Blog links
Here is a common archiving/eDiscovery/compliance FAQ I put together based on several education customer discussions:
If I currently have a 3rd party on-premises archiving solution does Exchange in-place archiving in Office 365 do the same thing?
No, it is not an exact match of functionality since we have more granular capabilities in Exchange Online where we break out archival of email (Exchange In-Place Archiving) from the preservation of email (Exchange In-Place Hold).
As you can imagine because we are more granular in capabilities, this is the an area which leads to quite a bit of confusion for everyone since there are multiple definitions of Exchange “archiving”. These two capabilities can be complementary or separate if need be where in a lot of on premises Exchange archiving solutions they are one in the same.
Exchange Online’s In-Place archiving is separate ‘mailbox’ for storing older email to be archived. The best analogy about Exchange In-Place Archiving is this is a server side/cloud based PST. You can delete mail from your PST on premises and the same is true for Exchange in-place archiving.
In-Place Archive mailbox end user OWA view
If the your goal is to achieve PRESERVATION of email (e.g. 3 year retention) which is what 99.9% of customers are looking for when replacing their older 3rd party Exchange archiving solution than the only way to accomplish this is with Exchange In Place Hold. This will preserve content in both primary mailbox and in-place Archive mailbox as well as Lync conversations.
Determining if a mailbox has an Exchange In-Place Hold. PowerShell can also be used for bulk enablement.
What is the difference between ‘Litigation Hold’ and ‘Exchange In-place Hold’?
This is another area that has created confusion for several customers. Exchange Litigation Hold is legacy functionality from Exchange 2010 and Exchange In-Place Hold is new functionality from Exchange 2013 or the new Exchange Online.
The recommendation is the leverage Exchange In-place hold over Litigation Hold as it provides more granular functionality such as time based holds, etc. It is also a good idea to mention you want to enable ‘In-place hold’ over ‘litigation hold’ to avoid enabling legacy features by accident.
Litigation hold remains only to support migration from 2010 litigation hold mailboxes to the new Exchange Online. See differences here under ‘In-Place Hold and Litigation Hold’.
What components do I get with add-on Exchange Online Archiving SKU with Office 365?
You get two features with the EOA add-on SKU for Office 365:
You can also get this functionality with the Exchange Plan 2 license as well as the A3 license. See here and here for more info on licensing options.
Are my Exchange Online unlimited in-place archives tamper proof and preserved by default?
Not by default. Unlimited Exchange In-place Archives mean the archive mailbox is unlimited in size (100 GB default but can be increased to a larger size via escalation) and unlimited in retention duration. If a retention policy is created to archive mail every 180 days, for example, mail is moved from the primary mailbox to the archive mailbox however it is NOT preserved and mail can be altered in those archives. Any mail in the in place archive can be found using in place eDiscovery and also can be found in the Outlook 2010+ or OWA browser as well. This allows for easy discoverability and clean end user access to their archived email.
To preserve and prevent tampering of these In-place Archives in the In-Place Archive mailbox or mail which is in the primary mailbox, you must enable Exchange In-Place hold on the mailboxes in question. This will log any alterations and preserve any emails deleted from the primary or archive mailbox.
How many eDiscovery types are in Office 365? What licenses do I need for it or them?
Two types. Exchange In-Place eDiscovery using Exchange Administration Console and eDiscovery Center as part of SharePoint Online. Exchange in place eDiscovery is included with the A2 license for both admin console and for searches and SharePoint eDiscovery Center requires A3 license for both admin queries and for the users which are searched.
Exchange In-Place eDiscovery console more on this here
SharePoint eDiscovery Center – more on this here
Are there any limits on eDiscovery search size in Exchange Online? If yes, how do you get around it?
Yes, Exchange in-place eDiscovery is capped at 5,000 mailboxes for search size using the EAC GUI. We designed this to be for smaller searches on average we found most customers search no more than 20 mailboxes at a time. If a customer wants more than 5000 they must use PowerShell to query larger mailbox sets. See here for search-mailbox options.
SharePoint eDiscovery search also has limits of 100 SharePoint sources, 1500 exchange sources, and 500 keywords.
