General Availability – Identify Support Options for Microsoft 365 Services

General Availability

General availability (sometimes called general release), or simply GA, means that a product has matured to the point where it can be released for all customers to purchase or use. Products in general availability can be considered production-ready and are fully supported by Microsoft. As with any new product, though, it’s important to ensure the compliance and security controls available meet your organization’s requirements.

Modern Lifecycle Policy

As per the Modern Lifecycle Policy, if a product is no longer to be supported, Microsoft will give a minimum prior notification of 12 months before the end of the service support. You can search for product and service lifecycle information by visiting the Microsoft product lifecycle page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/.

Next, you’ll look at how the stages of the development and availability lifecycle translate to support.

Support Policies

Support policies govern how and when Microsoft will offer assistance for a particular product or service. From the support perspective, both public and private previews typically do not have to abide by the standard SLA terms for the service. Public and private previews may have their own limited SLAs, may have no SLA defined, or may explicitly inform you that there is no expectation of any particular responsiveness or availability. And, as stated earlier, previews can be ended or discontinued at any time with no or limited warning.

Unless the preview’s specific terms and conditions are stipulated differently, preview products are excluded from all SLAs and warranty claims, and the unavailability of products in preview will not constitute an SLA breach that would result in service credit.

Products in general availability are fully supported in line with the product’s individual SLA. Support for products in general availability can be obtained through support tickets via the Microsoft 365 support portal, Microsoft phone support, or partners.

Now that you have an understanding of how Microsoft 365 SLAs are structured and some of the terminology associated with them, we’ll look at service health concepts.