Engineering fundamentals & process
ADAL SDKs follow semantic versioning and major/minor releases are published twice per year. These releases go through the following phases and rough timelines. A feature could be included in a release or not dependent on the complexity and integration of the feature.
- Planning: 2 weeks
- Development: 14 weeks
- Integration testing and sign-off:
- Ring 0: 3 weeks
- Ring 1 & 2: 3 weeks
- Developer documentation: 2 week
- Communication: 0.5 week
- Public Distribution: 0.5 week
ADAL SDK maintenance patches are typically released once per month (unless urgent fixes are required ASAP), these include live site issues and security fixes for the currently supported released versions. Some of the security issues are back ported to the last major.minor release.
If you want to look at our current backlog and/or determine when a particular feature is planned to be released, you can look at our current roadmap here and our full backlog here If you would like to make a feature request, please submit your request to IDDP DevEx PM
Current feature release being worked based on calendar dates is available at here.
ADAL release process follows the Ring cadence and goes through the below internal rings before the SDK is made publically available to the broader community:
ADAL engineering team builds the Outlook mobile and OneDrive apps with the latest SDK and validates the apps launch with an in place replacement of the latest SDKs. This is in addition to our internal testing of the SDKs: via regular automation and manual test passes, using the topologies and accounts as below:
- Test using accounts in our ID lab
- Test using actual customer accounts
- Build partner app with latest SDK and smoke test.
Intune and MS Authenticator teams sign-off on the new version of the SDK
At least one of the below needs to be done and the in-flight duration is dependent on the risk involved with the changes in the SDK release:
- MSFT employee dogfood
- Outlook and OneDrive take the latest SDK and put it into their MSFT dogfood program.This gives us broader confidence that we’re not releasing a regression to a customer.
- Actual customer beta testing: we work with affected customers to test flight any fixes. As customer configurations can be complex, the best test is the customer environment.
For example, MS Authenticator and Company Portal apps are released to the iOS and Android app stores via TestFlight and beta releases.
DevEx team releases the SDK to partners once internal ring sign-off is achieved.