CIAOPS Academy deprecation notification

Screenshot 2025-11-10 194840

The CIAOPS Academy has now reached the end of lts life. I will soon remove the ability to subscribe to any existing courses and aim to fully close it down within the next twelve (12) months. Existing subscribers will still be able to access any courses until full closure in December 2026, however no additional course will be added and existing courses will not be updated.

Why have I decided to do this? The main reasons are:

1. When I look at the metrics I see that well below 5% of course subscriber’s complete their course. Most complete nothing more than the first lesson.

2. Microsoft is changing the the M365 screens more and more regularly. People want courses to match the exact current displays in M365 and this would require an inordinate amount of work on my part refreshing each course as the interfaces continue to evolve and change.

3. In a world of AI, YouTube, etc people no longer want full courses. They instead, typically, consume content piecemeal and on demand. Few are willing to invest in a multi-lesson course it seems.

4. I rarely receive feedback on the existing course content or what people would like to see made available in new courses. People are looking elsewhere for their information.

For these and other reasons (e.g. increasing hosting costs) I have decided to fully shut down the CIAOPS Academy.

I will be moving all new content directly into the CIAOPS Patron Community (www.ciaopspatron.com) going forward. You can still sign up to my free Microsoft Team. You can use Robert.Agent to have all your M365 question answered directly via email.

In an evolving landscape where AI is rapidly commoditising knowledge, the CIAOPS Academy is losing relevancy and simply becoming too hard to maintain and I believe this is mirrored in fewer and fewer people consuming the course material.

All good things must come to and end and so it is for the CIAOPS Academy.

4 thoughts on “CIAOPS Academy deprecation notification

  1. I can understand that, the lifecycle of any Microsoft (and many others) processes and UIs are now often ridiculously short, and maintaining training and similar materials up to date pretty is much an impossibility. A Copilot chat is now my favoured approach in trying to find M365 config options I have used for ages, when they suddenly make an unannounced move.

    interesting as to how the wider training industry will manage the trend.

    thanks Robert for your work on the Academy over the years, from one of those who has indeed tended to use your (and other) resources in ‘bitesize’ chunks rather than full detailed courses. Your conclusion shows the value of maintaining decent metrics on which to base these decisions.

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