Natural Evolution

Recently Microsoft has introduced its new Dynamics 365 Personal and Family Subscription, the first consumer offerings from the company. In relation to this there have also been some changes to the names of the Office 365 products for small and medium business and to Office 365 ProPlus, all of which going forward will become a part of the Microsoft 365 Brand. This is a natural evolution, while Microsoft 365 began as a license bundle partner for enterprises due to the trying times, it has decided to extend its product offerings to its small and medium-sized businesses and give them better access to its services. The first part of this evolution is the change in its product names in order to better allow its customers to find the product offering which best suits them.

Changed Names

The new changes in product name go into effect on 21st April 2020. At this point in time it is just a change in name and there are no changes in the price or features of these products. The changes names are as follows

Office 365 Business Essentials will become Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
Office 365 Business Premium will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard.
Microsoft 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus will both become Microsoft 365 Apps. Where necessary the “for business” and “for enterprise” labels will be used to distinguish between the two.

While the names for the above products are changing there are still many office products which remain the same:

The following Microsoft Office 365 plans will have NO changes:

Office 365 for Enterprise

Office 365 for Education

Office 365 for Firstline Workers

Office 365 for Government

The more things change the more they stay the same:

While users might be concerned about the changes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and wonder whether they need to take any action, there is no need to worry. Currently, Microsoft is just updating the names and no feature differences are present. The change in names will happen automatically and the existing users don’t need to take any additional action to implement the change.

Office 365 ProPlus:

For the Office 365 ProPlus users, the older versions will see no change in the name. There might be a need to make some adjustments to your internal workflows and internal documents. In the case of those using ADRs to deploy updates which rely on the title property, they might need to make changes as the names of the Update Packages are Changing.

Currently, the title of an update package for Office 365 ProPlus begins with “Office 365 Client Update” as seen in the following example:

Office 365 Client Update – Semi-annual Channel Version 1908 for x64 based Edition

For update packages released on and after June 9, the title will begin with “Microsoft 365 Apps Update” as seen in the following example:

Microsoft 365 Apps Update – Semi-annual Channel Version 1908 for x64 based Edition

Some Registry Key values might change to reflect the new names. So those relying on these values might need to test their scripts and workflows.

Upcoming Changes in Microsoft Dynamics 365:

In the coming months Microsoft might introduce some new changes. The previews of these changes are already being introduced. The new personal and family subscription introduced is one such change.

Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Subscriptions

Along with the name change Microsoft has also introduced Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Subscriptions priced at $ 6.99/month for Microsoft 365 Personal and $ 9.99/month for a Family of about 6 people.

Some of the additions to the new subscriptions are as follows:

Microsoft Editor can now be accessed through Outlook and Word and as a standalone browser extension for Chrome and Edge.
New Templates for Word and PowerPoint. Improved Designer in PowerPoint.
New Datatypes and Smart templates in Excel.
Presenter Coach in PowerPoint with two modes Monotone Pitch and speech refinement. In Monotone Pitch your AI powered coach helps you adjust your tone and Speech refinement helps with your grammar.
Connect Personal Calendar and Work Calendar while keeping the details of both private in Outlook.
Deepen your relationship with partners, family, and friends with new features in Skype and Teams.

Two other Microsoft experiences that will roll out in preview in the coming months are as follows:

Microsoft Family Safety App – keep watch on your family from your mobile through location sharing, driving reports and restricting access to age-inappropriate sites for your kids all from your mobile.
New Microsoft Edge – Organize features with collections, work efficiently with vertical tabs, save time with smart copy, prevent tracking with tracking prevention, Safeguard your passwords with Password Monitor, keep your browsing private with In – private browsing, learn better with immersive browsing, support your favorite cause with Give with Bing and gain a more immersive experience with 4k view.

KORCOMPTENZ is a US-based, Microsoft Gold-Certified Dynamics 365 Partner headquartered in New Jersey with extensive experience improving business outcomes for our customers, by leveraging end-to-end solutions involving the ongoing convergence of ERP, Azure Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and IoT. We specialize in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 range of products such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, and Dynamics 365 CRM. Our consultants also specialize in Office 365/Microsoft 365 as well. We are experts in managing not only existing Office 365/Microsoft 365 Customers but also in helping our customers migrate from any email platform to Office 365. Contact Us!