As we’ve often said here on the Xbox Insider Blog: Our community is what makes the Xbox Insider Program so special. We’ve been excited to grow the program – from its origins as the Xbox Preview Program to now – with your help. Recently, we introduced the Alpha – Skip Ahead ring, which grants a select number of our Xbox Insiders an even earlier look into what our engineers are up to.

We weren’t sure how our community would respond to the Alpha – Skip Ahead ring, though we’d seen Windows Insiders take part in Windows Skip Ahead builds and greatly impact the quality and performance of those early builds. But we were happy to see that interest in this brand new ring was high. In fact, since we’re keeping this ring relatively small for the time being, we saw it fill up in about two weeks. So thanks for that, and for everything you continue to do, no matter what ring or game beta you’re currently active in!

The excitement around Alpha – Skip Ahead ring wasn’t just demonstrated by enrollment numbers, however. Here are a few pieces of sentiment you shared on Reddit after we announced the new ring:

“Oh, I’ll be all over this. I enjoy playing with and seeing new features ahead of time. I’m absolutely willing to take that plunge as soon as I see the option available!” Reddit

“Can’t wait! I need to be a part of this :)” Reddit

“Currently in the Alpha and love it and would be extremely excited to join Skip Ahead! Thank you so much for the post and information! I’ve loved the preview program since I joined and this new forum makes it feel so much more personal and lets you see that there are actual other people contributing with you to a great community.” Reddit

So what have our Alpha – Skip Ahead Insiders been doing since the ring launched and began receiving early builds? Well, they’ve been keeping busy. In fact, since launching the Alpha Skip Ahead ring, we’ve seen a great deal of response, including Quest and Survey completion and bug reports, that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. All combined, we’ve been able to count on this new ring for hundreds of pieces of early feedback and sentiment.

As prime examples of why having even earlier builds available to the public is helping produce even better builds, Alpha – Skip Ahead Insiders identified two key issues in 1810 in July alone. The first saw noticeable failures in launching and installing certain games and apps; with your feedback, we were able to fix this in less than week. The second issue involved how the virtual keyboard and Light Theme interacted together and was much easier to spot thanks to the scale testing allowed by Alpha – Skip Ahead.

Very soon, we’ll start moving Alpha – Skip Ahead users to a new set of builds planned for 2019, and we can’t wait to receive early feedback on the platform. As always, we appreciate your enthusiasm and dedication to helping us make Xbox products and services even better!