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Important
The information in this article applies to the Microsoft 365 multitenant environment.
Microsoft 365 updates and change management
Microsoft 365 is continuously updated with new features, security improvements, service maintenance, and compliance-related changes. These updates help improve productivity, collaboration, security, and the overall Microsoft 365 experience.
Continuous updates also require organizations to prepare for ongoing change. Some changes can be adopted with minimal preparation, while others might require additional review based on their potential impact to users, business processes, security, or compliance requirements.
An effective change management approach helps your organization assess upcoming changes, determine their potential impact, and focus resources on the changes that require additional planning or action.
Build an AI-ready change practice
Focus your change management processes on updates that could have a significant impact on your organization. Assess changes that affect security and compliance, organizational policies, administrative controls, and user experiences.
In addition, AI capabilities change how people find information, create content, and complete work. Agents can also connect models to organizational data and tools. Change management must therefore evaluate not only a feature's impact, but also what AI can access and its activity is governed.
Use the following framework for both Microsoft 365 and AI-related changes:
| Phase | Recommended actions |
|---|---|
| Inform | Monitor Message center, the AI at Work Roadmap, and release notes. Identify the affected users, services, agents, data, and controls. |
| Assess | Classify business impact and risk. For AI changes, review permissions, grounding sources, data boundaries, connected tools, auditability, and the need for human approval. |
| Govern | Use a test tenant or a representative group of power users. Test realistic workflows, including expected results, failure modes, inappropriate data access, and escalation paths. |
| Monitor | Monitor adoption, service health, audit data, support trends, and user feedback. Adjust controls and guidance as capabilities evolve. |
Keep people accountable for consequential decisions. AI can help summarize notices, identify affected groups, and draft change plans, but owners should verify the output and approve actions according to organizational policy.
Consuming and managing change – Message center and Planner
All change strategies require communication and messaging for users to consume and act on the change. Message center is your notification hub for planned changes and other important Microsoft 365 announcements. Message center is located in the Microsoft 365 admin center. It includes upcoming new and changed features, planned maintenance, and other important announcements. There are three categories for messages:
- Prevent or fix issues
- Plan for change
- Stay informed
The Message center provides the following attributes in a message: Publish Date, Message ID (for tracking specific messages), Title, and (change/event) Description. The Message center is a critical source of information and important for change planning and update consumption across Microsoft 365. Building projects and tasks from these often-actionable notifications is critical to a successful change strategy.
To help you better understand this content, the Planner has been integrated with Message center allowing messages to be directly synced with Planner.
Planner features include:
- Syncing messages from Message center.
- Selecting the type(s) of messages synced.
- Setting a cadence for the message sync.
After a message is synced to the Planner, it shows in the Planner as a task. Message center post titles are prefixed with the associated service in brackets. If a message is updated, that update also syncs to the Planner task.
Each task is structured as:
- The message post Title has a prefix in brackets (for example, "[SharePoint] New feature") that indicates the service that the post is associated with.
- The Start Date is set to the time the task was created in the Planner.
- The Published Date of the message post can be found in the Notes.
When you use the Planner to manage tasks, group tasks, and formulate a plan of action for completing tasks strategically, you can review boards and change management teams to track change efficiently.
For more helpful resources, see Track upcoming change.
Change classification and notification
Microsoft classifies changes to assist customers in understanding and planning appropriately for each update. Major updates should be a key focus for customers evaluating and analyzing upcoming changes. In the Message center, select Major update from the Tags drop-down to review changes of high importance (major updates).
Major updates are communicated at least 30 days in advance when an action is required and might include:
- User-impacting changes to daily productivity such as changing a user's inbox, meetings, delegations, sharing and access that may result in help desk calls, or organizational conformance concerns.
- Changes to the themes, web parts, deployed Copilot agents, and other components that may impact customer customizations.
- Increases or decreases to visible capacity such as storage, number of rules, Copilot agents and prompts, items, or durations.
- Rebranding that may cause end-user confusion or result in help desk changes, collateral changes, or URL changes if the new URL is not *.cloud.microsoft
- A new service or application deployed with default settings turned on.
- Changes to where data is stored or accessed.
The Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center is your primary source of change information. For a list of other helpful sources, see Track upcoming changes.
Change types and control methods
Microsoft provides various release choices and tools to help control and deploy changes in a manner that aligns with your strategy. Microsoft 365 changes are released to both services (like SharePoint Online and Teams) and clients, referred to as Microsoft 365 Apps (like Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). Services and clients have different release choices and deployment controls, so it's important to understand the differences as you implement your release management strategy.
Types of changes for Microsoft 365 services and clients
Microsoft 365 changes can be planned or unplanned, depending on the nature of the changes. For example, security updates aren't always planned, because they're reactions to emergent risks or issues in our products or services. The following table provides a summary of change types for both services and client applications.
