Microsoft publishes a roadmap for Office 365 Education users

While Chromebooks may be sucking up the news air regarding education and technology, Microsoft has been plugging away at its still considerable presence in schools and universities. With tools such as OneNote, Office 365, and Surface hardware, Microsoft appears to be revamping its brand with regard to teachers, faculty, and academic administrations.

On that note, the Office 365 team just announced its Education Roadmap via a new website that is easily accessible and viewable to all educators. A previous iteration of Office 365 Roadmap was made available for Enterprise customers that listed key developmental milestones for the suite of Office tools such as Yammer, Skype for Business, Exchange, etc. Now, the same detailed status updates and milestone marker listings are being offered for educators interested in Office 365 deployment.

We’re pleased to share the Office 365 Education Roadmap, which lists updates currently planned for applicable subscribers. Updates for the various stages—from in development to rolling out to customers, to being generally available for applicable customers worldwide—are easily accessible in the Office 365 Roadmap.”

Visiting the site, anyone interested in investing in technology for schools or colleges will find information about what’s being “Envisioned” by the Office team as well as transitioning and management tools for current Office users. By following the path below, users can gain further information on the development process of Office 365.

• Go to roadmap.office.com.
• 2.Open Filters.
• 3.Under Services, select Education.
• 4.Click the launch status (i.e., in development) to see product/feature items.
• 5.Click the item for a description and other information available.

Once filtered, customers will see a listing of milestone updates for the following sections of development from the Office 365 team.

Launched: Fully released updates that are now generally available for applicable customers

Rolling out: Updates that are beginning to roll-out and are not yet available to all applicable customers

In development: Updates that are currently in development and testing

Cancelled: Previously planned updates that are no longer being developed or are indefinitely delayed.

The addition of the Education Roadmap is another piece of a larger puzzle that is becoming Microsoft’s Office 365 platform, rather than only the company’s productivity suite. Microsoft is actively engaging with its communities and education is a enormous community that will help guide the company’s plans moving forward.