Blog links
Seminar: Exploring the Transition from Google Apps with Office 365 Education
Date & Time: May 15th 2014 at 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Registration: http://www.microsoft.com/education/ww/Training/webcasts/Pages/default.aspx
Seamlessly transition your faculty, staff and students to Office 365.
Join Microsoft Partner, CloudBearing as they review their limited time customer migration offer for educational organizations.
Now until June 30th, 2014, you'll be able to receive discounted pricing when you migrate from Google Apps to Office 365.
Seamlessly transition your faculty, staff and students to Office 365. Join Microsoft Partner, CloudBearing as they review their limited time customer migration offer for educational organizations. Now until June 30th, 2014, you'll be able to receive discounted pricing when you migrate from Google Apps to Office 365. In this session we will cover this migration solution including:
See you there!!
Hot off the presses – we have confirmed that the 1TB storage increase per OneDrive for Business user announced here will apply to A2 and A3 SKU customers.
This is great news!
Here is a quick FAQ:
Does this increase apply to Office 365 Education?
Yes, if you have A2 or A3 SKU assigned to your users you will get an increase from the default 25GB to the default 1TB in quota.
Will this increase cost me anything?
No, this will be included in the A2 and A3 SKU.
When will I see this increase in quota to 1TB?
From what I have read, it is coming over the next several months. It takes time to apply this to all the tenants.
Can I have files larger than 2GB?
Currently, SharePoint Online limited to 2GB file size for upload.
Can I limit my sync down?
Currently, OneDrive for Business folder sync cannot be limited by folder, etc.
Further to our recent announcement that Office for iPad is now available, I just wanted to take this opportunity to share some additional information that hopefully addresses some of the queries I have been receiving via email and Twitter over the last week around both the apps and how best to license them for your faculty and students.
Reading, viewing and presenting your content is available for free and if you have a valid Office 365 ProPlus license you can also create and edit Office documents on your iPad. This license is part of the A3 SKU and the Student Advantage SKU within Office 365 Education so you can now provide this to your faculty and students. The following deck below gives an overview of the various options available.
Office for iPad has been written specifically for the iPad and takes full advantage of the unique features of the device that are perfectly suited for keyboard and mouse free use. The Office for iPad apps have a familiar look and feel, though, and content created using the apps will look amazing across all your devices.
Furthermore, much like Office on a PC or Mac, collaboration and review sits at the heart of Office for iPad. Multiple people can work simultaneously on the same document. Just make sure that its saved to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint so that others can access your document.
The Office for iPad apps can be downloaded directly from the App Store and can be run on up to 5 devices. Faculty and students will need to be running IOS 7 on their devices.
For a full overview of Office for iPad in action, take the time over a coffee to watch the video below that discusses the array of Office experiences now available across multiple platforms - including Office for iPad. The whole video is worth checking out, but if you want to just watch the iPad related content, just jump to the 10 minute mark.
So, as mentioned previously, if all you are looking to do with the apps is view content or present your PowerPoint material to colleagues, you do not need any additional licensing. Just download the apps for free from the App Store and you are up and running.
If, however, you want to open your documents from OneDrive for Business, edit or format content on the go or save back to any of our cloud based storage options such as OneDrive or SharePoint, you would need to look into the additional Office 365 subscription options.
If your Office 365 subscription ends, don’t worry. You will still be able to view your Office documents with Office for iPad and the data on your device is not lost. You will not, however, be able to create and edit content on your iPad until the subscription has been renewed, and this can easily be done by signing back in with a valid Microsoft Account etc.
The table below may also be useful in terms of helping you understand the additional functionality that can be unlocked with an Office 365 Education subscription.
If you have any questions about how best to license your faculty or students for Office for iPad using Office 365 Education, please do not hesitate to leave us a note in the comments below.
Alternatively, drop your reseller a note and they will be delighted to help you with your query.
Microsoft is devoted to providing the tools which enable people from all walks of life to work anywhere and on any device. The ever increasing portfolio of Windows based devices available lay testament to that and with over a billion users of Microsoft Office globally we are now delighted to share that Office for iPad has now been released and is available to download on Apple's App Store.
At the Mobile First, Cloud First Press Briefing yesterday Satya Nadella made his CEO debut and announced that the Office suite including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel would now be available for use on the iPad.
Within hours of the launch Word became the most downloaded application for iPads within the Apple’s App store, with Excel and PowerPoint following closely behind.
At the event in San Francisco, Satya began by sharing some of the core foundations, this decision would be built upon:
"So first thing is about people. At the end of the day, if you look at our daily life, we have a set of activities that we do. We could be reading, we could be capturing, we could be listening, collaborating, organizing, researching. These are all activities that we do across a variety of devices. We're not bound, in fact, to one device, one place or one time. And the real goal for us is to step up to provide the applications and services that empower every user across all of these devices and all of these experiences. So that's perhaps the job No. 1 that we do, which is to empower people to be productive, do more across all devices."
He also added that the announcement was part of a strategy to empower people to be productive across all devices with Microsoft software.
"We are taking great focus and great care to make sure Office on any device shines through,"
For students and teachers wanting only to view and scroll through their documents on their tablet, the application is available for free, and for those wanting full functionality it will involve an Office 365 subscription (for example through Student Advantage, Office 365 ProPlus for Faculty, Plan A3, etc.).
For students and teachers this opens many doors, particularly in institutions where a BYOD infrastructure is in place, for those students unable to purchase a new device they still are empowered to use the best Microsoft Office productivity tools, with the device they already own.