Change types for Microsoft 365 services and client applications
| Item | Functionality | Non-security updates | Security |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type of change | Feature updates New features or applications Deprecated features |
Client hotfixes for issues | Security patches |
| Advance notice? | 30 days' notice for changes that require action | No; these are included in the monthly build for all channels | No; these are included in the monthly build for all channels |
| Communication channel | Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center Microsoft 365 roadmap Microsoft 365 blog Microsoft 365 area of the Microsoft Tech Community |
Release information for updates to Microsoft 365 Apps | Security bulletin or CVE |
| Requires admin action? | Sometimes | Rarely | Rarely |
| What kind of action? | Change settings Communicate changes to users Validate customizations |
Change admin settings |
Responsibility for managing these changes is shared between Microsoft and you as the administrator of your Microsoft 365 tenant. For more information, see the Microsoft shared responsibility model.
Now that we've outlined the types of changes that you can expect from Microsoft 365 services and client applications, including associated responsibilities, the next section explores the different release choices and the controls available for each.
Choose release options and validation groups
Use different release options for different groups. A test tenant provides an isolated environment for integration testing. A representative group of power users in production provides feedback from real business workflows. Include participants from security, compliance, support, and affected business functions instead of making evaluation an IT-only activity.
Microsoft 365 services
Microsoft provides three audience-based release options to help organizations determine when users receive eligible new capabilities.
| Release option | Use |
|---|---|
| Frontier | Opt-in access to selected prerelease features for experimentation and early evaluation. Features are subject to change and might not reach general availability. |
| Standard release (default) | Fully supported features deployed in phases on the standard schedule. Recommended for most organizations. |
| Deferred release | Eligible major updates delivered 30 days after Standard release begins, providing more validation time. |
For details, see Configure standard and deferred release options for Microsoft 365 services and Get started with the Microsoft Copilot Frontier Program.
Note
Some products use Targeted release for early access to production-quality features. For more information, see Targeted release.
Release audiences control when users receive supported service changes. Administrative controls determine what users and agents can access and how they can use it. Release audiences don't replace security baselines, conditional access, data loss prevention, or product settings.
Microsoft 365 app client release channels and controls
Microsoft offers different update channels to which customers can subscribe for updates to our Click-to-Run clients, Microsoft 365 Apps. These channels determine how frequently changes are released to their entire tenant or subscribed subdivisions of their tenant, depending on customer configuration. Channels are a powerful mechanism through which IT departments and power users can evaluate and test upcoming changes without hindering their release to the greater user population.
The following table provides a comparison of the update channels available for Microsoft 365 Apps:
| Update channel | Description | Preview or GA |
|---|---|---|
| Beta Channel | Includes features that are still in development. | Preview |
| Current Channel (Preview) | Includes features that are in their final stages of development, so they're less likely to change. | Preview |
| Current Channel | Provide your users with new Microsoft 365 Apps features as soon as they're ready, but on no set schedule. | GA |
| Monthly Enterprise Channel | Provide your users with new Microsoft 365 Apps features only once a month and on a predictable schedule. | GA |
We recommend using Current Channel and Monthly Enterprise Channel as two solutions to expedite update evaluation and testing. For more information, see Overview of update channels for Microsoft 365 Apps. For information about the benefits and how to enroll or change update channels, see Change the Microsoft 365 Apps update channel for devices in your organization.
Change evaluation democratization
Microsoft recommends two models for using these channels: test tenant and power user models.
Test tenant: To evaluate and test incoming features, customers use a test tenant that mimics production. Test tenants are used for integration testing and product evaluation separate from production. Traditionally, IT owns test tenants and operates the test accounts within them. This is an IT-centric model that may cause bottlenecks and incomplete evaluations to occur. We recommend including users from various departments and roles in your test tenant. IT departments aren't experts on every product and aren't always best suited to perform certain product evaluations.
- For clients, we recommend that the test tenant be subscribed to the Current Channel or Monthly Enterprise Channel.
- For services, we recommend that the test tenant be subscribed to the Standard release option. This ensures that service updates are evaluated alongside client updates, providing a comprehensive testing environment.
Power user (expertise): To democratize update evaluations, identify power users in your production tenant to receive continuous or early updates and serve as an essential source of feedback, bugs, and experience across various lines of business and user expertise.
- For clients, subscribe users to the Current Channel or Monthly Enterprise Channel.
- For services, add specific users to Standard release to receive service feature updates 30 days before Deferred release users.
You can use these two models concurrently to provide comprehensive, effective, and efficient evaluation of incoming updates. Moving away from the IT-centric acceptance model and democratizing evaluation across your organization improves the speed and quality of the effort. If the remainder of your organization subscribes to Monthly Enterprise Channel (apps) and Deferred release (services), the updates evaluated in the test tenant by IT and power users will be ready to deploy with reduced friction.
