If you’ve been keeping up with the progress of New Boards Hub, you’re probably aware that the preview has been active for quite some time now. In fact, we officially announced the preview of New Boards Hub almost two years ago to the day.
Since that initial preview announcement, we’ve been gathering your feedback and addressing issues. Azure Boards covers a vast range of functionalities, and migrating all these experiences to a new, modern platform was no small feat. We’ve tackled hundreds of bugs across various areas, including performance, accessibility, and functional.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce the final stage of our journey. We are beginning the process of making New Boards Hub the default experience for all of our customers. This will happen in two waves, with the first wave kicking off in the first week of April. The rollout process for each wave will span several weeks, as we gradually roll out to a different set of customers every other day. The second (final) wave will most likely start sometime in late May.
🤷♂️ How do I know New Boards is the default?
As we roll out to each customer, you’ll receive a welcome message the first time you open a new page in Azure Boards. If you come across this message, it means you’re now on the New Boards Hub.
🤔 Why don’t I see the welcome message?
There are a couple of reasons why you might not see the welcome message:
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We may have already enabled it in your organization back in July of 2023. This means you’re either already using New Boards Hub, or you might have disabled it since then. If you reverted back to Old Boards, we strongly encourage you to give New Boards another try.
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Your organization might not be in the first wave where New Boards is being enabled by default. You could be in the second wave, which is expected to start in May. However, you can manually turn on New Boards at any time.
🙋♀️ Does New Boards Hub have better features?
New Boards largely retains the same functionality as Old Boards. However, we have introduced several new features to entice users to switch to New Boards. Review the links below for details.
🐞 What happens if I find an issue?
As much as we hope to have fixed every bug, the reality is there are probably a few edge case issues lingering. If you find a problem, please don’t turn off the New Boards Hub. Report the issue via Feedback Ticket or email me directly. We need to know if there is an issue so we can fix it. Any and all feedback is appreciated.
Any news on when Markdown for comments is going to be in general availability? Back in December, the announcement was that it was in preview for “a few more weeks”, and I’m eager to get it without having to jump through hoops to get our admins to request it 😉
Next to that, is there an update on using Markdown in large text fields (like the description field on a work item)?
Yes, that is the plan. To eventually allow markdown for large text fields. That work is not yet a high priority as we focus on security across the service. But it is a feature that is at the top of our list once we work through some of these security items.
We released for about 70% of customers so far, as long as they are using New Boards. We will complete the task next week to make sure it is turned on for everyone. But again, it will only be available for those users on New Boards Hub.
Great work Dan and thank you. Looking forward to seeing this on the Server product for those of us working in environments that can’t leverage the SAAS product.
Mike