Announcing the Office 2016 IT Pro and Developer Preview

Valuable updates for IT pros and developers

Data Loss Protection (DLP)
In recent years Microsoft Office added DLP Exchange, Outlook, and SharePoint Business OneDrive. Now bringing these same characteristics classification and policy to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With these new capabilities, administrators can centrally create, manage, and enforce policies for content creation and sharing documents and end users will share tips political or restrictions when applications detected a potential violation of the policy.

Outlook
Significant technical improvements to Outlook
MAPI-HTTP protocol have replaced the timing based on a new MAPI RPC-HTTP protocol to use Internet connectivity that supports Exchange / Outlook.
Red flame foreground. Eliminated the use of the network of foreground called to make sure that Outlook remains open on unreliable networks.
Multi-factor authentication. With this version of the Outlook client, support multi-factor authentication through integration with Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL).
Performance email delivery and reduced the amount of time it takes to download messages, display the list of messages, and displaying a new email after emerging from hibernation.
Lean storage space have added settings that allow users to better manage storage only hold 1, 3, 7, 14 or 30 days of mail on the device.

Search  have improved the reliability, performance and ease of use of Outlook search, and integrated search engine FAST-based Exchange.

Click-to-Run deployment
For customers of Office 365 subscription, the 2016 version includes new deployment features:

Introducing a new transfer service Intelligence background (BITS) to help prevent network congestion. BITS accelerates again using bandwidth when other critical network traffic is present.
Improving integration with ConfigMgr to allow IT administrators to efficiently download and distribute monthly updates ConfigMgr Office using native features.
Created a way for administrators to manage the rate at which they receive feature updates and bug fixes while receiving regular security updates.

Adding a feature of Office 365 Portal Administration to allow administrators to manage devices activation's by users.

Macros and Add-ins
There is no changes to macros or add-ins in this release. It is rare that "no change" is one thing we would like to highlight, but we think worth celebrating consistency in programming model through communications and realize how important this is and committed to a high level of compatibility as we continue to innovate
(See dev.office.com for more on how we’re innovating in Office extensibility.)

Accessibility
Addressed a number of issues of readability in Outlook and introduced a dark theme for visually impaired users.

Information Rights Management (IRM)
Extended the protection of IRM Visio files, allowing both online and offline protection of Visio diagrams.

For more details on the Office 2016 Preview program and instructions on how to download the applications, please visit the Office 2016 Preview program on the Microsoft Connect site. 

post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer