline update model between Office and Windows 10.
Upcoming changes to Office 365 system requirements
so that your office desktop apps can benefit from the latest
Office 365 capabilities.
And improvements that we're making to make it simpler to deploy
and update Office 365 ProPlus on Windows 10.
Microsoft Mechanics
I'm joined by Amesh from the Office 365 engineering team, welcome back.
Thanks Jeremy, glad to be here.
Let's start with how we're aligning the update model between Office 365
ProPlus and Windows 10.
Can you explain some of the new things that were they were doing?
Yeah certainly, we're making a change to the semi-annual cadence.
And basically we're moving from this three times a year delivery,
now down to twice a year delivery.
This gives you more time
to be able to support these builds within your environment,
while still receiving security updates on a monthly basis.
This aligns the overall target delivery model
with Windows 10 as well.
If you want to continue to receive those monthly feature updates,
of course that option still stands.
But to some extent here both Windows and Office
they're both desktop technologies.
People really think about them in the same cadence terms of how we update them.
We've been though developing the model similarly but a little bit separately
with the two product teams over the last couple of years.
Yeah that's right.
Practically speaking that's because the rate in which we're evolving desktop experiences
across Office and Windows has increased compared to what we're used to have in the on-prem world.
From an Office perspective the main driver here is to ensure.
that we're delivering the most secure and productive experiences
with the latest apps and service innovations.
And similarly for Windows.
We're delivering a continuous up-to-date security model
that leverages the cloud
such as Windows Defender advanced threat protection.
As well as other cloud connected experiences,
such as mixed reality.
It makes a lot of sense to bring Office and Windows together.
Because if you're an IT admin,
desktop updates are usually going in tandem.
So we think about our operating systems and our client apps.
That's right.
We want to take this opportunity to streamline both models
especially as more people are moving to Windows 10
and Office 365 ProPlus together.
So how does this new update model actually work?
The best way to explain this is visually.
We'll target the first release of the semi-annual channel.
To be delivered twice a year, first in March and then in September.
Four months after the first release,
this particular bill reaches its final release
and will live for another 14 months.
During this process the bill continues receiving security
and reliability updates monthly.
And we'll also continue to release new builds every six months.
But there are also updates coming to the way that we think about
how Office desktop clients connect to Office 365 services.
Can you explain that?
Yes.
So increasingly, Office desktop clients are being more service connected.
Let me explain by showing you.
So now what we've seen here is we have the ability to connect
to more services in the back end.
For example I have the ability to see my most recently used files
so I don't have to figure out where I actually saved them last.
And it's coming from OneDrive for business or SharePoint.
I don't have to go to the browser to see those things.
That's correct.
In addition to that,
now I can have the ability to look at my version history.
I can see who's modified it.
I could even open my last versions
to see and understand the changes that were made in word here.
Another great info from SharePoint.
That's correct.
Now with PowerPoint and with the integration with Skype for business
it gives me the ability to see who's in my presentation at the moment
collaborating me.
And I can have a quick conversation with both of them at that same time.
And beyond that,
in Excel we've been able to see
a lot of things and a lot of connectivities with machine learning.
So I could do things like sentiment scores
and be able to see how my products and services are actually running in my organization.
Finally, we've done some additional things with SharePoint.
And by taking the DLP policies
and giving me tool tips
to ensure that all my privacy and information is protected within my organization.
In addition, this will also work in Outlook.
But we haven't even talked about Outlook and Outlook is one of those things where
we connect to Exchange, SharePoint and Skype.
All of those things are in Outlook client as well.
That's correct, more and more we're bringing new services and capabilities
into all of our services and clients.
Just to emphasize what you're saying here,
these capabilities were built in the cloud
and they were introduced over the last couple of years since office 2010
in available in desktop clients when they connect to Office 365.
Right, and to ensure reliability and secure connectivity of Office desktop apps
with Office 365 services,
means that we need to keep your Office desktop client in line with the service updates.