What are the four “in-place” compliance/retention features in Office 365? What licenses do I need for each? What does each one do?
I put together a matrix to help with this:
Where can I learn more details on these topics discussed above?
This is a great starting site here. It has very useful videos walking through the Exchange In-Place components discussed above.
See here and here for more details on archiving and retention.
More on SharePoint In-Place Hold and eDiscovery see here.
Best reference I have seen for limits and licensing on eDiscovery is here.
In Education, the IT landscape is rapidly changing. Schools, colleges and universities need to provide IT more efficiently; supporting applications and services on-premise and in the Cloud, using modern devices. But what does it take to embrace modern IT and exploit its many benefits?
Join Oxford Computer Group and other HE organisations, for a free summit. You’ll hear how to support modern IT in education and learn how to develop your roadmap. With high profile speakers from Microsoft and a case study from Middlesex University, Oxford Computer Group’s eighth annual summit will be a highly valuable and informative event.
October 23 and 24, Microsoft Campus, Reading, UK Learn More and Register
With a strong focus on Microsoft identity and directory technologies, day one will consider how to achieve a comprehensive identity service with Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) 2010 R2 , AD, Windows Azure Active Directory and AD FS 2.0. Day two focuses on Microsoft solutions for Cloud (such as Office 365), service automation and systems management including System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012.
Register today. It’s free to attend.
Guest post by Gerald Haigh. Gerald writes regularly for the education series of blogs.
Summer Term 2012, and your year eleven groups were on study leave. They were mainly a diligent, hard-working lot, and you smile when you think of them. So keen were they, in fact, that some of them couldn’t keep away.
‘Sonja Smith was here looking for you this morning,’ a colleague told you one lunchtime early in the leave period. ‘We couldn’t find you and I didn’t have your timetable. She was keen to ask you something that had come up in her revision. I think she was quite worried.’
She was just the first. Quite a few students called the school or came in on the off chance of catching you. Sometimes they were lucky and you were right there in the department office, or in the staffroom. Sometimes they waited around and eventually caught you. And sometimes they went away disappointed because they hadn’t time to hang around.
Jump ahead now, to Summer Term 2013. Your year eleven groups were on study leave again, and again they were mainly a diligent hard-working lot. Again some of them couldn’t keep away.
This time, though, there was to be no hanging around, or going away disappointed. This time you realised that if you put Office 365 Education to work, and did some forward planning, you might make study leave into a productive and enjoyable experience.
The secret, you realised, lay with Outlook Calendar, which you can share in whole or part with anyone you choose. So before study leave started you said to your groups.
‘I’m going to share my calendar with you all, showing when I’m available – sometimes before school, sometimes after, some of my free periods, some of my PPA time, some lunchtimes. I know you’re on your phones all the time, so keep checking because some of the availability might change – things can come up as you know. So if you want to see me, book into my calendar with a brief message saying what it’s about. The rest of you keep an eye on all that, because you might find you want to come along to the same meeting. The key thing is – keep in touch. Keep checking the calendar.’
Did it work? Of course it did. The students really appreciated being able to book specific slots. There were times when so many people came along to join a meeting booked by one person that it became almost like a lesson – except it was more relaxed.
And did the students do well in their exams? Of course they did. It would be too much to claim that they did better as a result of Office 365 Education and calendar sharing, but in some cases it wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption. The whole exercise certainly did wonders for morale.
This blog is based, with thanks, on a conversation with Scott Wieprecht, Integrated Learning and Maths teacher at Saltash.net Community School, and on the work of the student group ‘The Offperts’.
@MrWieprecht
learnwithoutlimits.co.uk
offperts.com
Earlier this year I wrote 10 blog posts, each covering one of my top tips for Office 365 Education. As schools, colleges and universities across the country reconvene for the start of a new term, I thought it would be helpful to summarise my top 10 tips for Office Education in one handy place.
Office 365 is constantly evolving with new features being added, and existing features being improved; not to mention the fact that it is free to education. I can’t pretend to know all the best hints and top tips so why not leave us yours in the comments?
Whether you want a class blog, or your own blog to share with your students the blogging capabilities in SharePoint Online allow teachers and students to quickly and easily write up their thoughts, ideas and showcase their progress in a secure environment. You can even customise the look and feel of the blogs to make them more appealing for younger pupils!
