Windows 10: Updates to the Office 365 user experience

Brink · Jun 13, 2018

Technology is changing the way people get things done. We’ve picked up the pace. Our work is more collaborative. And we’re blurring the boundaries of time and place. When we ask customers why they continue to choose Office for their most important work, they tell us that they love the power the Office apps offer. The breadth and depth of features is unmatched in the industry and allows them to do things that they just can’t do with other products. But they also tell us that they need Office to adapt to the changing environment, and they’d love us to simplify the user experience and make that power more accessible. Today, we’re pleased to announce user experience updates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook rolling out gradually over the next few months. These changes are inspired by the new culture of work and designed to deliver a balance of power and simplicity.

Office is used by more than a billion people every month, so while we’re excited about these changes, we also recognize how important it is to get things right. To guide our work, we came up with “The Three Cs”—a set of guiding principles that we use as a north star. Because these principles will make this process feel different than any previous user experience update, we thought it would be useful to share them with you.

Customers—We’re using a customer-driven innovation process to co-create the design of the Office apps. That process consists of three phases: initial customer research and analysis; concepting and co-creation; and validation and refinement.

Context—Customers love the power of Office, but they don’t need every feature at the same time. We want our new designs to understand the context that you’re working in, so you can focus on the job at hand. That means surfacing the most relevant commands based on the work you’re doing and making it easy to connect and collaborate with others.

Control—We recognize that established skills and routines are powerful—and that the way someone uses the apps often depends on specific parts of the user interface. So we want to give users control, allowing them to toggle significant changes on and off.

These updates are exclusive to Office.com and Office 365—the always up-to-date versions of our apps and services. But they won’t happen all at once. Instead, over the next several months we will deploy new designs to select customers in stages and carefully test and learn. We’ll move them into production only after they’ve made it through rigorous rounds of validation and refinement.

The initial set of updates includes three changes:

Simplified ribbon—A new, updated version of the ribbon is designed to help users focus on their work and collaborate naturally with others. People who prefer to dedicate more screen space to the commands will still be able to expand the ribbon to the classic three-line view.

The first app to get this new experience will be the web version of Word and will start to roll out to select consumer users today on Office.com. Select Insiders will then see the simplified ribbon in Outlook for Windows in July.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Windows offer our deepest, richest feature set—and they’re the preferred experience for users who want to get the most from our apps. Users have a lot of “muscle memory” built around these versions, so we plan on being especially careful with changes that could disrupt their work. We aren’t ready to bring the simplified ribbon to these versions yet because we feel like we need more feedback from a broader set of users first. But when we do, users will always be able to revert back to the classic ribbon with one click.

New colors and icons—Across the apps you’ll start to see new colors and new icons built as scalable graphics—so they render with crisp, clean lines on screens of any size. These changes are designed to both modernize the user experience and make it more inclusive and accessible.

The new colors and icons will first appear in the web version of Word for Office.com. Then, later this month, select Insiders will see them in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Windows. In July, they will go to Outlook for Windows, and in August they will begin rolling out to Outlook for Mac.

Search—Search will become a much more important element of the user experience, providing access to commands, content, and people. With “zero query search,” simply placing your cursor in the search box will bring up recommendations powered by AI and the Microsoft Graph.

Commercial users can already see this experience in action in Office.com, SharePoint Online, and the Outlook mobile app, and it will start rolling out to commercial users of Outlook on the web in August.

For an overview of these changes, check out the video below by Jon Friedman, our chief designer for Office.

[youtube]dIuQTQq9aWo[/youtube]

To develop these initial designs, Jon’s team worked closely with customers. They collected data on how people use the apps and built prototypes to test new concepts. While we have plenty of work left to do, we’ve definitely heard encouraging things from customers using early builds:
“It’s simpler and I feel like I can open it and immediately get my bearings and move forward. Not a lot of extra information. The tasks are obvious on this screen.”

