We try to maintain an evergreen approach, dipping no more that 2 minor version behind the current unless we find any showstoppers in testing.

Its likely we will jump on 11.6 as soon as it gets released as it is likely to close an open risk we have relating to legacy email protocols and brings us closer to our WCAG AA goal. Subject to testing of course.

That’s really helpful to know. I’d be curious to know what you mean about legacy email protocols but appreciate that it may not be something you are able to share.

Nothing sensitive (that I can think of). When I say legacy, it would probably be more accurate to say basic authentication protocols (see the MS Learn topic for details). We have a risk open relating to whether MS will decide to turn SMTP (which I understand underpins SmartMail) off on tenants,. Probably more of a ‘when’ as this has been in the pipeline for a few years now.

Deprecation of Basic authentication in Exchange Online | Microsoft Learn

IFS have already replaced IMAP with modern authentication in the ETM using Graph. My fingers are crossed to see similar replacements for SMTP in the 11.6 release notes.

Hi @Steve Miller what are your thoughts now 11.6 release notes are out?

We are proceeding with out test environment very soon.

It is good to see the continued development of the promotion tool. Combined with the Process Designer improvements in 11.5, this will save us a lot of time (and human error) in migrating new services to production.

I’m also excited by the prospect of search tags on offerings. Especially if we can configure the feature to allow business areas to self-serve them maintain them.

How about you? 

Yes the promotion tool is looking great to reduce human error - I’m looking forward to that. 

I’m intrigued by the search tags but concerned about the time involved in getting them to a level where they are useful if that makes sense. 

We trying to work on the timelines for upgrade but it’s a shifting landscape at the moment