With the “current” Azure Portal (http://portal.azure.com) in full force and Microsoft deprecating services / features within the “classic” Azure Portal, they have now made available a NEW Preview Portal. The NEW Preview Portal allows you to access Azure Portal features before they are released to the main Azure Portal. This enables a sort of “Insider Preview” for just the Azure Portal.

You can access the NEW Azure “Preview” Portal by visiting http://preview.portal.azure.com

Here are some of the features you can expect in the NEW Azure “Preview” Portal today:

Full-screen blades – The Azure Portal has been optimized for both large and small screens with the addition of full-screen blades. This allows for more room to display blade content while reducing the amount of scrolling necessary within the portal.
Subscription usage + quotas – Service usage / quotas for each subscription can now be viewed.
Performance – Upgrades have been made to enable faster startup and improved responsiveness within the portal. These types of performance improvements will be released to the new Preview Portal first before being rolled out to the Current Portal.
Notifications – You can now expand notifications within the portal without navigating away and losing your place in the current blade being displayed.
Accessibility – Some usability and readability improvements are being made to the Portal to improve accessibility for everyone.

To leave feedback on your experience in the NEW Preview Portal, you can contact Microsoft using the following methods:

Post feedback and / or ideas on the Azure portal feedback forum
Tweet comments to the @AzurePortal Twitter account (you can also Follow this account for updates as well)
Click on the Smile icon in the header of the Preview Azure Portal

Here’s the original announcement from Microsoft for the NEW Azure Preview Portal:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/get-early-access-to-new-portal-features-2/

Have fun peeking into the future!

About the Author

Chris Pietschmann

Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.