M365 Changelog: (Updated) Feature Update: Service health admin notifications in Outlook

MC422158 – Updated September 9, 2022: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft is improving Service health admin notifications in the Microsoft Outlook client experience. This feature is available to Global administrators and Office Apps administrators, who are signed into the Outlook desktop client (for Windows). We’ve heard your feedback and have implemented some improvements, including:

  • Notifications are now separated by “Latest notification” and “Previous notifications”, to more easily distinguish new information.
  • New icons have been added to easily identify active versus resolved issues.
  • Admins now can provide feedback on specific notifications, versus a generic bucket.
  • Ability to fully manage (enable or disable) admin notifications within the notification pane.

When this will happen:

These enhancements will begin rolling out at the beginning of October 2022 (previously September 2022) and be made available to all customers by the end of the same month. Admin notifications are accessible to Global administrators and Office Apps administrators who have the feature enabled in the Outlook desktop client experience.

How this will affect your organization:

Global admins and Office Apps admin who already have admin notifications enabled in Outlook desktop client, will observe the above enhancements once the roll-out is complete.

What you need to do to prepare:

If you are a Global administrator or an Office Apps administrator and would like to receive Service health notification in the Outlook desktop client, use the following steps to ensure the feature is enabled:

  • Before deployment: Navigate to File -> Options -> Advanced, and enable admin notifications.
  • After deployment: Navigate to Help -> Admin notifications, and toggle “Show Admin Notifications”.