Working on class projects has never been easier thanks to the Office Web Apps and their ability to support multiple authors of spreadsheets and documents at the same time! Being able to collaborate on work in the classroom (and at home!) is really important and the Office Web Apps enable anyone with access to a supported browser and an Internet connection to get involved.
How many times have you needed to survey your students and staff for their feedback? This doesn’t just apply to teaching and learning, but also the IT department, facilities, finance, almost anyone in the institution. It couldn’t be more simple to create a survey in Excel that can capture a variety of answer types (yes/no, multiple choice, text, date, etc.) into a spreadsheet automatically. This can be shared amongst your students and staff, or publicly.
Student feedback is particularly important in university. Many still spend time printing thousands of sheets of paper each year only to have to input that data back into a computer! Why not cut out the paper middle-man and use an Excel Survey?
In a mature SharePoint Online environment there might be thousands of sites, files and other content that may or may not be useful to every student or member of staff. Sometimes you stumble upon a really useful resource either by searching or by accident and now you can keep track of it by following the content in your newsfeed.
When a school, college or university is using shared devices, such as tablets, it isn’t always possible to personally configure the applications for a particular user; this is where the web apps in Office 365 really come into their own. The Outlook Web App on mobile devices is excellent, and will automatically switch format based on the type of device you’re using whether it’s a mobile phone, tablet or full PC device.
This is one of my favourite tips. In the Outlook Web App you can add multiple calendars to view on one screen. This is extremely useful when it comes to planning tutorials, meetings, and other events as you can overlay many people’s calendars to see when the most suitable time would be to arrange something. No more lengthy email threads trying to work out when everyone can make it!
There are even Microsoft partners out there who have developed solutions to automatically fill your calendar with your school timetable so that it’s available instantly, wherever you go.
Uploading files to anywhere in the past has always been a bit of a chore. Having to click browse, find your individual file, upload and repeat quickly becomes a nightmare. In the new Office 365 you can simply drag and drop multiple files into a documents library and see them get uploaded automatically – simple!
If you don’t have Outlook client available to you then scheduling a Lync meeting might seem like an impossible task; not so with the Lync Online Web Scheduler. Now it’s easy to configure your meeting settings via the browser. With the latest updates to Office 365 you can event schedule a Lync Online meeting straight from the Outlook Web App!
The humble # symbol probably never thought it would get such exposure before Twitter launched, but now the #hashtag is king, with @mentions and “likes” not far behind. In SharePoint Online you can use these familiar social networking features to share content and conversations with others in your class.
I’d like to think we live in a world where connection to the Internet is practically everywhere, but speak to anyone who has been on a train in the UK recently and they’ll tell you that being offline is not unusual! Thankfully, just because you’re using services that are in the cloud does not mean that you suffer when you lose your Internet access. With the new Office 365 there is an offline mode for OWA, and of course the old favourite, the Office and SkyDrive Pro clients to keep you going when your connection lets you down.
This is my bonus tip! Since putting the original top 10 tips together we’ve supercharged the storage options in Office 365. Now students and staff get to benefit from 25 GB of free SkyDrive Pro storage, with options to increase that up to 100 GB! Equally, students, staff and alumni also get their inbox quotas doubled from 25 GB to 50 GB, free!
Helpfully, we’ve also increased the individual file upload limits from 250 MB per file to 2 GB per file, and made it even easier to restore documents. Now it’s much easier to store those important multimedia or design technology coursework files online, securely, and accessible from anywhere.
Have you got any tips or tricks that make using Office 365 Education even more awesome? Perhaps your students are making videos like The Offperts? Let us know in the comments.
Guest post from Gerald Haigh. Gerald writes regularly for the Microsoft Education series of blogs.
One of the first things I did when I decided to learn more about the capabilities of Office 365 Education was to have a meeting with Alex Pearce of BFC Networks.
Alex is always good value – generous with his time and knowledge. He’s also the kind of person who doesn’t raise his eyebrows and sigh when you ask the question that reveals you haven’t understood what he’s just told you. Believe me, I need people like that in my life.