“The toolbar provides the most frequently used features…maximizing the screen real estate for the actual content.”

“I like the extra space. What I do find is that the feature to toggle it off/on is helpful because occasionally I can’t figure out (quickly) where something went.”
We plan on carefully monitoring usage and feedback as the changes roll out, and we’ll update our designs as we learn more.

Technology is changing the way people get things done at work, at school, and at home, resetting expectations for productivity. Inspired by these changes, these updates are designed to deliver a balance of power and simplicity. But what’s most exciting for us is that over the next few months we’ll be co-creating and refining these new experiences with our customers—and making the power of Office more accessible for everyone.
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Source: Power and simplicity - updates to the Office 365 user experience - Microsoft 365 Blog

See also: Three user experience updates Office announced today - Windows Experience Blog

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Brink · Jun 14, 2018

Introducing a new home page experience for Office 365 users

Earlier this month, we began to roll out a new, more intuitive home page experience for Office 365 users. This update brings a fresh new look and feel to the Office 365 welcome page, and a range of new features for both administrators and users.

We’re constantly looking for opportunities to improve the way our users get things done. The new Office 365 home page enables more consistent and unified experiences for work, education and home users across every device. This new platform also helps us respond to user feedback and deliver innovative new features at a faster pace than ever before.

Simple, responsive design

We’ve simplified how people access their Office 365 applications and documents. Now, when you log in to Office 365, you have immediate access to all your online applications and recent documents to help you get to what you need faster.

As part of this update, we’ve also taken the opportunity to add improved page responsiveness for a better, more consistent experience across all your devices. Office 365 lets you get your best work done, no matter what device you’re using, and the new home page will look beautiful on your phone, tablet, PC and Mac.

Tool tips

We want to make sure that our Office 365 users get the most out of their Office 365 experience. New tool tips help highlight new and unused features, including recently added applications and actions users need to take.

Seamless Office install

We’ve made it easier than ever for Office 365 users to get the latest version of their mobile applications and desktop software. Now, you can download and install Office on your device with one click from the home screen. We’ve also made it easier to install Office 365 mobile applications from your desktop. Simply choose the application you want to install, then send an email or an SMS to the device you want to install it on.

What’s next

Over the next few months, you’ll see the new home page replace the default log-in experience for Office 365 users. Let us know what you think! And don’t be surprised if we respond to your feedback. We read every piece of feedback that we receive as we work to make your Office 365 experience the best it can be.

—Tom Batcheler @tombatcheler, senior product marketing manager for the Office 365 team
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Source: Introducing a new home page experience for Office 365 users - Office Blogs

Brink · Jun 14, 2018

Office 365 ProPlus updates

Office 365 ProPlus delivers cloud-connected and always up-to-date versions of our most valuable enterprise apps. Today, we’re making three important announcements related to ProPlus: changes to the Office 365 system requirements; improvements to the ProPlus update model, including alignment with Windows 10; and new tools and programs to manage ProPlus application compatibility.

Changes to the Office 365 system requirements

Office 365 ProPlus is the very best way to experience the Office 365 services. For IT, ProPlus delivers the most secure and most complete suite of productivity apps available. And because the apps are cloud-connected and always up-to-date, they’re continually getting better—with new security features, new telemetry and new management capabilities. For end users, ProPlus brings the Office 365 services to life. When a modern app is connected to a modern service, magic happens. People can collaborate in new ways. Apps can simplify mundane tasks. And advanced security services can protect users as they work.

When customers connect to Office 365 with a legacy version of Office, they’re not enjoying all that the service has to offer. The IT benefits—particularly security—are cut short. And the end user experience in the apps is limited to the features shipped at a point in time. To ensure that customers are getting the most out of their Office 365 subscription, we are updating our system requirements.

Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support required to connect to Office 365 services. Starting October 13, 2020, Office 365 ProPlus or Office perpetual in mainstream support will be required to connect to Office 365 services. Office 365 ProPlus will deliver the best experience, but for customers who aren’t ready to move to the cloud by 2020, we will also support connections from Office perpetual in mainstream support.

