How Microsoft Insider Programs Give IT Pros a Leg Up

… a different level of tolerance for new features:

Dev Channel (formerly Fast Ring)

• Who is it for? IT pros and support technicians.
• What are the benefits of the channel? Users will have the earliest public access to enhancements, new features and under-the-hood changes to the operating system. For enterprise testers, this is the prime opportunity to identify compatibility issues with both hardware and software and provide feedback to eliminate those issues early in the dev cycle.
• What are the drawbacks? The builds will have rough edges and some instability.

Beta Channel (formerly Slow Ring)

• Who is it for? IT pros, support technicians and key department personnel across the enterprise. This is good for early adopters who want to test-drive the builds and identify potential end-user support issues.
• What are the benefits of the channel? Feedback has the greatest impact here. The features and enhancements are locked down with only minor adjustments and fixes planned for them. Updates are distributed approximately once per month via cumulative updates for bug fixes and stability, and Microsoft validates the updates.

Release Preview Channel (formerly Release Preview Ring)

• Who is it for? IT pros, support technicians, key department personnel across the enterprise and designated early adopters to prepare for full migration.
• What are the benefits of the channel? The most stable pre-release version of the upcoming update. Focus is on bug fixes and stability. Perfect opportunity to broadly test compatibility with hardware and software.

Windows Insider Program, Windows Insider Program for Business, Windows Insider Program for Developers

Office Insider

The first thing to know about the Office Insider Program is only those organizations using Office 365 and Microsoft 365 can join; enterprises that don’t subscribe to the cloud-based service need not apply.

Tenant administrators can manage access to these early preview channels within the respective Office 365 or Microsoft 365 service portals. There are two different channels for the Office Insider program; each targets a different level of tolerance for new features:

Beta Channel

• Who is it for? IT pros and support technicians.
• What are the benefits of the channel? Users can try the earliest builds and get first looks at what’s new.
• What are the risks of the channel? It’s frequently updated, so keeping track of what has changed is a lot of work. Also, Microsoft doesn’t support it.

Current Channel (Preview)

• Who is it for? IT pros, support technicians and key department personnel across the enterprise.
• What are the benefits of the channel? Well-tested features that are much more stable compared to the beta channel. Microsoft offers technical support to users who encounter issues during testing and use. Microsoft updates the channel with new features and bug fixes approximately once a month.

Office Insider, Office Insider for Business

Edge Insider

In late 2018, Microsoft announced its intention to build a new web browser based on the open-source Chromium rendering engine. This was a significant shift because Microsoft previously embedded its web browsers (Internet Explorer and legacy Edge) into the operating system, so major browser updates only happened with …