So how does all of this effect Office 365 system requirements for the Office Desktop?
especially if you're using older versions of Office.
As I mentioned, the service keeps evolving.
Think of Office 365 ProPlus as an app extension of the Office 365 services.
But for this to work well, we want to help you establish a standard desktop environment.
There are practical reasons for this.
For example, from a security perspective
we're retiring support for RPC over HTTP and Office 365 ProPlus.
it's been replaced by a more cloud aware protocol
such as MAPI over HTTP.
In this case it means that you'll need to be on a build
of outlook that supports this MAPI protocol.
Now that's really just one example.
You'll also see that as of 2020,
your connectivity to Office 365 services from your perpetual Office clients
will require mainstream support or use of Office 365 desktop clients
to be able to connect to the services.
But let's switch gears here for a little bit.
I know that we're doing a lot in terms of the deployment
process around getting updates deployed.
So some of the work that you're doing there?
We think about three things.
User training, application compatibility, as well as deployment and update management tools.
First we want to be able to reduce the overall training burden
and do what we can to inform Office users about what's new,
by showing you a what's new panel every time you receive a new update.
And we're only going to get smarter about this by exposing
what you actually have within your service environment.
In addition to that we're also integrated into the Windows upgrade analytics
where you can get a full inventory of all your Office add-ins within your enterprise.
This gives you a great sense of what you actually have
and what you have to manage as you go through an upgrade
or even through some of your updates.
It's great to see that we're addressing the user training as well as the app compat concerns here.
And you can get a longer overview of this by watching a recent Microsoft Mechanics show
on Windows upgrade analytics.
But I know we're doing a lot of work in terms of deployment, can you explain what's new there?
Yes, certainly.
So we've done a lot of work with System Center Configuration Manager
If you have up to version 1610
you're going to see a lot of greatness here
where we introduce the Office 365 client management dashboard
which gives you a single place to view your entire environment
How many devices you've actually have deployed,
what versions are available there,
languages, as well as what channels these devices are receiving their updates from.
Now, in 1702 which was recently released.
We included the Office 365 client installer.
This basically gives your Office deployment tool a new view
and it gives you the ability to target and deploy packages.
Something I've personally received a lot of questions about, it's finally here.
So here I'm going to give you an example.
I'm going to say finance and I'm going to send it out to the semi-annual channel.
And then be able to download it to a local host.
And from here I can be able to take any of my existing configuration files
Or I can just start new, which we'll start with this first demo.
As you can see here, similar to the Office deployment tool
I could pick the actual product that I want to be able to deploy
ProPlus for example.
And I can actually exlude certain applications.
Most users don't actually need access and therefore administrators take that out.
I can also have add-on products such Vizio pro
or even Project pro
for that particular package itself.
What this is actually doing behind the scenes is kind of authoring what we used to do with config.xml file, right?
That's correct.
And it gives me the flexibility to choose things like my architecture,
the channel that I would like to deploy from,
or even the actual build.
And this is all cloud connected.
So as we have new builds posted to the RCDN,
this automatically gets updated with that information.
And finally, I have the ability to set the particular languages
that my users are going to have.
And then from there I could just use the existing workflows
that system center already has to either target a set of machines
or advertise to my organization.
Not just the existing workflows,
but you're also using your config manager infrastructure distribution points to push those bits out.
So making it like the rest of your software deployments.
It's really great seeing all the support come into configuration manager.
These are some really important updates about how we manage Office, but
where can people go to learn more if they've got additional questions?
Well for more information on the Office update model
and the updates for the Office 365 system requirements,
you can join us on the tech community to find the answers to your questions
or pose new ones.
And lastly, once you're ready to upgrade your desktop,
Fastrack which is a free service for qualifying Office 365 customers
is an excellent resource to take advantage of.
Lots of great resources.
Thanks for joining us today, Amesh.
And also keep watching Microsoft Mechanics for the latest tech updates across Microsoft.
And thanks for watching.
Microsoft Mechanics
www.microsoft.com/mechanics