Office 365 Roadmap

Office 365 is available to students and teachers at no cost through their academic institution. Visit Office in education to check eligibility and to download onto multiple devices.

When you make any investment in technology you are investing in a living thing. The pace of development of technology in today’s world is such that improvements and alterations are seemingly continuously available to software, hardware and infrastructure. And with the increasing utilisation of the cloud, platforms and tools can be upgraded “on the fly” by the providers without the end users having to break stride.

This also enables product developers to be much more receptive to user feedback and incredibly agile  when it comes to implementing features and functionality based  on these suggestions.

Anyone investing in technology for their school, college or university has the added responsibility of building an environment that will shape the learning paths of hundreds or even thousands of young people. Therefore, it’s important to know not only what the current capabilities of technology are, but where it’s going in the future.

Office 365 Education Roadmap

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.

To see what’s coming up specifically for Education, simply do the following:

1. 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.

If you don’t see a feature on this roadmap that you or your users would like to see, just add your request to our Education UserVoice.

Office 365 Roadmap key highlights

LAUNCHED:

Class Notebook Add-in for OneNote with LMS Connection
Teachers can create and grade assignments in your Class Notebook that show up in their Learning Management System (LMS) or the new Microsoft Classroom. We are announcing over 25 partners that have committed to working with OneNote.

Learning Tools for OneNote Preview
New Learning Tools from OneNote will help individuals with learning needs be able to use the product better and help them in education settings; including improved ability to read.

ROLLING OUT:

Learning Tools for OneNote
GA version of Learning Tools for OneNote.  Support for more languages, including dictation and text to speech.

Microsoft Classroom Preview
Office 365 Education includes Microsoft Classroom, a homepage where teachers can manage all of their classes and assignments online. Teachers can manage multiple class sections (like Biology A and Biology B), create or manage assignments and grading, collaborate with other teachers in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), and provide feedback to students with built-in Class Notebooks. In Classroom, students can collaborate with their teachers, their classmates, and access all the materials to be successful in the class even when they are absent. With Sway integrated, teachers can create interactive web-based lessons, assignments, project recaps, newsletters, and more – right from a phone, tablet, or browser – and even embed a quiz with the new Microsoft Forms. Students can access all their assignments on their mobile devices (Classroom app).

Office 365 is now optimised for teachers and students along with an integrated platform with the aim of saving teachers time and improving  student outcomes. This will be available for US customers only at the time of launch, with other countries added later.

Microsoft Forms Preview for Office 365 Education
New Office 365 app that allows anyone to easily and quickly create basic surveys, quizzes, questionnaires, registrations and more. Forms authors can invite others to complete forms via a link. Authors can view results as they are submitted via built-in analytics and data can be easily exported to Excel  for additional analysis.

School Data Sync Preview
School Data Sync, which will be included in Office 365 Education, will mirror user profiles and class rosters from a Student Information System into Office 365.  It models classrooms within Office 365 as Groups and Group sites, so teachers can easily manage classes and  class materials.

Our objective is to:

1. Help teachers save time by automatically creating groups and enabling single sign on to apps in  the classroom.
2. Help schools and districts save  money by working with existing technology investments to reduce  the time IT admins spend managing groups, troubleshooting, and auditing security.
3. Help ISVs by providing a single, free, platform and API to connect their applications to SIS data.
4. Help SIS providers by providing a single, free, platform API to connect to LMS and other classroom apps.
5. Help increase school and student security and privacy by creating a single, secure source for identity  and central control over which  data gets shared and where.

This will be available for US and Canada customers only at the time of launch, with other countries added later.