Satya closed by saying “We are absolutely committed to making our applications run what most people describe as cross-platform great. There's no holding back of anything. It is about being able to excel everywhere our customers are. One of the questions is, is this a massive trade-off for you? There is no trade-off. It's reality for us. It's not a competitive reality. That's not what motivates us. What motivates us is the realities of our customers. What motivates us is to make sure that we build the great experiences that span the digital life and digital work of our customers, both individually and as organizations. And that's what you can count on us doing, both with Windows as well as other platforms. And that's what's driving us”
The official Office Blog talks more about the latest announcement “We thought a lot about what people want to do when they’re on their tablet, iPad functionality, and touch-first when we were building Office for iPad. We reimagined Office on the iPad, while retaining what people love about Office. We hope you’ll be as pleased with the results as we are. In the future, we will bring Office apps to the Windows Store and other popular platforms. In addition to Office for iPad, we’ve gone a step further in our mobile first and cloud first approach, and like Windows Phone, we’ve now made Office Mobile for iPhone and Android phones available for free”
Read the complete blog and FAQ here
Download the apps: Microsoft Word for iPad, Microsoft PowerPoint for iPad, Microsoft Excel for iPad.
Announced today we are now offering Office for iPad. You can use the free portion of Office for iPad for reading, viewing and presenting and if you have a valid Office 365 ProPlus license you can also create and edit Office documents on your iPad. This license is part of the A3 SKU and the Student Advantage SKU within Office 365 Education so you can now provide this to your faculty and students.
We also announced that Office for iPhone and Android will be free as of today where this used to also require an A3 or Student Advantage license but is no longer the case.
There are some exciting features in Office for iPad including Excel for iPad, Word for iPad, and PowerPoint for iPad where it has been written from the ground up for touch friendly and mouse and keyboard free use.
Excel for iPad
PowerPoint for iPad
Word for iPad
A more in depth demo of Office for iPad here:
Here is a quick FAQ I put together on the release:
Where can I get Office for iPad?
You can download it here from the App Store.
Is this free?
You can download and read, review, and present Office content with the free version however if you need to save to OneDrive, edit or create new Office content using Office for iPad you will need a valid Office 365 subscription.
Here is a matrix describing free vs. Office 365 subscription functionality with Office for iPad:
What Office 365 Education subscriptions qualify for creating/editing documents using Office for iPad?
note: you can also buy an Office 365 subscription outside of Office 365 Education using a personal subscription purchase using Office 365 University for academic users (faculty, staff or student) here or if non academic user see here.
How many tablets can I run this on per user subscription?
You can now run this on 5 tablets per user subscription with the Office 365 Education subscriptions.
Can I trial Office for iPad?
Yes, you can use a 30 day trial here.
What does it include?
What happens if I no longer have a subscription?
Your Office for iPad will allow you to continue viewing content but you will no longer be able to create or edit Office documents.
What version of iOS is supported?
You need an iPad running iOS 7.0 or later.
NOTE: Update 4-30-14 - This has all changed as we now provide 1TB of default OneDrive for Business quota per user. Please see new my new blog post here and ignore the old scenario below.
Great news you can now up your SharePoint OneDrive for Business quota to 1 terabyte up from the default 25GB and previous upper limit of 100GB.
The way it works is you can specify which specific users you want to assign new upper quotas of 50GB, 100GB, 250GB, 500GB or 1TB quota. The catch to this is once you exceed the default quota of 25GB for a user you will be pulling storage out of your overall pooled tenant storage allocation (10GB + 500MB x total number of users) in your tenant.
For example:
If you have 10,000 A2 licensed users that equals 5TB of pooled tenant storage available.
You decide to up OneDrive for Business quota from default 25GB to 250GB for 4 users which consumes 1TB out of the 5TB leaving 4TB remaining of the overall pooled storage.
You can purchase more pooled tenant storage at a per GB / per Month charge if you require more.
The SharePoint site collection limit has also been upped from 100GB to 1TB max and the 25TB max SharePoint Online limit in a single tenant has been removed which means you can purchase as much pooled storage as needed in your tenant.
You can read more on how to configure OneDrive for Business and site collection quotas here and here.
Office 365 Education updates shipped in February 2014:
New names: Office Web Apps are now rebranded as Office Online and SkyDrive Pro is now rebranded as OneDrive for Business.
OneDrive name now in Office 365 user portal.
Office Online name branded with each app – Word Online, Excel Online, PowerPoint Online, and OneNote Online.
Azure Multi-factor Authentication for Office 365 – This will be included with the A2 license at no additional charge with an Office 365 Education license. Now any users can be required to provide a second level of verification when logging into Office 365. Users can opt to receive a call, SMS, or use a mobile app to verify their identity. Multi-factor authentication adds an additional level of security to prevent unauthorized access to documents and email. If Azure MFA is required outside of Office 365 Education, another license is required called ‘Windows Azure MFA’. See here for differences.
Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) now available – Customers with Windows Azure Rights Management included with Office 365 Education A3 license can now use transport rules to enforce message encryption (OME) on email leaving their organization. This feature replaces Exchange Hosted Encryption and will allow for secure external encryption outside of your institution.
Office Online – replacing the old name of Office Web Apps. The new names are Excel Online, Word Online, PowerPoint Online, and OneNote Online all of these fold up into Office Online. It is more of a branding rename since functionality is the same. See the recent improvements and real-time coauthoring, now with a new name.
Hierarchical Address Book now available – Institutions can setup the Address Book in Outlook to show an organizational hierarchy such as colleges, departments, etc, for purposes of showing segmented address book views related to that college or department, etc.
Data loss prevention capabilities extended – Two new DLP features available. First, document fingerprinting lets organizations match and apply polices to documents derived from the same template to prevent leakage. Second, Policy Tips are added to OWA so that you can see compliance policies related to your mail before it is sent from the browser now. DLP requires an A3 license.
S/MIME encryption now supported in Exchange Online – S/MIME standard now supported in Exchange Online across Outlook, OWA, and EAS so that organizations can send and receive S/MIME encrypted and digitally signed email from any compliant device.
Part of the new S/MIME support include the ability to push the user certificate from local AD to Azure AD now which then lights up S/MIME in Exchange Online OWA, Outlook, etc.
Power BI now available – to Office 365 Education customers or standalone. Power BI for Office 365 is a new service that enables you to search and access data from both internal and external sources, do natural language queries on that data, automatically refresh data, and create and share interactive dashboards using PowerPivot, PowerView, PowerChart, PowerMap, and PowerQuery technologies. See here for some demos of Power BI.
power BI screenshots
Lync 2013 desktop client updates – The update adds an on or off option for displaying pictures in the IM window view, adds support for high-res displays with 200% scaling.