Alex took me expertly up the Office 365 Education learning curve, and the first thing he reminded me of is that Office 365 Education comes free of charge to schools.
We all know that, don’t we? But it’s astonishing how many have apparently missed the good news. At BETT 2013, and at conferences since then, I’ve heard, first hand, visitor after visitor being surprised to hear that Office 365 Education really is free, gratis and for nowt. Everyone needs to be reminded all the time, or the ‘too good to be true’ factor kicks in.
That bit over, Alex went on to describe the various components of Office 365 Education – Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, and Office web-apps -- sketching out some scenarios of its day-today use in schools.
There will, in fact, be Office 365 Education scenarios and examples from various sources in these blogs as the school year goes on. For now, allow me to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned from Alex and friends within Microsoft.
Looking back over my time both working in schools and observing them. I can see no end of ‘if only’ moments – ‘If only we’d had Lync, we’d have been able to do classroom-to-classroom joint projects with our partner schools’. Or, ‘If only we’d had SharePoint we could have improved home-school collaboration.’
I have no doubt I’ll be writing about projects like that in the coming school year.
Ultimately, though, what I’m hoping for are examples where the combined resources of Office 365 Education have caused school leaders and teachers to tear up the rule book and think in a different way about the organisation of teaching and learning. That’s because, like all good software, each of the component parts of Office 365 Education starts by helping you to do familiar tasks, but will then go on, if you’re ready to grasp the opportunity, to completely change the way you work. The mission statement for my task, I suggest is, ‘From help to transformation.’
I have in mind the kind of thing I found at Barnsley College last year. There, Office 365 Education, with SharePoint and Lync, and other Microsoft technologies form a whole ‘eco-system’ whereby students can use Windows 8 devices to create their own personalised learning environments – ‘learning without barriers’, the College calls it.
Of course, not everyone needs or wants to copy what Barnsley College is doing. Everyone, though, can think like them, and go beyond, ‘How can technology help us to do what we’ve always done?’ and move on to, ‘How can we help students to learn more effectively now that we have this technology in place.’
It seems to me that with a comprehensive and free cloud environment like Office 365 Education, the transformation of learning ceases to be a problem of technology, and becomes a matter of will, imagination and leadership. The technology is ready and waiting.
It was at the apogee of this flight of fancy, zooming from ‘Help’ to ‘Transformation’, that I decided to call Microsoft Innovative Expert Educator Charlotte Beckhurst of Harstbrook E-ACT Free School in Tottenham. Hartsbrook has all of its IT provided as a Microsoft cloud-based service, and Charlotte uses Office 365 Education with her Year One class.
One of her most intriguing projects puts Microsoft OneNote to work on what is effectively a whole-class, live, interactive ‘portfolio’ which also provides each child with a personal area. Charlotte describes it, significantly, with the same words -- ‘Learning environment’ -- that I heard at Barnsley College. It’s a term that shows how she, too, is thinking well ahead. At the same time, ever practical, she points out that it’s necessary to make haste slowly, taking colleagues along, moving a step at a time. She’s certainly walking the talk on that, helping teachers in other schools as well as hers to see how Office 365 Education can help them with their work.
Her ‘OneNote’ project, for example, is something that any individual teacher can do with their own class, and we shall certainly return to it as a scenario that will set out what’s possible.
‘That’s what people are interested in,’ she says. ‘Teaching is hard enough, and people want to know how to make it easier.’
Charlotte’s right of course. So what we need to do in these blogs, I guess, is focus first on the ways that Office 365 Education can help teachers and school leaders to do their jobs. As we tell those stories, the possibilities for deeper transformation will emerge.
It’s turning out to be a bumper week for Office 365 Education updates. Earlier this week it was announced that SkyDrive Pro was increasing the default storage quota from 7 GB to 25 GB and starting from now Office 365 Education Exchange Online mailbox quotas are doubling to 50 GB FREE!
Stephen Brown, a product manager on the Exchange team, made the announcement yesterday on the Office 365 technology blog that the increased quota would be rolling out from yesterday through to November so keep an eye out for the bigger quota over the next few weeks and months. This is a tremendous improvement, and one that I hope will benefit students, teachers, admin folks, and researchers across education.
