The 2027 edition of Microsoft 365 for IT Pros was released today. The official announcement is here, but I wanted to talk a little about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into it. This year, there was a lot of new goodness!
Asteroids but with words
The last of the 2026 edition books weighed in at 1300+ pages. We decided to make small rocks out of the big ones, just like playing Atari’s classic Asteroids, and split the content into four books total: Microsoft 365 for IT Pros is the core material, Microsoft Purview for IT Pros contains all the compliance- and audit-related material, Power Platform for IT Pros covers the Power Platform family, and Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell continues as the place for all our PowerShell scripts, tricks, and content.
Unlike pushing buttons on an arcade console, our rock-breaking required a lot of work. Christina Wheeler expanded her Power Platform coverage to more than 150 pages spread across 7 chapters covering every part of Power Platform, with me editing and assembling the resulting book. Tony Redmond went solo on the Purview and PowerShell books, and our existing crew of authors continued on the Microsoft 365 book, which we retitled to emphasize its coverage of M365, not just O365.
I now own eight chapters in the M365 book edition — the Microsoft 365 ecosystem overview (chapter 1), tenant management (chapter 3), user management (chapter 4), tasks and Planner (chapter 8), video (chapter 9), client management (chapter 14), Intune (chapter 16), and an all-new chapter 16 on managing AI and agents. Brian Desmond owns our Entra ID coverage; Michel de Rooij covers Exchange; Juan Carlos Gonzalez covers SharePoint; and Ben Lee, Tony Sterling, and Leah Theil cover Teams.
What gets cut
When Michaelangelo was asked how he carved his masterpiece, David, his answer was crisp: “It is simple. I just remove everything that is not David.”
Because we update the book monthly, we’re always adding new material to reflect what Microsoft has changed, and what the best practices are for dealing with it at that point in time. The annual work to produce a new edition is the right time for us to take away “everything that is not David”: features that were removed or deprecated, items that were in preview but got promoted to GA, “how it works” explanations that were superseded by changes to the service, and so on. The underbrush must be cleared so the forest can thrive.
The new additions
Microsoft has been stuffing Copilot and agents into so many corners of the platform that a meaningful number of things we previously wrote about are now completely different. They have also added a heavy layer of frosting to this concoction in the form of the Copilot Control System and Agent 365. The filling and frosting together are enough that this edition has its own dedicated chapter to cover it. Some of what’s in that chapter will still be there in twelve months; some of it will be overtaken by events, and some of it will turn out to be irrelevant. The editorial judgment of what to cover is why people buy our book– we’re not just parroting Microsoft’s documentation or (worse) their marketing material.
Besides that, of course, there’s a ton of new material covering changes in Power Platform and Purview in their respective books, not to mention the ongoing updates to Intune, Teams, Entra ID, and the other parts of M365.
What this looks like as a reader
If you’ve subscribed to past editions, the 2027 release will feel familiar. The July 1 release always gives you a fresh starting point for the year. However, because we’ve added the new companion eBooks, the M365 book itself is a little more focused on the core administration and management tasks. Power Platform admins, people who like PowerShell, and people with an interest in compliance will find greatly expanded coverage of those topics, too. Because the basic subscription includes all four eBooks for the same price, we feel like the total package has something for every M365 admin, no matter their focus or skill level.
In conclusion, buy our book
For US$60, you get a year’s worth of updates. That’s less than one month of an E7 license. “Add to cart” and get smart.
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