Exchange Online Protection enhancements – we added several new pieces to EOP: directory-based edge blocking, increased Office 365 domain limit, Message Trace extended for 90 days, improved mail protection reporting, Remote PowerShell for EOP standalone customers, and junk mail reporting for OWA and OWA for devices
Lync Mobile update for Android – This update gives you the option to rejoin a meeting or call you recently left or potentially dropped from, and lets you pick up an IM conversation right from where you left it, even if from another device.
OneDrive for Business for iOS update – with the rename occurring the iOS app has been updated to reflect the new name OneDrive for Business and enabled for authenticating with certain SharePoint Server 2013 configurations.
New start page in the Exchange Admin Center – A new dashboard view provides direct links to the most common administrator tasks and speeds up admin page performance.
Office 2013 Service Pack 1 released – Office 365 education customers using Office 365 ProPlus (e.g. Student Advantage, etc.) are automatically receiving all fixes and enhancements related to SP1. Any new Office 365 ProPlus download will automatically have SP1 slipstreamed in it so no need for users to download after install.
This new eBook, Office 365 Education in the Classroom, concentrates almost exclusively on how Office 365 Education can help the teacher and the student in their day to day work.
We look at a whole list of teaching and learning scenarios, describing some of the ways in which hard- working teachers might be dealing with them now and going on to show how one or more of the functions within Office 365 Education can make things easier and better.
The full eBook can be viewed/downloaded below:
We will be posting additional complementary content, such as demo videos, to the blog over the next few weeks.
In the meantime, we would love to hear what you think of the eBook. Leave us your thoughts in the comments below.
Student Advantage is a volume licensing benefit where students get Office 365 ProPlus at no additional cost, provided institutions meet the following criteria:
1. Institution has an EES agreement or an OVS-ES agreement
2. Licenses 100% of Faculty/Staff organization wide for Office (i.e. Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Education A3 or A4, or Office Professional Plus 2013)
3. Institution places an order for Student Advantage licenses through their reseller
Since various institutions order licenses for Office 365 for Education differently, we have produced a handy ordering and deployment guide for you, with details of how to assign your licenses to your Students.
So, if you are an existing Office 365 for Education customer (either through EES or directly through our web site) with single or multiple tenancies or if you are a brand new Office 365 for Education customer please take a look at this deployment guide and FAQ to find out more about how to get up and running quickly
Any questions, please get in touch with your reseller.
I was asked by several customers what are some of the new SKU names they can use and where can they find some licensing sample PowerShell scripts. I put together a few matrices covering these along with links to several sample scripts.
You also need to create a session to connect to Office 365 PowerShell. See my post here for those steps.
Here are some SKU names and PowerShell names (updated 11-17-14 to reflect several new SKU name changes):
If you want to enable or disable service plans within a particular E1 or E3 suite SKU:
Sample approach to Office 365 Education licensing:
1) Create an Office 365 PowerShell login script to use for all of your Office 365 PowerShell usage scenarios. Please see my other blog post on creating a Super Office 365 PowerShell script here.
2) Create a global admin account which is not synced via Dirsync and does not have an expiring password. Steps to create non-expiring password on a global admin account.
3) Obtain a CSV file of your faculty or students with DisplayName, UserPrincipalName headers. You can also dump users from Office 365 which may have been dirsynced using this script:
#Export all O365 users to CSV FileGet-msoluser -all | Sort DisplayName | Select DisplayName, UserPrincipalName | Export-CSV o365users.csv
Sample script to enable E1 and Student Advantage for students:
#Import CSV File of Student Accounts$CSV=Import-csv students.csvforeach ($line in $csv) {write-output $line.UserPrincipalName#These are plans we will not enable - e.g. MCOSTANDARD = Lync Online - remove -disabledplans section from script if you want to license all of A2 for students#Refer to SKU blog for SKU and license plan names: http://aka.ms/licensescript$disabledPlans = @()#$disabledPlans +="MCOSTANDARD"# Create variable for student A2 standard (no Lync)$StudentPlan = New-MsolicenseOptions -AccountSKUId tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT -DisabledPlans $disabledPlans# Set usage locationSet-Msoluser -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -UsageLocation "US"#License using Student A2 standardSet-msoluserlicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT -LicenseOptions $StudentPlan#License Office 365 ProPlus Student AdvantageSet-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:OFFICESUBSCRIPTION_STUDENT
#Import CSV File of Student Accounts$CSV=Import-csv students.csvforeach ($line in $csv) {write-output $line.UserPrincipalName#These are plans we will not enable - e.g. MCOSTANDARD = Lync Online - remove -disabledplans section from script if you want to license all of A2 for students#Refer to SKU blog for SKU and license plan names: http://aka.ms/licensescript
$disabledPlans = @()#$disabledPlans +="MCOSTANDARD"# Create variable for student A2 standard (no Lync)$StudentPlan = New-MsolicenseOptions -AccountSKUId tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT -DisabledPlans $disabledPlans# Set usage locationSet-Msoluser -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -UsageLocation "US"#License using Student A2 standardSet-msoluserlicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT -LicenseOptions $StudentPlan#License Office 365 ProPlus Student AdvantageSet-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:OFFICESUBSCRIPTION_STUDENT
#Import CSV File of A2 Faculty Accounts$CSV=Import-csv faculty.csvforeach ($line in $csv) {write-output $line.UserPrincipalName#These are plans we will not enable - e.g. MCOSTANDARD = Lync Online - remove -disabledplans section from script if you want to license all of A2 for students#Refer to SKU blog for SKU and license plan names: http://aka.ms/licensescript$disabledPlans = @()#$disabledPlans +="MCOSTANDARD"# Create variable for Faculty and Staff A2 standard (no Lync)$FacA2Plan = New-MsolicenseOptions -AccountSKUId tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_FACULTY -DisabledPlans $disabledPlans# Set usage locationSet-Msoluser -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -UsageLocation "US"#License using FACULTY A2 standardSet-msoluserlicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:STANDARDWOFFPACK_FACULTY -LicenseOptions $FacA2Plan
#Import CSV File of faculty and staff a3 Accounts$CSV=Import-csv facultya3.csvforeach ($line in $csv) {write-output $line.UserPrincipalName#These are plans we will not enable - e.g. MCOSTANDARD = Lync Online - remove -disabledplans section from script if you want to license all of A2 for students#Refer to SKU blog for SKU names: http://aka.ms/licensescript$disabledPlans = @()#$disabledPlans +="MCOSTANDARD"# Create variable for Faculty and Staff A3$FacA3Plan = New-MsolicenseOptions -AccountSKUId tenantname:ENTERPRISEPACK_FACULTY -DisabledPlans $disabledPlans# Set usage locationSet-Msoluser -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -UsageLocation "US"#License using FACULTY A3Set-msoluserlicense -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -Addlicenses tenantname:ENTERPRISEPACK_FACULTY -LicenseOptions $FacA3Plan
For other more advanced sample scripts on Office 365 licensing I linked to 5 very useful licensing sample scripts:
TechNet Office 365 licensing here and here. (replace Enterprise SKUs with Academic SKUs listed above)
Bulk Enable Office 365 license script samples here and by CSV file here (replace Enterprise SKUs with Academic SKUs listed above).
