News

Microsoft Adds Access to Office 365 Business Plans

Subscribers of Office 365 Business and Office 365 Business Premium plans will soon be able to use the Microsoft Access relational database management system.

Currently, those two plans don't include Access, although it's frequently included in various Microsoft Office product suite offerings.

Business and Business Premium subscribers will start to receive Access automatically "between December 1, 2016 and January 30, 2017," according to Microsoft's announcement on Friday.

However, if an organization subscribing to either of those two plans has elected to get Office 365 updates via the "deferred channel" update process, then Access will start to arrive in June 2017.

Microsoft releases its Office 365 updates in so-called "channels," as illustrated in this TechNet article. Monthly update releases are called the "current channel." Updates arriving every four months are called the "deferred channel." The "first release for deferred channel" update release arrives every four months and is designed for testing purposes. Office 365 updates arrive via Microsoft's "click-to-run" streaming update technology. The click-to-run process will automatically update clients, so Access will just show up for the subscriber when it's available.

Access is described as a database management system that can be used to develop business applications. It doesn't require much IT end user support, according to Microsoft.

"Access is a great database management solution for small businesses because it makes collecting and storing data accessible on the desktop -- without requiring support from an IT administrator," Microsoft's announcement explained.

Presumably, there will be no extra cost for Office 365 Business and Office 365 Business Premium subscribers to get Access.

In other Access news, Microsoft is planning to broaden the data sources available for those Access users subscribed to the Office 365 ProPlus E3 and E5 subscription plans. The expanded access will happen through new connectors for Access, including "OData Feed, Dynamics CRM, Salesforce and Amazon Redshift" connectors, the announcement stated.

The new Access connectors for Office 365 ProPlus E3 and E5 subscriptions will start to become available in "early 2017." More connectors will be "on the way," Microsoft promised.

Microsoft lately seems to be breathing new life into Access. In September, Microsoft announced that Access 2016 was receiving support for dBase files. The support was actually added back to the product after Microsoft removed it from Access 2013.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

Featured

  • Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business

    Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.

Most   Popular