Yet another unannounced change in Office 365? App Launcher?

 

Update… it was announced! See here: http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/16/organize-office-365-new-app-launcher-2/   For me, it was unannounced. I missed the blog article. There was no mention of the change in the Office 365 Admin Center "Message Center". It just showed up in one of my subscriptions. Turns out it is also "mentioned" in the Office 365 Roadmap site, but with no links or any idea where it might show up in O365. And… I have "opted into First Release" and did not see it back in October. It just showed up this week.

If you are using O365 then you should proactively notify/warn/train your users before this just appears in your site.

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Yet Another Change…

The navigation bar across the top of SharePoint 2013 is called the Suite Bar. What does yours look like? I'm getting different results from different subscriptions.

Mine used to look like this:

Now it looks like this in one subscription:

The nine little squares on the left is a new button:

So far:

• I have not found where this was announced. Just found this: http://blogs.office.com/2014/10/16/organize-office-365-new-app-launcher-2/
• If I can turn it on or off.
• If it is just for some types of subscriptions or all subscriptions.
  

Now all of my training materials, cheat sheets and book screen captures are all out of date!

Office 365 has been, and I guess will always be, a moving target. Ready… Fire… Aim…

 

Is it better?

• Except for the Sites link, everything else now requires at least one more click.
• The Admin menu is now missing. While there is a button marked "Admin", it just takes me to the Portal site. If I need to got the SharePoint, Lync or Exchange admin pages I now have to go to the Admin Center page first and then click "SharePoint", "Lync" or "Exchange".
• So for me, no.

 

What should I call this?

As a trainer I have to document steps, and tell people where to click. This button does not even have a mouse-over tip to explain it's purpose.

Using the F12 tools I found this HTML:

<button class="o365cs-nav-item o365cs-nav-button o365cs-navMenuButton ms-bgc-tdr-h o365button ms-bgc-tp"
id="O365_MainLink_NavMenu" role="menuitem" 
aria-label="Open the app launcher to access your Office 365 apps" type="button">

So I guess we can call it the "Main Link Nav Menu" or may be the "App Launcher button". Your guess is as good as mine.

Here is looks like it is called App Launcher.

 

What about your customizations?

Depends on how they were done. From here it sounds like your custom logo will be moved to the center of the Suite Bar.

 

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