SaaS Updates Summary: May 9–13
3 minute read

Last week’s SaaS highlights included exciting new features for the education market. Microsoft introduced a new Office 365 education roadmap, and Dropbox launched Dropbox Education, a new version of its product tailored to students and faculty. Google Calendar rolled out several updates as well. Slack introduced “Sign In with Slack,” while Zendesk launched a new native channel for customer support via text message.
The Office 365 Education Roadmap is Now Available – Microsoft is pleased to share the Office 365 Education Roadmap, which lists updates currently planned for applicable subscribers. Updates for the various stages—from in development to rolling out to customers, to being generally available for applicable customers worldwide—are easily accessible in the Office 365 Roadmap.
Improved Search and Filter Experience in Reports Section of Admin Console – Google has improved the search and filter experience in the Audit Reports section of the Admin console. Previously, when you typed a query in any one of the “Filters” fields in a particular report, we would automatically begin searching when your cursor left that field—an unexpected and often confusing experience. To make this workflow more intuitive, we’re adding a Search button below the filtering fields, which you’ll need to explicitly click to launch any search.
Stay Focused with Google Calendar Event Notifications in Your Browser – We’re happy to announce that starting today the Gentle Notifications lab is graduating to become a fully supported feature. You can now continue working in other tabs uninterrupted without losing track of your next meeting. Event notifications in browsers which support Web Notifications (like Google Chrome) will allow you to use native browser notifications instead of interruptive alerts.
Introducing Sign in with Slack – Today, we’re introducing Sign in with Slack, a way for customers to quickly sign up for your app using their Slack identity. More than just log in, Sign in with Slack keeps teams connected across the many apps they use for work. When a user signs up for your app using Sign in with Slack, they’ll be instantly connected to their teammates within your product.
Dropbox Goes Off to College with New Education Service – Dropbox launched a new service on Tuesday to help graduate students, college faculty and staff collaborate on files while they’re at school. Schools can now pay $50 per user, per year for Dropbox Education, a version of the cloud storage company’s premium offering for organizations that’s tailored to the cost-sensitive education market.
Office 365 Datacenters Now Available in Canada – Following up from our announcements of new datacenter regions in Japan, Australia and India over the last 18 months, today we are announcing the general availability of a new Office 365 datacenter region in Canada. The new datacenter region adds in-country data residency, failover and disaster recovery for core customer data at rest to customers in Canada. Canadian customers continue to have access to the full breadth of productivity and collaboration services available in Office 365 today.
Customer Support via SMS is About to Get a Lot Easier, Courtesy of Zendesk – Customer support powerhouse Zendesk announced today it is broadening its ever-expanding number of support channels, as the company launches a new native channel for customer service via text message. SMS may be 20-year-old technology, but in a world where email is too clunky and where waiting on hold for 20 minutes to have a simple query resolved sucks too hard to contemplate, there’s a lot to be said for short bursts of asynchronous exchange of information.
New Tool for Helping Resolve Office 365 Issues – The Support and Recovery Assistant for Office 365 is an easy-to-use app that asks you some simple questions, tests for some of the most common Office 365 support issues and attempts to implement resolutions on your behalf. While the current version is focused on some the more common scenarios people encounter with Outlook, the Support and Recovery Assistant will gain new troubleshooting and resolution capabilities in the future.
New Editor Coming to Outlook 2016 for Mac – Enhanced formatting support has been one of the most frequently requested improvements in Outlook 2016 for Mac. Today, we are laying the foundation with the new editor and will continue to build on this work in future updates, including support for Tables.
See Event Locations at a Glance with Google Calendar on the Web – Google Calendar on the web is getting an update today: event locations will now appear in the day and week views. Instead of needing to navigate to an event’s details in order see the event location, the event location will now appear on your calendar, when there is enough space available.