Assign Office 365 licenses based on Distribution Group membership found in the ‘Office 365 Helper Scripts’ here (replace Enterprise SKUs with Academic SKUs listed above)
You can also check out a new GRAPH API sample code for Education licensing here – this has been used for very large bulk enablement scenarios e.g. more than 60,000 students, etc.
I recommend you watch this new video from the Garage Series team which centers around education. There are some excellent student demo scenarios with Lync mobile, real time coauthoring, OWA mobile app, etc.
Watch it here:
I also recommend you watch some of the other excellent Office 365 Garage Series shows here.
This is a very common topic I am getting with my education customers and student labs, etc. My colleague James Baker created this excellent post:
Using Student Advantage with Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) , and Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) systems.
With the launch of Student Advantage there are many questions customers have around using the Office 365 Pro Plus install within different environments that may have previously depended on a MSI model. Rest assured there are solutions for you RDSH, VDI and ESD scenarios with Student Advantage.
Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) systems.
All Electronic Software Distribution can work to deploy Office 365 ProPlus. The ESD just runs a setup.exe bootstrapper (from the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run) at the end of the day, more or less like the Office MSI package or anything software that installs via an EXE. You can find more information on deploying with the Office Deployment Tool for Click-To-Run here
Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH)
You’ll need to use a Volume Activation package (Office Professional Plus or Standard 2013) to install on the server with the RDS role enabled. More information can be found here in a blog post by my co-worker BVA who spoke about this install for the O365 E SKUs
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
For VDI architectures where each student has a dedicated virtual machine (aka Personal VM), normal Office 365 ProPlus works as long as that machine meets system requirements and periodically connects to the Internet to validate the user’s subscription.
For VDI architectures where there are shared machines (aka Pooled VM) you’ll need to use a Volume Activation package (Office Professional Plus or Standard 2013) to install on the machine. Same scenario as the RDSH scenario above.
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I also found an excellent Office Garage Series video going through these Office 365 ProPlus deployment scenarios along with App-V deployment of Office 365 ProPlus here or click below:
I’ve been working with the education team at Microsoft for over 3 years now. In that time the education landscape, from a technology perspective, has changed massively. It’s almost unrecognisable. The challenges and aspirations have evolved, the technology has matured, and it’s easy to forget just how much there is to know! To make it a bit easier, in association with PC Pro Magazine, we’ve put together a guide on everything you need to know about Office 365 Education.
You can view the guide here below, or check it out on SlideShare – it’s free! Here are some excerpts to whet your appetite:
We’re heading into the holiday season, so wouldn’t it be nice to give something to your students? Starting December 1st Microsoft made Student Advantage available to qualifying schools, colleges and universities around the world.
Signing up for Office 365 is really, really simple. It’s possible to co-exist with your existing mail solution, and there are ways to migrate your existing content too! It’s more than just mail; there’s SkyDrive Pro for storing work online; Lync Online for having conversations, distance learning and sharing ideas; and there’s SharePoint Online to pull teaching resources together and make them easy to find.
Oh, and it’s free too!
It’s a very exciting time to be an Office 365 Education customer. Student Advantage availability is just around the corner, and we’ve put a few posts up discussing how to get it, but it’s also important to consider how you’ll be deploying and managing Office 365 ProPlus.
My colleague across the water, Mark Garcia, recently put a post up covering the various options for deploying Office 365 ProPlus, but I found this deck which I thought I would also share for you to view and download (there are videos in the deck).
Remember, Student Advantage is just the name of the benefit – the actual technology, the bit that will make sense to anyone outside of education, is Office 365 ProPlus. If you’re searching online, on TechNet, or MSDN, you might find that Office 365 ProPlus gets you to the answers you need.
We have a few posts that cover:
And don’t forget, TechNet has a great page on choosing the best deployment method to use; so check that out too!
Everyone I speak to is excited about being able to offer their students Office 365 ProPlus at no additional cost1 and we’d like to hear about your plans and successes in the comments. Will this be a little pre-Christmas surprise for your students, or will you roll it out near exam season so your students have the latest tools to revise and study at home, or something else altogether?
Let us know, we’d love to share your story!
1 Institutions must cover 100% of their faculty/staff for Office on their volume licensing agreement to qualify for the Student Advantage benefit. For more information, please speak to your licensing reseller.
In part one of this little trio I talked about how institutions who already have Office 365 Education can get access to Student Advantage, and in part two I looked at how students access the benefit. In this final part I’ll look at what you need to do to if you don’t already have Office 365 Education.
Office 365 ProPlus, which is the “proper name” for Student Advantage, is delivered through Office 365 Education. You might jump to the conclusion that in order to get it you must be using Office 365 Education for all of the other workloads that come with it, like Exchange Online, Lync Online or SharePoint Online. You’d be wrong.