Microsoft change plans, policies, and procedures
The mission of Microsoft change is to enable rapid delivery, improve productivity, and delight customers with new applications and features while minimizing friction and disruption. Managing change is an evergreen program that delivers continuous innovation to users. Changes are necessary to keep products and services secure, up to date, and working as expected. Although innovation is key to delivering user value, we recognize that impactful changes to your environment may create legal, regulatory, security, or compliance risks.
To reduce potential risk, Microsoft commits to:
- Following defined change control policies and procedures.
- Notifying you of major changes at least 30 days in advance.
- Listening to community feedback to improve the change release process.
We recommend organizations focus on reviewing and testing efforts on major updates, changes affecting customizations, regulatory requirements, security controls, business-critical workflows, and user productivity.
Change management plan
To help your organization prepare for Microsoft 365 changes, the following table describes the three phases of change and the recommended actions for each phase.
| Phase 1: Before change | Phase 2: During change | Phase 3: After change |
|---|---|---|
| Identify a change center of excellence or cloud governance board with representatives from each line of defense in your organization. Validate existing change policies and create policies as required. |
Consider the change's impact on your organization and your users. | Provide feedback about an upcoming service change by using the Message center feedback mechanism. |
| Know about the change: - Check Product Roadmap - Check the Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center |
Stay aware of workflow changes to help your deployment teams and increase user productivity through proactive adoption and change management. | Review factors that drive successful deployment in your organization and adapt to reduce impact and increase awareness and efficiency. |
| Provide feedback about an upcoming service change by using the Message center feedback mechanism. | Ensure that the stakeholders and contacts section of your customer profile is complete and provided to your Customer Success Account Manager (CSAM). | Changes are designed to benefit customers. Help your users be aware of changes, understand them, and get the most out of them. |
Regardless of change strategy, ensuring that your users understand the latest changes is important for successful adoption. The criticality of adoption and change management continues to trend upward as Microsoft and the greater market move toward continuous change.
Track upcoming changes
To ensure broad dissemination and accessibility, Microsoft publishes change information in various locations. The Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center is a key source of tenant-specific information, but you should pay attention to the entire suite of sources to ensure that you're holistically informed in a timely manner.
Message center
Use Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center to stay informed about planned changes, new and updated features, maintenance events, and other important announcements for both Microsoft 365 services and apps. Review Message center regularly to identify changes that affect your organization and create the communications, tasks, and readiness activities needed to support adoption and change management. For more information about how to use Message center, see Track new and changed features in the Microsoft 365 Message center.
The Message center admin user interface is one way to obtain service change information. You can build automated solutions to query relevant data using the Microsoft MCP Server for Enterprise or Accessing service health and communications in Microsoft Graph.
Sync your Message center posts with Microsoft Planner to create tasks for your change management team. For more information, see Track your Message center tasks in Planner.
AI at Work Roadmap
The AI at Work Roadmap, formerly known as the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, is a public website that relays the status of products that are in development, rolling out, or launched. You can view the status of each feature or workload, search using tags, and confirm release dates from a single portal. For more information, see AI at Work Roadmap.
Release notes
For Microsoft 365 Apps, release notes provide detailed information about monthly builds, resolved issues, and new features. For more information, see Release Information for Updates to Microsoft 365 Apps. For cloud services, use Message center and Roadmap entries to understand service-level changes and deployment timing.
Microsoft admin mobile app
The Microsoft 365 admin mobile app has more than 80 features that help you manage your company when you're on the go. The app is available for download in the Apple App Store and Google Play. Using the mobile app, you can perform common tasks like resetting user passwords, adding users to a group, and reviewing change notifications and alerts. We recommend enabling mobile alerts so that you stay apprised of updates the moment they're released. For more information, see About the Microsoft 365 Admin mobile app.
Give feedback
Microsoft establishes a virtuous feedback loop between customers and our products. There are several examples of changes that have been rolled back or modified because of feedback submitted by customers. Customers can provide feedback through multiple channels:
- Microsoft 365 admin portal
- Message center
- Microsoft Tech Community
Microsoft reviews all feedback submitted by customers and uses this feedback to improve the product experiences for users, including by improving the quality of AI-generated responses and troubleshooting product issues. Keeping the feedback experiences enabled allows you to see what your users are saying about the Microsoft products they're using.
To learn more about managing Microsoft feedback in your organization, see Manage Microsoft feedback for your organization.
To learn more about the types of feedback and how Microsoft uses user feedback, see Learn about Microsoft feedback for your organization.
Related articles
Overview of update channels for Microsoft 365 Apps
Overview of modern change management for Microsoft 365 services
Track new and changed features in the Microsoft 365 Message center
Configure new Standard and Deferred release options for Microsoft 365 services