If you’re an IT admin there are some tips to remember to make managing large mailboxes even easier:
Great news we just announced today the new Exchange Online mailbox quotas are now 50GB in size with no price increase. You get double mailbox storage for FREE and it will also be applied to any existing mailboxes you have in production with no extra steps required!
It is starting to rollout to tenants today and will continue through November. So you now get massive mailboxes in Office 365 education which should provide plenty of mail storage for faculty, staff and students for quite a long time.
Here is a matrix with all the new storage quota details:
Please read the official blog post here for more details.
For me, Office 365 Education just keeps getting better and better. SkyDrive Pro, part of Office 365 Education Plan A21, is cloud storage for education, and is the place where students and teachers can store, sync, and share their files across multiple devices with ease and security. To date SkyDrive Pro has offered institutions 7GB of cloud storage per user but yesterday Mark Kashman and Tejas Mehta, senior product managers in the SharePoint team, announced that the SkyDrive pro storage increases making it even better for storing and sharing class work.
1Plan A2 is free for students, faculty and staff and includes Exchange Online Plan 1, Lync Online Plan 2, SharePoint Online Plan 1 and the Office Web Apps. You can sign up for free online!
Let’s look at the headlines:
I think this is a great improvement for schools, colleges and universities who are using Office 365 Education as it means their students and teachers can keep more files in the cloud, accessible from everywhere, and the fact that an administrator can increase that quota up to 100GB for individuals means that even the most demanding users should still have enough storage to keep them happy for a long time.
Don’t forget that there are applications for SkyDrive Pro on a variety of platforms including Windows 8 and iOS that make it easier to access your files on the go.
Be sure to check out the post on the Office technology blog to find out more about how you can increase storage beyond the new default 25GB, and how you can easily find documents others have shared with you!
This is a pretty common question I get with my education customers. The answer is there is not one tool that can calculate everything for your Office 365 bandwidth but there is an Exchange calculator, Lync calculator and some guidance for SharePoint bandwidth.
Exchange bandwidth calculator
This calculator is pretty extensive as it accounts for mail usage profiles, etc:
It also allows you to calculate bandwidth needed for each site depending on what client type Mac, Outlook 2010, OWA, etc.
You can visit my other post for a bit of a deeper dive into using this bandwidth calculator here.
Grab the Exchange bandwidth calculator here.
Lync 2010 and 2013 bandwidth calculator
This is a pretty awesome bandwidth calculator where you can provide site by site calculations for Lync bandwidth required.
You can specify locations, users, type of users, concurrency, etc.
Lync calculator also has nice graphics showing bandwidth requirements per location, etc.
Grab the Lync bandwidth calculator here.
SharePoint bandwidth
I haven’t found a calculator on this for SharePoint 2013 but I did find a reference matrix from SharePoint 2010 which should be enough for a baseline estimate for SharePoint Online – I did read that SharePoint 2013 bandwidth can be up to 40% more efficient than the results below so take that into account in your estimations:
:
Here is an Office 365 WAN test result on SharePoint 2013 that has great information but not customer guidance unfortunately. See here.
There are other older SharePoint calculations available for reference here.
You can also view your available network bandwidth by running the Office 365 bandwidth test tool which is available here.
The DirSync team and the FIM Sync team are pleased to announce that we have released the Release Candidate of the Windows Azure Active Directory (AAD) Connector on Connect for pre-release evaluation. This replaces the Office 365 Connector which has earlier been available only through MCS and partner engagements.
This new Connector is based on ECMA2 and is the same we use in recent releases of DirSync. It is intended to be used when DirSync is not a viable option. We still recommend to use DirSync as the primary solution to synchronize AD to AAD and use it whenever possible. For additional details, please read the documentation that comes with the Connector.
To be able to get access to the download on Connect, go to http://connect.microsoft.com/directory and join the program “Forefront Identity Manager 2010” – “FIM Synchronization Service Connectors Pre-release”. You will be automatically approved....
You can then find the download here: https://connect.microsoft.com/site433/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=50509. Feedback on the Connector and documentation can be submitted on Connect.