Office 365 Education is a collection of many services:
The only required part of Office 365 Education is Windows Azure AD – that’s the bit that controls the user accounts and licensing. Without it, there’d be no service. Everything else is optional. You can pick and choose which services you take; many start with Exchange Online, adding in other services later. Some will start with just Office 365 ProPlus (under Student Advantage).
You don’t have to move away from your current email and collaboration services to pass on the Student Advantage benefit to your students! Although obviously, I think you should because the full Office 365 Education collection of services when run together is pretty awesome.
Now that we’ve cleared up the misunderstanding about how Student Advantage is delivered we can look at the quickest route to getting all signed up and ready to go.
As well as the resources I’ve put together on this blog, there’s a very handy portal called FastTrack that takes the behemoth that is all of Office 365 Education and distils signing up to it into 3 simple steps: pilot, deploy and enhance.
In a nutshell, using FastTrack as a guide, you need to go through a few easy stages:
It goes without saying that once your students are using Office 365 ProPlus they’ll get even more value from it by pairing it with SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint Online, Lync Online and Exchange Online. Getting started with FastTrack for the purposes of getting Office 365 ProPlus is a great way to dip your toe into the water but consider piloting the other services and maybe working with a partner to roll them out over time.
Want to know what others are doing? Why not check out the University of West London’s case study on how they use Office 365 Education to start a life-long connection to their students, or read how Warwickshire County Council created WeLearn365 for all schools in the county?
If you’re using Google, maybe it’s time to look at Office 365 Education – Birkenhead Sixth Form College did and they love it!
This is becoming a popular question in education now that Student Advantage is coming very soon. I put together a quick FAQ to answer some of these common questions.
What is Office 365 ProPlus Click-to-Run and how does it differ from MSI/ISO installations?
There are several differences including:
What happens when I try to install Office 365 ProPlus on a 6th device?
It will prompt you to deactivate on a previous device.
Do my Office 365 ProPlus users always have to be internet connected to leverage this?
No, we do not require a machine to be always internet connected to leverage Office 365 ProPlus. However, we do check for valid Office 365 ProPlus subscription every 30 days. After 30+ or more days in no verification of a valid license Office 365 ProPlus will go into reduced functionality mode which means view and print only are available. See here for more information.
Can I run older versions of Office side by side if I have an application that requires older versions of Office?
Yes, Click-to-Run uses application virtualization which allows you to run older versions of Office in parallel. Previous versions required a de-installation of older versions of Office. This provides you a comfort level that you can always fall back for worst case incompatibilities.
Can I use ADFS or Dirsync with Password sync credentials to login into my Office 365 ProPlus installation?
Yes, this is valid. The key is the identity you log in with must be tied to an Office 365 ProPlus license within Office 365.
Are my user required to be local administrators to install from the cloud portal or on prem using Click-to-Run?
Yes, Click-to-Run from either the Office 365 Portal (above) or a local installation require the local administrator right to install.
Can I deploy Office 365 ProPlus from an on prem source?
Yes, you can download an Office 365 ProPlus package for customization and local installation.
How do I grab an Office 365 ProPlus image for local customization and deployment?
Run the Office Deploment Tool (ODT) here.
Use setup to grab the Click-to-Run package from Office 365 (e.g. setup.exe /download http://sourcebitsurl/download.xml)
Use the Office Deployment Tool to customize the configuration XML
Add C2R packages to your software distribution infrastructure
Deploy C2R packages (e.g. setup.exe /configure \\server\sourcepath\install.xml)
Layer on add-ins or customizations via Group Policy
More information on ODT for Click-to-Run here.
Which one should I use the Office 365 portal or on prem source?
This all depends on what your end goals are. Do you require customization? Do you want to maintain Office 365 ProPlus packages locally? Do you want to control installations/bandwidth? See here for more information on this.
How do I customize settings with an Office 365 ProPlus package?
Two different components needed:
1) Group Policy templates are used for changing specific settings in Office 365 ProPlus.
2) Configuration.xml file is used for specifying installation and update options in the package.
Where can I grab the Group Policy templates for my Click-to-Run installation?
You can grab the ADMX, ADM Group Policy Admin template and the Office Customization Tool (OPAX/OPAL) files here and you can view all the customization settings available to you here.
What can the Configuration.XML file do?
It is used for specifying the installation and update options of your Office 365 ProPlus package.
Here is what it can do:
Add or remove products from the installation
Add or remove languages from the installation
Specify display options
Set logging options
Specify software updates behavior for Click-to-Run
See here for more details on the configuration.xml file.
Can I use System Center Configuration Manager 2012 or Windows Intune to deploy Office 365 ProPlus?
Yes, you can push an Office 365 ProPlus package using either technologies to deploy to user workstations. With Windows Intune you can even source the Office 365 bits from Office 365 portal rather than locally.
For more on Configuration Manager see here or Intune see here.
What about when updates, patches and service packs come out? How do they work now with Office 365 ProPlus?
This is drastically different with Office 365 ProPlus. We now rebuild and slipstream the source file location Office 365 ProPlus every second Tuesday of the month. This way every net new patches, update is slipstreamed into the latest build.
For existing Office 365 ProPlus installations, via the self-healing mechanism, they will also autoupdate the patches down to their local installations of Office 365 ProPlus. They download only the deltas each month not a full re-install.
Users are not impacted if they are using Office while a patch is streamed down. When the user closes and re-opens the Office application the automatically are using the newer build.
This gets IT out of the patching business and they can also download the latest slipstreamed Office build every month for on prem deployments of Office 365 ProPlus.
Can put an Office 365 ProPlus package onto student lab workstations?
Yes, you can either stream it down upon login or push it to the workstation using App-V, Configuration Manager, etc. One key requirement is you must log into Office first with a valid user license. ADFS SSO in this lab scenario would automatically log them into Office 365 ProPlus assuming they are domain joined lab machines and the student is logging into the workstation with an identity that has an associated Office 365 ProPlus license.
What about using Office 365 ProPlus and desktop virtualization (VDI, RDS, TS)?
I will post a separate post on this soon. There are several intricacies involved with this but user dedicated desktop VDI is supported. You can read here on this topic.
