It’s July 1, so you know what that means… or maybe you don’t: the new edition of Office 365 for IT Pros is available. Each year, around this time, we release a new edition. herewith a rude Q&A that might be informative and/or useful (but probably not entertaining)
Q: It isn’t 2020. Why are you calling it the 2020 edition?
A: Car manufacturers do this too. Unlike cars not made by Tesla, though, we release monthly updates to upgrade and update the thing you buy today into the next calendar year.
Q: What’s different about this edition?
A: The cover has a new animal on it.
Q: No, seriously, what’s different?
A: We reorganized the content, so now there’s a separate companion volume (included with your purchase, of course) that holds some older material. This frees up space and word count for new stuff. In this edition, MVP and identity management legend Brian Desmond took over the IdM chapter from me, which automatically makes the book at least 16% better. There’s also significant new content covering new features in Planner, Teams, Intune, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and the various other parts of Office 365.
Q: What are your plans for updates to this edition?
A: We’ve already covered a ton of 2019 updates in this initial edition– for example, the switch to the “Microsoft 365 admin center” branding and all of the new goodies around information protection are included. Microsoft has already publicly announced or started to RTM several major new features that we’ll be covering, including information barriers for Teams. Then there’s a whole shedload of new stuff that Microsoft has discussed under NDA that we’ll be covering once it’s publicly mentioned. Plus, there is always room for surprises, like the rainbow themes Microsoft added to the admin center, OWA, and a few other apps in June 2019.
All joking aside, we’ve got lots of new content planned for the book, and one key advantage of our book is that you’re buying a year’s worth of updates, not a single point-in-time copy. As Microsoft evolves and grows Office 365, we cover the changes to help you learn what you need to effectively plan and manage your Office 365 deployment. I hope you’ll give the new edition a look and let us know what you think.
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