Applies to Office 365 commercial services only. This update does not change our system requirements or support policies for the Office perpetual clients, Office perpetual clients connecting to on-premises servers, or any consumer services.

More than three years’ notice. We’re providing more than three years’ notice to give IT time to plan and budget for this change. Until this new requirement goes into effect in 2020, Office 2010, Office 2013 and Office 2016 perpetual clients will still be able to connect to Office 365 services.

Visit our Office 365 Tech Community to learn more and to ask the experts your questions.

Improvements to the Office 365 ProPlus update model, including alignment with Windows 10

Moving to Office 365 ProPlus requires an initial upgrade and ongoing management of regular updates. Customers quickly see the benefits of the move, but they’ve also asked us to simplify the update process—and to improve the coordination between Office and Windows. To respond to this feedback, we’re pleased to announce that we will align the Office 365 ProPlus and Windows 10 update model. This change will make planning and managing updates for both Office and Windows easier for customers using the Secure Productive Enterprise.

Targeting September 2017, we will make the following changes to the Office 365 ProPlus update model:

Two updates a year. We will reduce the Office 365 ProPlus update cadence from three to two times a year, with semi-annual feature updates to Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus targeted for March and September.

18 months of support. We will extend the support period for Office 365 ProPlus semi-annual updates from 12 to 18 months (starting from first release) so IT professionals can choose to update once or twice a year.

System Center Configuration Manager support. System Center Configuration Manager will support this new aligned update model for Office 365 ProPlus and Windows 10, making it easier to deploy and update the two products together.

See the upcoming changes to the Office 365 ProPlus update management article to learn more.

New tools and programs to manage Office 365 ProPlus application compatibility

One of the biggest concerns customers have about the move to a new version of Office is application compatibility. Office add-ins and VBA solutions often play a significant role in key business processes, and application compatibility is an important consideration in both upgrades and updates. To help customers manage ProPlus application compatibility, we’re pleased to announce four new investments.

Upgrade assessment tools. Starting today, we’re offering a limited preview of new tools that will catalogue the add-ins and VBA solutions in use in your organization, identify potential issues with the upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus, and recommend steps for remediation.

Application compatibility testing. For each new Office 365 ProPlus release, we will perform compatibility testing of the most common third-party add-ins, identify potential issues, and take steps to remediate.

Office 365 ProPlus monitoring services. We will provide new services to monitor your ProPlus deployment and provide visibility into the usage and stability of apps and add-ins.

Reporting, tracking and resolving issues. We will improve our existing service for reporting, tracking and resolving application compatibility issues—and partner with customers and ISVs to find the best approach to remediation.

You can learn more about the upgrade assessment tools today, and we’ll have more to share on our application compatibility testing program, the new Office 365 ProPlus monitoring services and the new service for reporting, tracking and resolving issues in the coming months.

We are here to help

If you’re connecting to Office 365 with a legacy version of Office, you’re not enjoying all that the service has to offer—and we’re here to help. For more information on Office 365 ProPlus deployment, refer to the Office 365 ProPlus Deployment Guide and the ProPlus Ignite On-Demand sessions. And when you’re ready to make the move to ProPlus, the Microsoft FastTrack customer success service will help you with the details. Visit the FastTrack website to learn more and submit a request for help with planning, assessment and deployment. ProPlus is the very best way to experience the Office 365 services, and we’re committed to helping you upgrade with confidence.

—Ron Markezich
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Source: Office 365 ProPlus updates - Office Blogs

freebird_9924 · Jun 14, 2018

office 365 vs office 2013

my Microsoft surface came with 1 month trial of ms office 365 , now it's expired.now I wanna know if I she subscribe to office 365 or uninstall it & install office 2013. what's the difference between both?

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Updates to the Office 365 user experience

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