Table of Contents
Author Team Busy Working on 2022 Edition
Today, we shipped the last monthly update for the 2021 edition of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. Subscribers can download the updated files from their Gumroad account. If you bought the Kindle version, please ask Amazon support for the updated file. More information about getting updates is available in our FAQ.
As described in our change log, the June 2021 update covers 19 of 24 chapters. The eleven monthly updates issued for the 2021 edition span a total of 230 chapter updates ranging from very small (fix some formatting errors or minor typos) to very large (include descriptions of new features issued by Microsoft). We’ve added roughly 25,000 words to the book since it was issued on July 1, 2020. During the last year, we also built up the Office 365 for IT Pros PowerShell script repository by moving many examples of scripts out of book tex into the repository to make them more accessible to anyone who wants to use them.
In a nutshell, lots of work to track, analyze, and report on change across the entire Office 365 ecosystem, including large bits of Microsoft 365 like Azure AD and Microsoft Information Protection.
There’s no way that the traditional publishing model can cope with the number and type of changes that we see across Office 365. A good example of the reason why is in the June update. Microsoft updated the user interface for content searches and Core eDiscovery during the month. Not only does the new interface work differently, it also removes some functionality. We’ve updated Chapter 20 to reflect the new situation.
After a year’s work, we’re finished with the 2021 edition and will issue no further updates unless we discover a fundamental error in the text between now and July 1, 2021. On that date, we publish the 2022 edition, the eighth in the sequence since we started working on the book in 2014. I don’t think we ever anticipated that we’d still be quite so busy at this point.
New Authors
Two new authors have joined the writing team for the 2022 edition. Christina Wheeler takes over the Power Platform chapter from Gustavo Velez, who’s stepping down to concentrate on his book covering recipes for Office 365 development (available on Amazon or Guitica.com), and Gareth Gudger takes over the mail flow chapter. We wish Gustavo continued success with his book and welcome Christina and Gareth to the team.
Extending Subscriptions for the 2022 Edition
When we issue the 2022 edition, current subscribers will be offered a time-limited opportunity to extend their subscription for $14.95 to cover another year. We deeply appreciate the support received from subscribers who renew. The income enables the writers to spend time figuring out how Office 365 really works, and to keep on going back to investigate how things change as Microsoft updates their code.
Reduced Price for Office 365 for IT Pros (2021 Edition) in June
Because the 2021 edition will receive no further updates, we have dropped the price of the book to $35 for June. The normal price will be restored upon the release of the 2022 edition in July. Effectively, this means that new buyers can purchase the 2021 edition now and upgrade to the 2022 edition for the same price as they would have paid for the 2021 edition in May. We think it’s both a good and fair deal.