Five years ago this month, Microsoft announced the Office Insider Program. We wanted to take a moment to highlight that anniversary and thank you for all the wonderful feedback you’ve provided over the years. Your input has been crucial in shaping the Office apps.
Office Insider Program
“As an Insider, you get first-hand access to the latest innovations, putting you on the inside track for all things Office,” wrote Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of Office, in a blog post announcing the program in November 2015. “And when you become an Office Insider, you are joining a community of like-minded power users. With your partnership, we can ensure a high-quality Office experience for millions of Office users worldwide.”
What Insiders have to say
Here are a few of the things you love about the program.
“When supporting other people and writing a lot of documentation, it is good to stay ahead of the curve. The Office Insider program offers just that. It allows you to experience new features and other changes before they roll out to the masses. Therefore, any questions about them won’t take you by surprise (too much).
The Insider program also allows you to provide feedback at a development stage where changes and feedback can often still be implemented in a relatively easy way by the Product Team. My experiences with them have been quite good. They welcome the feedback and frequently explain why they made certain choices and how they see the feature develop.”
“Everyone likes something new and shiny, and for an Excel fan, there’s not much more exciting than getting to try out a new feature the day it’s released. Particularly when it’s a feature, you may have had a say in shaping or suggesting through your involvement in the Microsoft MVP program.”
“[Office Insider] is my window into the future! Whenever updates are installed, I open each app, Word, PowerPoint, Excel & Outlook and go through every single tab and check for anything new. I always look out for incremental updates, too, like PowerPoint’s AI enabled Design Ideas or Excel’s Power Query. These updates allow the products to keep getting better all the time.”
“[With the Office Insider program, I get to test new features and tell my audience about it on my YouTube channel and my blog. Sharing these with the community and getting their feedback and enthusiastic comments make me very happy.”
“Many customers have wish lists for the products or mental blocks to using certain ones, but they feel better about trying things out because of the Insiders program,” he says. “They like being able to give their feedback directly to the team. They love that they can nominate a feature and give it support.”
-Microsoft MVP Raphael Köllner.
Your feedback makes us better
Thanks again for all the time and energy you’ve put in providing quality feedback for the Office programs. We’d love to continue hearing your thoughts about what works, what doesn’t, and what we can do to improve. Sign up for the Office Insider newsletter and get the latest information about Insider features in your inbox once a month!