Recently, Microsoft moved Office 365 roadmap to merge with other products and bring under one umbrella of Microsoft 365 which include Windows and EMS.
Microsoft made the roadmap available on URL – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=.
The purpose of M365 roadmap is to let everyone know what’s cooking inside MS and what to expect as change. Many organizations are facing the challenge to know the new feature release and how to prepare for rolling out changes.
Microsoft promised to enable the RSS feed for M365 Roadmap (which was missing from O365 roadmap) so that you can consume RSS feed easily and be ready for what’s coming.
I was able to find the behind API behind the scene and was able to use it in previous blog post to read the content and store in a SharePoint list. Today, I found that RSS link is also working and you can access the RSS feed from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/RoadmapFeatureRSS .
When I was reading the information and comparing with what’s published v/s what’s in feed item, my observation is as below –
| Item in roadmap via web | Item in RSS feed |
 |
 |
As you can view the information highlighted in above screens, I will details it out as below –
- In RSS feed, the rather having items directly, it has a channel and then items (which are again flat with other info). I am not sure What’s the intent behind having a channel as root item in RSS feed behind. May be publishing more roadmap of other products via same feed.
- On web, you can read status (in above examples it is ‘In Development’). While the RSS feed item does not have proper node info about this status field. It is shown as category.
- Each feature could impact more than one product at any time. The related product information is available on web as Products or Tags information. But again in the RSS feed, this information is again listed as category node. Which is repeating and could be confusing when user is processing this using any tool. If Microsoft can fix the first category as Status and a collection of Tags/Products together so that it is easy to process using tools like Microsoft Flow.
- The other important information is when this new features is getting released. This information is available on web as Release information. This is very important for Change managers, Trainers or Communication manager who prepare for upcoming changes. In RSS feed this information is missing completely which could be more costly to organizations. Enabling or making this information in RSS feed will be super useful for users.
These are my personal observations and making this recommendation based on my previous work experience and interaction with customers.
Office 365 University 