Where can I find some IT training on Office 365 Pro Plus?
Some excellent training for IT pros just became available:
See here.
Guest blog post from Gerald Haigh. Gerald writes regularly for the Microsoft Education series of blogs.
Ramandeep has been absent from school for five weeks following a road accident. Recovery is slow, and there’s still no firm date for her return. The school sends work home with her brother, but, as she tells her mum, she feels more and more cut off.
‘I just don’t feel I go to that school any more. I sometimes think they’ve forgotten me. When I first had the accident it was all fuss, and visits, and flowers and chocolates. Now I hardly ever see any of them.’
Next day, Ramandeep’s mum went into school and spoke to Ramandeep’s year leader.
‘She’s really down I hate seeing her like this. It can affect her recovery, and her work is going to suffer.’
He understood and promised to speak to Ramandeep’s teachers and her friends, but he also made a mental note to follow up on a thought that niggled in the back of his mind. He went off to see the network manager.
‘Sal, you know when we took on Office 365 Education, and we decided to move our email to it, and then get started on a proper online portal. Well, isn’t there also something called “Lync”? I wonder if we could use it to solve this little problem.’
He explained what he had in mind. Sal thought it was a brilliant idea, and entirely possible, given a bit of advice from Microsoft, and a visit to the local university where they used Lync all the time to save travelling costs between two campuses.
Within a few days, the year leader and Sal had been round to see Ramandeep, with a tablet borrowed from the pilot ‘Surface’ project running in Year Seven, set up for Lync. And suddenly, there on her little screen was a tightly framed gaggle of familiar laughing faces – Ramandeeps’s friends who’d been prepared in advance.
That was just the start. Over the next few weeks, Ramandeep had Lync tutorials with her teachers, about the homework they’d set. She ‘sat in’ on some lessons with her own class and, of course, had some personal sessions with friends. Many of the ideas, such as being able to take her turn at reading in assembly with the aid of a smartboard in the hall, came from Ramandeep herself.
Best of all, so far as Ramandeep was concerned, was that when she shared in a classroom session, she could record it to watch offline later.
‘That’s great, I often get things much better the second time,’ she said.
(When Mr Johnson heard she’s said that, he made a mental note to discuss lesson pacing with his colleagues)
‘All this must be costing the school a fortune one way or another,’ said Ramandeep’s mum to Mr Johnson on one of her visits. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It’s completely free to schools as part of our Office 365 package.’ ‘Unbelievable,’ said Ramandeep’s mum. ‘I just know how much money and trouble went into the video conferencing set-up we have at work. I wonder if they know about this?’
‘All this must be costing the school a fortune one way or another,’ said Ramandeep’s mum to Mr Johnson on one of her visits.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It’s completely free to schools as part of our Office 365 package.’
‘Unbelievable,’ said Ramandeep’s mum. ‘I just know how much money and trouble went into the video conferencing set-up we have at work. I wonder if they know about this?’
By Christmas that year, Ramandeep was back at school, but the experience the school had with Lync during that time led to a whole lot of interesting innovations including screen sharing by staff during planning sessions. Integration with ‘OneNote’ also enabled staff working group members to share their ideas on what they were seeing on their screens.
For the near future, again based on the experience with Ramandeep, senior staff are hoping to run ‘Virtual Parents Evenings’. Obviously these won’t replace face-to-face meetings. The idea is to make Lync meetings available to specific parents who have genuine problems getting into school – they may be housebound, or work difficult shifts. Again the ability to record sessions is going to be really useful.
In our last post, we looked at how an institution can associate Student Advantage licences with an existing Office 365 Education tenant. Today, we'll answer the question “how do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education?” from a student perspective.
Once an institution has allocated the Office 365 ProPlus licences that underpin the Student Advantage benefit students will not necessarily see anything different in their experience of Office 365. So, in the spirit of sharing, here are a couple of ideas for how to spread the word:
The direct link, if you want to include it in communication, is: https://portal.microsoftonline.com/OLS/MySoftware.aspx but without the direct link, here’s what you need to know…
Students will need to sign into Office 365 with their credentials in the usual way, such as through your SSO portal, directly into OWA, etc. Once there, click on the little sprocket in the top right-hand corner, and select Office 365 settings from the menu.
This will take you to your main settings page, where you can see all sorts of interesting things, but in the context of Student Advantage and Office 365 ProPlus we’re only interested in the software link.
Clicking the software link will take you to the page, below, where you can access your Office 365 ProPlus software!
Simply select the appropriate language, and whether you want the 32-bit or 64-bit (click advanced to unlock that option) and then click install. Your Office 365 ProPlus experience will then begin.
If you’re running Mac OS X then this screen may look a little different to let you download Office for Mac 2011.
One of the additional benefits of Student Advantage is that Office 365 ProPlus enables the use of Office Mobile for iOS for iPhones and Office Mobile for Android for Android phones. I wrote about this a little while ago, with links to the various stores (iTunes and Google Play).
The apps themselves are free, but require an active subscription to use. Download the app to your device, and sign in with your Office 365 credentials to get started.
With a little under a month until Student Advantage becomes available (that's December 1st, put it in the diary!) one of the questions I am getting asked most frequently is: how do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education?
I’m going to cover this off in two posts, this first one to discuss how to get Student Advantage added to your existing Office 365 Education tenant. The second post will be a student-view; how to access and download the software.
Let’s start with a recap of how you qualify. Any institution will need to meet some criteria:
As long as you meet the criteria you’ll need to contact your licensing reseller after December 1st to order the Student Advantage licences. What happens next depends on which volume licence agreement you have.
Once you’ve placed your order with your reseller you’ll get sent a link to retrieve your keys from the Volume Licensing Service Centre (VLSC). Through here you’ll see your product keys and be able to access the redemption interface to enter your keys into your tenant.
After you’ve entered the keys you’ll have the licences available (note, the image below does not show the Student Advantage Office 365 ProPlus licences, it’s just for illustration):
You can then follow the process for assigning these licences to your student users in the normal way; either via the admin centre, or Windows Remote PowerShell. These will be in addition to any other Office 365 licences a user may already have, such as Exchange Online Plan 1 or Office 365 Plan A2.