We are also looking for customers who would be interested to use this Connector in a production environment in a TAP program. These customers will be able to get production support on this pre-release version of the Connector. If you have any candidates, please send an email to andreas.kjellman@microsoft.com.
On behalf of the DirSync team and the FIM Sync team,
Thanks!
We have recently released several new tools to help you with analysis and troubleshooting with Office 365:
Pre-checking tools:
Use the new Onramp readiness check tool – replaces the older Office 365 readiness check tool – helps determine your Active Directory readiness for Office 365 and other areas:
Visit Onramp checking tool here.
New Network analysis tool helps you determine latency, bandwidth, etc:
Check your network and bandwidth for Office 365 here.
Is there a self-help diagnostic DIY Office 365 troubleshooter tool?
Yes, there is a pretty good self-diagnostic troubleshooter you can use:
See here for this tool.
How can I validate my firewall, DNS, Hybrid server or ADFS are configured correctly for Office 365 ?
Use this Remote Connectivity Analyzer tool here:
Visit the site here.
I can’t connect Outlook to Exchange Online?
Three tools that can help you here:
1) Remote Connectivity Analyzer (linked above)
3) Use the Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool (MCAT):
Install Now
See here for the MCAT tool.
I can’t connect the Lync client to Lync Online?
Try these Lync tshooter applications:
1) Lync Online client Troubleshooter tool here.
2) Use MOSDAL Lync Connectivity Analyzer tool
Grab tool here.
I am having free/busy calendar sharing issues with Exchange Hybrid.
Use the Exchange Hybrid free/busy tshooter
Visit the Hybrid troubleshooting tool here.
I am having problems with lost mail, slow mail, or mail bounces with Office 365
Use the Exchange Online Mailflow troubleshooter:
Visit the Exchange Online mailflow tool here.
I have had several questions around multi-forest and multi-tenant questions from my education customers. Here is a FAQ I put together:
Can you have multiple forests with a single tenant?
Yes, with FIM Connector for Office 365 or with the upcoming AADirsync tool. You can grab the beta of AADirsync tool here. Read more on AADirsync here.
Can you have one forest with multiple tenants?
Yes, this is now supported as of recently. You either have to use the FIM Connector for Office 365 or you can now use multiple Dirsync servers syncing to each unique tenant. The key is you cannot sync the same objects into the different tenants. You must create dirsync filtering on each dirsync server.
Can I have a non-AD directory sync to a tenant?
Yes, with FIM Connector for Office 365.
Can I have one ADFS farm servicing multiple forests?
Yes, as long as trusts exist between the forests this will work. Each forest much have unique UPN login suffixes for this to work.
What if do not have trusts between the forests?
If no trusts exist between the forests than multiple ADFS farms are required.
Can I have multiple Exchange orgs connecting via Hybrid into a single tenant?
Yes, this is a new capability available in Exchange 2013 SP1. See here.
What if I have a resource forest for Exchange and an account forest for logins?
Setup dirsync against the resource forest and setup ADFS against the account forest. Eventually, collapse the resource forest data into the account forest and then change dirsync to work against the account forest.
Over on the Office blog there have been a couple of announcements. If you’ve got an Office 365 subscription (A3 or A4, or the Office ProPlus subscription and others) then you can now get Office Mobile for Android Phones and the iPhone!
Office Mobile is the official companion to Microsoft Office. Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents look great on your phone, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt Graphics, and shapes. When you make edits or add comments to a document, the formatting and layout remain intact. When you return to your PC or Mac, your document looks like it should.
I have received this common question for customer’s Office 365 Education tenants who were upgraded to Wave15. They receive this error:
Prepare for takeoff!
Upgrade is currently disabled for your site collection. Please check back later to see if it has been unlocked for you.
The resolution to this issue is found here.
You can watch the step by step on how to fix this here as well:
Over the course of the year until the end of September 2013, we are going to be rolling out the new Office 365 Education service to existing customers who are on the “pre-upgrade Office 365”.
