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Microsoft Renames Office Insider Program to Microsoft 365 Insider Program

Microsoft's Office Insider program will now be called  "Microsoft 365 Insider," the company announced on Wednesday. 

Moreover, Microsoft 365 Insider participants will see more discussions about other apps and features than were described in the Office Insider program. For instance, Teams and Forms topics may get discussed. Microsoft also indicated that it moved the program's Release Notes to Learn.microsoft.com, updated its Website and changed the program's Twitter handle to @MSFT365Insider.

Other than those few changes, the Microsoft 365 Insider program will function like its predecessor. Office Insider participants don't need to make any changes.

The Office Insider program has been in existence for about seven years, Microsoft indicated in another announcement. Microsoft is switching its name to Microsoft 365 Insider as part of an overall branding swap. The name change rationales are characterized in Microsoft's FAQ located at this page.

As part of its name swaps, Microsoft recently announced that its Office.com site for accessing Office apps is now Microsoft 365.com. Microsoft still plans to use the Office name for its "perpetual-license" productivity suites and its Office long-term servicing channel products.

The Insider programs offer early releases of software products for review and testing purposes and are open to the general public. The Microsoft 365 Insider program offers two release channels to that end. The "Beta" channel delivers new features that are still under development. The "Current" channel is a more stable "preview" of Microsoft's software releases that arrives less frequently, at a rate of about once per month.

More about the Microsoft 365 Insider program is explained at the "Microsoft 365 Insider Handbook" site. It includes links at the end to other Microsoft Insider programs, including programs for Windows, Skype, Teams and Microsoft's Security Update Validation program.

About the Author

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

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