As with OVS-ES you’ll need to contact your reseller to order the licences. Once the order is processed an email will be sent to the Online Services Manager, Notices Contact, or the Primary Contact. This email will contain two links: one to sign in, and one to sign up.
Whoever is going to process this email needs to ensure they are fully signed out of any and all Microsoft Online Services (this includes Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Xbox Live, Office 365, etc.). This will avoid accidentally attempting to associate the licences to the wrong place. Given that you’ll already have a tenant with users in place you’ll need to click sign in and authenticate with your Office 365 administrative credentials.
This process provisions the licences to your tenant, and once completed you’ll be able to assign them to your users following whatever process you currently use.
Check back soon for part two where I’ll cover how a student accesses their software once you’ve allocated their licence.
Since the recent announcement introducing Student Advantage almost a fortnight ago we’ve been inundated with questions. I’m super excited at the response to the news. As a result, we’d like you to join us for a live Q&A on Student Advantage at midday (GMT) on 31/10 on Twitter.
We’ll be tracking your questions and conversation on all things Student Advantage on the #SAFAQ hashtag. The two accounts to follow are @ukeducloud and @microsofteduk.
We’ll kick off at 12pm, midday, GMT and we’ll be around “live” for an hour. Of course, we’ll answer any questions that come in at any point afterwards as well, just not so quickly!
To make things a bit easier we’ve already published an FAQ that might answer some of your questions, so please check it out!
This is a common question I get from customers deploying Office 365 Education. There are several training resources available for end user’s to learn Office 365 Education.
This site has excellent Office 365 end user video and text training resources here:
The videos are on Office 365 common usage scenarios:
A downloadable Office 365 video training series called ‘Get to know Office 365’ you can host in your internal training sites here:
Some SharePoint Online quickstart handouts here:
Sample downloadable SharePoint .doc training:
If you don’t have Microsoft IT Academy you really should get it for your academic institution since you can get access to Microsoft training courses and digital MS Press books. This is an affordable training option for your end users where you can obtain a site license for your entire academic institution (contact your Microsoft account manager or Microsoft rep to sign up) to allow them to learn Microsoft technologies:
You can assign Office 365 specific/customized learning curriculums to your end users and you can track their progress and completion of content. You can also add other Microsoft products to their training plan such as Outlook, Lync, SharePoint, Office, etc.:
Sample of an Office 365 customized CBT curriculum you can assign custom courses to an end user or IT pro/admin:
View of the course outline for Communicating and Collaborating with Office 365:
Office 365 ProPlus/Student Advantage training would be here:
TOOLS YOU CAN USE: how to change from the Exchange Only Plan 1 License to an A2 license after the upgrade from Live@EDU to Office 365:
Example PowerShell command to change from the "Exchange Online Plan 1" license to the "A2 FULL SUITE" license (with no service plans disabled) for one student user:
Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName example@contoso.edu | Set-MsolUserLicense -RemoveLicenses contoso:EXCHANGESTANDARD_STUDENT –AddLicenses contoso:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT
(Always use caution when you remove a license since you have to add a new license or the mailbox is permanently deleted after the 30 day grace period.)
How to manage licenses with PowerShell or the GUI in Office 365:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11349.office-365-license-users-for-office-365-workloads.aspx (Bulk license assignment via PowerShell or the GUI in Office 365)
http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/deploy/granular-license-assignment-from-powershell.aspx (Granular license assignment from PowerShell)
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15905.how-to-use-powershell-to-automatically-assign-licenses-to-your-office365-users.aspx (Automatically create and license users with one PowerShell script)
http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/ee441218.aspx (Import Exchange Online users from a ".csv" file)
http://help.outlook.com/en-US/140/cc713521.aspx (Old - CSV Parser composed of Live@EDU PowerShell commands that need to be updated for Office 365)
How to use PowerShell in Office 365:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj151815.aspx (How to use Windows Azure AD PowerShell commands in Office 365)
http://help.outlook.com/140/cc546278.aspx (How to use Exchange Online PowerShell commands in Office 365)
http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/upgrade/windows-powershell.aspx (Live@EDU and Office 365 PowerShell Differences)
Forum Posts on managing licenses with PowerShell in Office 365:
http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/74033.aspx (Office 365 provisioning with PowerShell after upgrade from Live@EDU)
http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/58260.aspx (How to enable a single feature of an A2 license by PowerShell)
http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/17328.aspx (How to add A2 licenses by PowerShell)
http://modery.net/getting-all-licensed-office-365-users-with-powershell/ (PowerShell to find unlicensed users: get-msolUser where licensed = true or false)
http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/56329.aspx (PowerShell to find unlicensed users: Get-MsolAccountSku)
http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/172/p/63940/244113.aspx#244113 (List of Office 365 license names for PowerShell administration)
How to refer to Exchange Only Plan 1 Licenses in PowerShell:
Service Plan: EXCHANGE_S_STANDARD
SKU ID: contoso:EXCHANGESTANDARD_STUDENT
Enjoy!
Great news! We just publically announced today at Educause that Office 365 ProPlus will be offered to students at no additional charge if all your faculty and staff are already licensed for Office 2013 Professional Plus via EES/OVSES agreement or via Office 365 ProPlus subscription.
This is incredible news for students as they can now take advantage of all that Office 365 ProPlus has to offer.
I put together a quick FAQ for what this means for your education institution:
What is included with Office 365 ProPlus subscription license?
How many machines/devices can I run this subscription on?
Each subscription license allows you to run Office on up to five machines being Mac or PC. You can also run Office for iPad on up to 5 tablets.
Is this a full version Office and available for offline use?
Yes, this is full Office on the PC, Mac, tablet, mobile platform and all are available for offline use.
What applications come with Office 365 ProPlus for PC?
Word 2013
Excel 2013
PowerPoint 2013
OneNote 2013
Access 2013
Publisher 2013
Outlook 2013
Lync 2013
InfoPath 2013
What comes with Office 365 ProPlus for Mac?
