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Stream Mobile App Cut from July 1, 2024
Microsoft’s announcement in message center notification MC789607 (2 May) that they plan to retire the Stream mobile client for iOS (Figure 1) and Android on July 1, 2024, is not unexpected. It follows the completion of the long-running migration from the Stream Classic platform to Stream on SharePoint on April 15, 2024.
The (sparse) documentation for the change says that Microsoft is retiring the Stream mobile client as they “continuously strive to improve and unify our services.” More likely it’s simple rationalization. How many mobile apps does Microsoft need to upload and view videos stored in Microsoft 365. And because the focus of video storage is now OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, the OneDrive app was never going to be rationalized, even if its mission to handle all file types means that it pays less attention to video than a dedicated video app. The same is true for the Microsoft 365 mobile app, the other alternative nominated by Microsoft.
Microsoft says that their future investment will be in the OneDrive and Microsoft 365 mobile apps. Presumably this refers to investments to improve support for video files rather than just generally.
Block Download Policy
In MC789607 Microsoft calls out a potential change in behavior that users might encounter. The Stream mobile app doesn’t support the SharePoint Online block download policy, which is designed to block downloads of sensitive material from sites. The OneDrive and Microsoft 365 apps do apply the policy, meaning that users are forced to watch videos online if files are stored in sites protected by the block download policy.
I’m not sure that this will be a big concern for many customers because the block download policy is designed to protect sensitive sites that probably don’t hold many videos. I might be wrong, and there’s certainly a case for protecting videos about new products and other confidential material, but in the general course, I think the majority of the 400 mil users won’t notice any difference in viewing videos.
Usage of the Stream App
A note in the announcement says:
“If you would like more information about how many users in your organization are using the Stream mobile apps, please email us at streammobileapp@microsoft.com.”
If you think this seems a tad odd, you’d be right. It’s very strange to send email to a Microsoft development group to ask them to provide information about the usage of an app within a tenant. I bet that the folks lined up to process these emails really appreciate the chance to extract statistics for tenants.
What this statement underlines is the lack of usage data published for Stream in the Microsoft 365 admin center or available through the Graph Reports API. Stream is not alone in this respect. Despite having a usage dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a notable absence in the list supported by the API.
Retiring the Steam Mobile App is a Bump in the Road
Overall, I suspect that the retirement of the Stream mobile app will be a bump in the road: unnoticed by most but a pain for those who hit it. Rationalization occurs all the time and given the size of Microsoft 365 and the number of workloads it spans, it’s likely that good candidates exist for future rationalization. Expect similar stories to emerge in the future.
Thanks to Microsoft for announcing a change like that just after we shipped the May 2024 update for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. The only good thing about changes like this is that they show the value of a book that’s constantly updated to stay up-to-date with what happens inside Microsoft 365.