As has become standard fare and common knowledge during the Windows 10 Technical Preview, the Office 365 team is taking a similar direction with how updates are tested and managed prior to public rollout. The Office team has shared today more about how it uses a 5-ring approach, detailing the actions that are performed in each. This, in hopes of showing comforting levels of responsibility before patches are made available to unsuspecting customers.
We've yet to see if the ringed approach really works in the real world. The Windows Insider program has yet to kick back off after the public release of the Windows 10 upgrade. But, we should get a taste of that very soon. However, it seems logical that adding varying levels of testing should help eliminate problems so that customers have a smoother experience than experience in the past.
The 5 rings of assurance include the following audiences:
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Ring 0 – The feature teams of engineers who build and test proposed changes.
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Ring 1 – The Office 365 team takes a test drive.
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Ring 2 – All Microsoft employees (dog-fooding).
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Ring 3 – First Release customers. Those brave, opt-in souls who don't mind providing feedback and bug reports.
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Ring 4 – Everyone! The official worldwide rollout.
