Microsoft Ignite: Office 365 App Launcher Gets Major Overhaul

As I have attended different sessions here at Microsoft Ignite in Atlanta this week I am picking up on a common theme from Microsoft.

We have heard the companies CEO, Satya Nadella, talk about the mobility of the experience many times. That means having the same capabilities no matter what type of device you access a product or service as part of your daily routine.

One element of that is the ability to customize your experience and with an update due in October that functionality is arriving for commercial Office 365 subscribers in the form of a revamped Office 365 App Launcher.

The App Launcher is that grid of icons you see when logging into your Office 365 account on the web. It is pretty linear and not customizeable.

According to a blog post on the official Office 365 site these new changes are meant to increase a users productivity by adding more customization choices and improving search in all of the applications that individual uses in the Microsoft Cloud.

There are two key areas in this update.

Tabbed Layout

This new feature will give you Home, New and All tabs for finding the Office 365 apps that are part of a subscription.

The Home tab is now customizable so you can pin the apps your most used apps for quick access and then drag and drop them to build your own unique layout.

Any new apps added by your Office 365 administrator will show up under the New tab and a full list of every app available under a subscription will appear in the All tab which is also searchable.

If you are using Windows 10 then you will notice a lot of similarities for customizing the Start Menu in the OS with options to Resize, Pin and Organize your tiles are available through the Right Click Context Menu on those tiles.

Support for Office 365 Themes

This update also allows the user options to select from various Office 365 themes or you could set a corporate custom theme as an option.

If you are participating in the Office 365 First Release Program then these features will be come available later this month while all other users will see them in October.

Down the road the team plans to add recently used files to the Office 365 App Launcher so users can get back into their work directly from the launcher and save time in the process.

Check out the full FAQ for more information.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.

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