I guess it’s true what they say, miracles do happen!
Microsoft has finally, after YEARS of MVPs begging them, started to promote some of the improvement they make to product so people actually can see that the product is being actively developed and isn’t on life support!
Why am I mentioning this? Well, for years now, we have seen little public official posts regarding Access development. The Access Roadmap is simply not maintained and goes months or years with no updates, the Access blog only seems to get posts about bug fixes and very few improvements or new features ever get a post made by Microsoft leading many to believe the product has been on life support for many years now. Several MVPs have done our best to make posts regarding new aspects, but of course this does not hold the same weight as an official Microsoft post and we scrape together the information we can, but can make omissions and mistakes as we don’t always have all the information.
What this means is we finally have an updated and official resource we can point fellow developers and most importantly clients which clearly highlights that Microsoft Access is alive and still evolving, in active development. So no more hearsay, no more take our word for it, we get the information straight from the horses mouth.
I’m expecting, okay let’s be realistic – praying, to see more resources promoting what they release in the future (now that we’ve seen this occur), but in less than 24hrs they updated their “What’s new in Access for Microsoft 365” page to include many of the recently added features and/or product improvements that had not visibility up until now.
So take a look at the article to make sure you’re aware of everything that has recently come to be! Perhaps there’s something you weren’t aware of and that may be beneficial to your work.
Yes, there’s still lots of work to be done, but this is a GREAT first step. For instance, I’m hoping that each “What’s new” feature will eventually have a link to a detailed blog post explaining the feature in depth and providing information about which versions, builds, … it applies to.
This was LONG overdue!!! The Access community has no clue how long and how much MVPs have been begging Microsoft to do this for, start promoting new Access improvement and features.
So let’s hope this is a sign of things to come: fixing their websites, being more communicative, publishing their acheivements, …
Whatever you do Microsoft, keep this momentum going, keep updating that page and let’s see more improvements:
- Add a detailed post for each improvement or new feature providing all the information about it and what editions, versions, builds it became available on.
- Add missing items (code signing for instance) to the “What’s new in Access for Microsoft 365” page
- Update the roadmap (why were many of these items never on the roadmap?!)
- Post regular Change Logs/Release Notes (not just bug fixes, but new feature and improvements as well!). Better document what has changed in each release.
- Update outdated support documentation (lots are missing information)
- Update the SQL Editor
- Update the VBE
- Keep fixing those bugs
- Perhaps a web page with matrix of features vs Access versions to help find ourselves in this extensive mess of a Microsoft ecosystem. The above is great, but it is for MS365, what about the other versions/flavors (2019, 2021, perpetual, LTSC, …) don’t leave them in the lurch!
Lastly, THANK YOU!