Ask IW UK Blog : Office Live

Office Live Learning Path Published

IW UK Partner Team — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:13:40 GMT

Our Office Live learning path has just been published! This outlines the training available to build applications or other solution for the Office Live platform.

It also includes links to the community pages, our Partner-TV demo etc.

Visit http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/learningpaths/?id=microsoftofficetechnical.live for more information.

Microsoft Office Live on the .NET Show!

IW UK Partner Team — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:08:40 GMT

Microsoft Office Live on the .NET Show!

What is Office Live again?

Our new internet service called “Office Live”, which allows small businesses to easily create both a web presence, as well as a SharePoint Services enabled portal to assist them with managing their business and operations.

What's the video about?

The .NET Show hosts Rajesh Jha, Corporate Vice President for Office Live, and Tara Brown, lead program manager for Office Live, to talk about how this new service empowers small business.

Also click here to check out our Office Live videos on Partner-TV.

Office Live Mind Map

IW UK Partner Team — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:30:51 GMT

Tim Kimber showed me an excellent mind map yesterday, written by Don Campbell from the Developer Platform Evangelism team in the US. It helps visualise all the pieces that make up Office Live from the technology itself to the dev guide and forums and blogs that support it.

It may just open your eyes to some new possibilities about how to hook up the pieces in the Office Live ecosystem.

As Don intends to keep this mindmap current, please feedback via comments on his blog.

Don't forget if you want a non-technical view on "What is Office Live?", head over to Partner-TV now, where I interview Tim Kimber, the UK Office Live programme manager.

Windows Live ID Client 1.0 SDK in Alpha

IW UK Partner Team — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:37:43 GMT

Thanks to James Akrigg for pointing out that the Live ID team has released the Windows Live ID Client 1.0 Alpha SDK. This may be used in conjunction with Office Live - visit Partner-TV to see a demo by Tim Kimber.

From their blog:

The Windows Live ID Client 1.0 SDK provides a managed API for Windows Live sign-in authentication. Included in the release is a sample application with its source code, so that you can build your own client applications.
The sample application demonstrates the following functions:

Users can sign in to your application using the sleek Windows Live-designed authentication user interface.
Users can save their user name and/or password so that their sign-in information persists the next time they run the application.
From within the sample application, users can create a blog that is automatically posted on their Windows Live Space.
The application will launch an Internet browser, and users are automatically signed in to their Windows Live Space.

The benefits of implementing the Windows Live ID authentication service include:

No need to worry about the technical details of authentication! The Windows Live ID authentication service manages this process for you.
Don’t bother worrying about how to store and retrieve user account information! The Windows Live ID service uses the same functionality as Messenger to cache the user name and/or password for use in subsequent user sign ins.
Forget about creating, storing, and maintaining user accounts! The Windows Live ID service hosts and manages the Web flows and account services to enable account sign up, credential viewing and updating, and profile management.
Gain hundreds of millions of potential users of your application! By enabling Windows Live accounts direct sign in to your application, anyone with a Windows Live ID can become a user of your product.

The Windows Live ID team is working on new and improved features to the Windows Live ID Client 1.0 SDK, which will be announced on dev.live.com.
Please download the SDK and let us know what you think. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and will help us shape the final product. Post your feedback and support requests to the Windows Live ID discussion forum on dev.live.com.
Click here to download the Windows Live ID Client 1.0 SDK Alpha release from connect.microsoft.com!

Partner-TV: Tim Kimber talks about Office Live

IW UK Partner Team — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 19:15:39 GMT

If you are struggling to understand what Office Live is all about, head over to our video blog, Partner-TV, where I interview Tim Kimber. Tim explains his role as Business & Marketing Lead for Office Live, gives a quick demo and explains the call to action to Partners with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 development skills.

So if you are a Partner who:

has a small business offering, horizontal or to a specific vertical
has web design skills
or would like to make your solution available to small businesses

then visit http://blogs.msdn.com/ptstv/archive/2007/01/19/partner-tv-tim-kimber-talks-about-office-live.aspx

For more information:

Sign up to the Office Live beta today:
www.officelive.co.uk
Download the Office Live Developer Guide preview: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/officelive
Read the Directions on Microsoft article: http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/update/2007/01jan/0107olosca.htm

Office Online Refreshed!

IW UK Partner Team — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:40:37 GMT

I've always been a fan of the Office Online site. It's great for when you need a last minute template or a piece of clipart to make that PowerPoint or Word document a little more exciting... and now it even has a link to our Office Live site!

Well now, it's been brought up-to-date with the 2007 Office system look and feel - with a ribbon!

As Darren mentions, you can even publish your calendar so other's can see it...

Office Live Beta

IW UK Partner Team — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:36:37 GMT

Yesterday we announced Office Live was going live in the US on November 15th. In the UK it will enter in beta so you will be able to sign up for it then at www.officelive.co.uk.

Put simply, Office Live basics gives you:

Personalized domain name and Web site
50 e-mail accounts
Web site traffic reports
Online workspaces for sharing customer, project, and marketing information

The best bit is that this is totally free even after the beta!

This is a SharePoint Services 3.0 platform which works seamlessly with the 2007 release desktop applications. This is particularly useful for those who don't work in a company that runs its own SharePoint infrastructure. Small businesses can start to use SharePoint integration without running their own server and get their company web site and email all set up together with collaboration - and all free.

From Darren

Office Live Comes to Windows Messenger

IW UK Partner Team — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:24:25 GMT

The newest Live related tab has launched, this time for Office Live, bringing the total number of Live tabs for Windows Live Messenger to 5. It joins Expo, Favorites, Messenger and the original Alerts tabs.

As there is limited advertising within the Office Live platform, I presume this is a way of achieving scale... as well as getting the message that Microsoft has this great new small business offering...

You can give the tab a try out by directly opening it in your browser.

I'm still looking for Parnters with WSS skills... email me.

Calling all UK SharePoint Developers for Office Live

IW UK Partner Team — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:10:00 GMT

Further to my earlier posting on Office Live, if you are interested in developing a small business hosted solution on Windows SharePoint Services v3 for Office Live, please email me at AskIW@microsoft.com to let me know. I'm looking for Partners who:

would like to extend their current offerings to Small Businesses
produce professional web site templates
offer vertical solutions for organising and managing customer and business information
offer integration services

In the meantime, watch the video; download the Office Live Developer Guide Preview and also check out the Office Live Developer Portal on MSDN. There's also a basic overview demo here.

Technorati tags: office live, office-live

Interested in Office Live? Sign up to the UK Beta

IW UK Partner Team — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 20:43:00 GMT

What is Office Live? In summary, Office Live is:

A offering for Small Businesses
A professional Web site, expertly hosted by Microsoft
A secure online workspace for organising and managing customer and business information
A complete set of tools for managing time, tasks, projects, and company data that integrates with your existing Microsoft Office programmes

Steve took the opportunity to film Rajesh Jha, the GM for Office Live, for PTS-TV whilst at the Microsoft Global Exchange conference in Orlando. Rajesh talks about the beta in the US and the forthcoming UK beta.

If you are interested in Office Live, visit the website and register your interest for the UK Beta here. As always, if you are interested in participating in our UK launch activities, please post a comment or send me an email and I'll add you to the list for consideration.

In the meantime, watch the video; download the Office Live Developer Guide Preview and also check out the Office Live Developer Portal on MSDN. There's also a basic overview demo here.

Stream (6 mins)
Download (12.5mb)

Posted by Christian.