The Fifth Edition is Here!

All good things come to and end and it’s time to finish up with the 4^th edition of Office 365 for IT Pros. We will cease work on the 4^th edition on July 1, 2018 and retire the edition soon afterwards.

Originally released on June 1, 2017, we have updated the 4^th edition 51 times since to keep pace with changes inside Office 365. We added a net total of over 150 pages of new content during the year. We hope that you enjoyed the book and found it helpful in your work.

Introducing the 2019 Edition

We are now preparing for the release of the 2019 edition of Office 365 for IT Pros. Why 2019? Well, Microsoft’s 2018-19 fiscal year starts on July 1, 2018 and we want to align our release to their fiscal year. We also call this book the fifth edition, so you can use that name if you prefer.

Although we added a lot of new content to the 4^th edition, we know that we needed to expand into new areas of Office 365. The 2019 edition includes a chapter on Flow for the first time, has a dedicated chapter for the basics of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, together with in-depth coverage of the transition of Skype for Business Online to the Microsoft Phone System and Teams. We have restructured the book to create a more natural flow and taken the opportunity to slim the book a little by removing older (but still valuable) content to a companion volume that will be available separately.

Our author team has changed too, as we say goodbye to Paul Cunningham and Michael Van Horenbeeck and welcome Paul Robichaux, Jussi Roine, Juan Carlos González Martín, Gustavo Valez, and Brian Reid. We thank Paul and MVH for their work on the last four editions of the book and welcome our new contributors, all of whom are MVPs and well qualified to take up the challenge.

Release cadence

Our plans for the 2019 edition are to follow a somewhat more relaxed update cadence. Some of our readers are uncomfortable with a weekly update, so we are focusing on a monthly update now. This does not mean that we will not release more frequent updates to cover important news from Microsoft, but in general, we’re not going to be as hectic as we were over the last year.

Book Variants

We plan to offer the same subscription service for the 2019 edition. You can buy the book from our online store for $49.95 and will receive two volumes:

• Office 365 for IT Pros (2019 edition): This is the book we will update regularly. You can download a sample chapter (2) here.
• Office 365 for IT Pros (2019 companion volume): A separate 250-page eBook with information that changes less often than the topics covered in the main book. Most of the current text in the companion volume is taken from the 4^th edition We think the information is still useful, so we’ve moved it into the companion volume.

When you buy online, you get the books in PDF and EPUB formats. We will continue our arrangement with Amazon to publish a Kindle edition too. However, because you cannot use the same “two books in one” arrangement for Kindle, each book is available separately.

• Office 365 for IT Pros (2019 edition).
• Office 365 for IT Pros (2019 companion volume).

As a special launch offer, you can get a $10 discount until 8 July 2018 by using this code. If you bought a copy of the 4th edition from Practical365.com, please wait to receive the email from Practical365.com with an even better offer for you.

Subscriptions and Subscribers

When you buy a book, you also get a subscription that last for at least one year from July 1, 2018. Subscribers can download updates as they are released during the subscription period. The subscription model enables us to dedicate the time necessary to track, document, and debug (sometimes) change as it happens inside Office 365. We think that our subscription represents extraordinary value because you get a great book (worth the price on its own) and its updates.

If you subscribed through Practical365.com, you should download update 51 of the 4^th edition using your Practical365.com account to make sure that you have the latest files.

Office 365 Never Stops Changing

The thing about a cloud service like Office 365 is that it never stops changing. We’ve already started the process of tracking updates for the 2019 edition. We expect lots of announcements and interesting changes to happen at the Microsoft Ignite conference in Orlando in September. The challenge now is to keep pace and keep writing. You can get news about what we do by checking in here or on our Facebook page.

Or follow me on Twitter @12Knocksinna.