Word 2011
Excel 2011
PowerPoint 2011
Outlook 2011
What comes with Office Mobile for iPhone? (update 3.27.14 – now free)
Word Mobile
Excel Mobile
PowerPoint Mobile
OneNote and Lync Mobile available as separate download.
See here for more options.
What comes with Office Mobile for Android? (update 3.27.14 – now free)
OneNote and Lync Mobile available as separate download
What are the PC requirements for Office 365 ProPlus?
32-bit Office can be installed on 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems and 64-bit Office can only be installed on 64-bit operating systems.
Computer and processor 1 GHZ or faster x86 or 64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set.
Memory
1 GB RAM (32-bit)
2 GB RAM (64-bit) recommended for graphics features, Outlook Instant Search, and certain advanced functionality.
Disk space 3 gigabytes (GB)
Monitor resolution 1024 x 768
What are the Mac requirements for Office 365 ProPlus?
What are the iPhone requirements for Office Mobile for iPhone?
iPhone 4
iPhone 5
iPhone 5s
iPod Touch 5th generation
All devices above must be running iOS 6.1 minimum
What about Office on the iPad?
Office for iPad is now available as of 3.27.14. See new blog post for details here.
What are the Android requirements for Office Mobile for Android?
Android OS 4.0 or greater
Android touch enabled smartphones only
Do students have to sign into Office 365 to use any of these applications with Office 365 ProPlus?
Yes, a valid Office 365 ProPlus license tied to a valid Office 365 login for students is required to enable any of the four Office 365 ProPlus features.
How long can a student leverage Office 365 ProPlus?
The guidelines are they can leverage this until they graduate or are no longer attending your school. At that point, you must disable their Office 365 ProPlus license.
How is this different from Office 2013 Professional Plus?
The Office 2013 applications are exactly the same however there are some differences including patching, license sign in for usage, and Click-to-run (C2R) technology for rapid installs (2 minutes for quick usage).
Can I run a local image of Office 365 ProPlus to install from and can I customize the install share?
Yes, you can install Office 365 ProPlus for PC from a local share and still leverage C2R technology for a few minutes installation of Office and with the Office Deployment Tool you can also customize the Office installation. See here for more instructions
Where can I get training on Office 365 ProPlus?
There is some excellent end user training on Office 2013 here.
There is some excellent end user training on Office for Mac 2011 here:
Some end user help guides on Office Mobile for iPhone here and here.
Some end user help guides on Office Mobile for Android here and here.
Some end user Office for iPad training here:
Is there a deployment guide for Office 365 ProPlus?
Yes, there is an excellent IT Pro reference guide here and see my deployment blog post here.
When can I obtain this license for my students?
You can order it through your reseller. Please see these three part series on “How to get Student Advantage” - partI, partII, and partIII for guidance. Here is a new “Student Advantage Deployment Guide”.
As part of our ongoing commitment to education, we are thrilled to announce Student Advantage, a new benefit to qualifying institutions which will make it easy for students to use the latest and best version of full Office at their education institution and at home.
So what does this mean? From 1st December, 2013, any institutions worldwide that licenses Office for staff and faculty can provide access to Office 365 ProPlus for students at no additional cost. As a result, more than 35,000 institutions worldwide are automatically eligible to deliver the Student Advantage benefit to their students.
Office 365 ProPlus includes all the familiar and full Office applications, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and offers the ability for these to be locally installed on up to five devices and available offline.
Furthermore, when a school combines Student Advantage with our other cloud services - Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online - of which all are available free through Office 365 Education, students have access to the same set of productivity tools and services used by Fortune 500 companies all over the world.
“Students use Office every day for school work and activities that are most important to them. Office not only helps students stay organised and get their work done today, but at the same time develops skills that will be required when they enter the workforce,” said Antony Salcito, vice president of Worldwide Public Sector Education at Microsoft. “We are thrilled to offer Student Advantage to schools across the globe so students have access to the latest, most up-to-date version of the world’s leading set of productivity tools in order to give them a competitive advantage when entering the workforce.”
To help you learn more about this benefit to your students, we are going to be running a number of Q&A sessions via Yammer and Twitter over the next week. More details to follow via the blog and our Facebook and Twitter accounts.
In the meantime, if you have any immediate questions or queries, drop us a note in the comments below.
1 Windows PC client programs and/or features only. Cannot be used across devices.
It gives me great pleasure in announcing that we have now completed the Live@edu Upgrade program to Office 365. In the course of just a year, we have upgraded over 9 Million users, equating to 5000 customers; this has been no small feat by our engineering teams, nor our customers and a little celebration is definitely in order.
Looking back over the road map for Live@edu you can see that Microsoft has always invested heavily in Education, ensuring that the services available to the academic sector are at the forefront of innovation. Since the outset, Live@edu has proved highly popular and grown rapidly, with institutions joining from all shapes and sizes. And in the past 8 years we have grown our user base from a few handfuls, to over 9 million.
Back in 2005, we set out to create a free cloud service for Education, providing institutions with free cloud hosted email, initially this was built on Hotmail and formed the primary base for what was then, MSN University. As the service was rolled out and trialled we gathered feedback asking for more functionality. We met these suggestions and added SkyDrive and Windows Live Messenger into the mix, providing a robust and free service that allowed students to store their data in the cloud and communicate with each other by IM and email.
In 2011 we launched Office 365, the new cloud service offering enterprise grade email, collaboration and IM services on SharePoint Online, Lync Online and Exchange Online; again free for Education and designed to eventually take the place of Live@edu. The beginning of this upgrade was announced in March 2012 and began formally as a program in July. Today marks the end of this upgrade program, meaning the closing of Live@edu in the UK.
I’d like to thank all of our customers for their enthusiasm and support; it has been an exciting and fascinating journey. In addition many of you will have completed our Service Upgrade, meaning you are on the latest version of Office 365 with access to all the benefits like SkyDrive Pro, which now has 25GB of online storage per user! Education is at the forefront of innovation with Microsoft and a crowning jewel in our Online Services portfolio; and just as we continue to listen and process your feedback, we will continue to add to and grow our service.