The Microsoft 365 Message Center is a key tool within the Microsoft 365 Admin Center designed to keep administrators informed about important updates and changes related to Microsoft 365 services.
What is the M365 Message Center used for?
1 - Feature Announcements
It provides notifications about new features, updates, and changes to existing services, helping admins stay proactive in managing their M365 environments.
2 - Maintenance Notifications
The Message Center alerts admins about planned maintenance and potential service disruptions, allow for better planning and communication within organisations.
3 - Relevance Filtering
Admins can filter messages based on relevance, service type, and impact, ensuring they only see the information that matters most to their organisation.
4 - Email Notifications
Users can opt in to receive a weekly digest of messages via email, making it easier to stay updated without constantly checking the portal itself.
5 - User Roles
Most users with admin roles can access the Message Center, and there are options to assign specific roles for viewing messages without granting full admin privileges.
Overall the M365 Message Center is essential for effective change management and helps ensure that organisations can adapt to updates in a timely manner.
Given the ever-increasing number of products included within the Microsoft 365 portfolio, it's hardly surprising that on average, organisations receive 131* Microsoft 365 Message Center notifications every month - that's a lot to sift through!
60% of these 131 messages are categorised as 'stay informed' informational messages, but on average 52 are categorised as 'plan for change' or 'prevent or fix' messages that require action, such as a policy decision or config change.
Read more about the different categories Message Center items in this blog.
*based on averages from 18 tenants which Empowering.Cloud monitor
With this increasing number of Message Center notifications, the job of categorising, reviewing, actioning, and reporting on updates is key to enabling an organisation to realise the true potential its investment in Microsoft 365.
With this in mind, below is an example of the best practice approach to managing Microsoft 365 change that we discuss with our customers.
1 - Categorise the Microsoft 365 Products into Workloads
Step 1 of the process is to highlight the products within the Microsoft 365 portfolio, of which there are currently in excess of 70, and assign them into the relevant workloads. For example, create a workload called 'Microsoft Teams' and within that including products such as Skype for Business, Webinar, Live Events, MTR etc.
Once this has been completed, you may well end up with something akin to the below.
At this stage, you will have reduced the 70 plus products into easily manageable workloads that you can then assign to individual product owners. Depending on the size of your organisation or team, a product owner may be responsible for more than one workload.
2 - Create a Workflow
Step 2 of the Microsoft 365 change process would be to create a workflow that enables the identification of Message Center items, and assigns them to the relevant workload and product owner. In its simplest form this can be achieved by integrating Message Center with Microsoft Planner, though this does have limitations and is something we’ll cover in a future blog post.
With the new change items successfully categorised and allocated to the relevant workload, the product owner should make time in their daily workload to review the items. It’s at this stage the product owner could close items that have no impact, or highlight them for discussion with colleagues in the team.
3 - Weekly M365 Service Category Review
At this stage we introduce the concept of a weekly Service Category Review.
This meeting is an opportunity for members of the team to come together to review all the changes that have been added to Microsoft Planner since the last review, with the objective of clearing all new items to a status of ‘in process’, ‘requires discussion’, or ‘closed’. This is also an opportunity to review existing items within those categories with a view to agreeing a plan of action.
4 - Fortnightly M365 Change Stand-Up Meeting
Finally, step 4 sees the creation of a fortnightly Change Stand Up meeting. In this meeting a wider group of individuals consisting of Product Owners, IT Ops, and IT Trainers come together to review the items classed as ‘requires discussion’. These items typically span multiple workloads, require significant effort, and have the potential to affect users. This meeting is an opportunity to discuss these items, and between the group, plan out the steps required to address and successfully implement.
The above steps lay a good foundation for an efficient Microsoft 365 change management process. When implementing, thought should be given to the advice provided within ITILv4 and ITOM methodologies, and also how automation and workflow can reduce the time and effort required to handle the number of Microsoft 365 Message Center updates affecting your tenant.
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