The service upgrade for Office 365 will deliver exciting new features, including:
The new Office If you have purchased a subscription to Office, you will get the clean, new look; expanded support for smartphones and tablets, all delivered with the new, fast, Click-to-run deployment technology. Exchange Online Outlook Web App has a new look optimized for easy touch-access on tablets and mobile phones. Improved anti-malware protection, that can prevent malware from ever reaching inboxes. SharePoint Online Better collaboration, making it easier to share documents with external users and manage external sharing. SkyDrive Pro, a cloud storage option users can keep synchronized with their hard-drive for off-line access. Lync Online New Lync Web App which delivers a full Lync Meeting experience with high-definition video and VoIP, all from a browser. One-click meeting access: whether you're at the office or on the road, you don't need to remember dial-in numbers and passcodes.
The new Office
Exchange Online
SharePoint Online
Lync Online
The Microsoft Online Portal is the primary means of communication about your service upgrade, but the technical contact listed for your Office 365 tenant will also receive emails notifying you about the service upgrade.
Sneaking in at the tail end of last week Senior Product Manager for SharePoint, Mark Kashman (@mkashman) announced over on the Office 365 technology blog that SkyDrive Pro apps are now available for Windows 8 and Apple iOS for SharePoint Online users in Office 365.
Both apps are available in their respective Windows Store and Apple App Stores NOW!
Learn more about SkyDrive Pro app for Windows 8 and SkyDrive Pro app for iOS on Office.com.
On July 10th at our UK HQ in Thames Valley Park, Reading, Berks, we’ll be holding an event in conjunction with the University of West London to bring all interested parties together to showcase and discuss Office 365 Education, and how by harnessing its power institutions can provide a better social learning environment.
In the summer of 2012 The University of West London set out to harness the immense potential of the free cloud-based suite of collaboration tools, provided by Office 365 Education, to create a personalised, interactive, social platform to support the institution’s mission to raise aspiration through the pursuit of excellence. Allowing students to combine social learning with academic study. The University won the UCISA Award for Excellence, 2012 for the service they have created.
This event will provide detail on what UWL wanted to achieve, how they accomplished it and a demonstration of capability and features. In addition Microsoft will share latest features of Office 365 Education.
9:30am – Arrive and refreshments
9:50am – Welcome to Microsoft
10:00am – Introduction by VC of UWL
10:15am – Office 365 latest information– Microsoft
10:45am – UWL – Highway to Heaven– Adrian Ellison CIO UWL
11:30am – Break
11:45am - UWL – Presentation/Demonstration of environment
12:45pm – Lunch and networking
1:45pm – Fulcrum – Developing the portal (partner who worked with UWL)
2:30pm- Open Questions on UWL environment and Office 365
2:45pm- Break
3:00pm- Janet Amendments for Office 365 and Janet/Microsoft Alliance Agreement
3:20pm – Office 365 user group – introduction – Group discussion
3:45pm- Close
Places for this event are very limited to register today using invite code 7EA736 to avoid disappointment!
When Office 365 Education was launched, and the ability to provide seamless single sign-on to the service was realised, a lot of my customers were emailing asking me how they could have all the benefits of ADFS without the infrastructure burden. After all, many education customers, particularly schools, do not have the funds to invest in on-premises hardware and have to be as efficient as they can with what they already have.
The truth is that in order to provide a highly available, properly sized, secure ADFS infrastructure some customers would have to deploy extra servers, and surely part of anybody’s cloud strategy is to reduce on-premises hardware not add to it! That’s where the Office 365 Adapter can help – by utilising the power of Windows Azure.
With the introduction of Windows Azure Virtual Machines, institutions who require Active Directory federation have another Microsoft-supported choice for hosting these services.
Aside from the obvious benefit of moving to Windows Azure being reduced on-premises hardware, there are many other ways it can be an advantage:
Download the Office 365 Adapter guide today to see how it all works!
Of course, even the Office 365 Adapter requires some time and effort to set up and configure. With the IT manager’s time already divided too many different ways, it might be nice to pay somebody else to sort SSO out for you. Helpfully, there are partners like IAM Cloud who offer similar cloud-hosted solutions to provide ADFS without the on-premises infrastructure to go with it!
Don't forget to check out the new password synchronisation options there are, too! When ADFS is just out of reach, DirSync & Password Sync can keep your student and staff identities the same between Active Directory and Office 365, without the single sign-on capabilities.
I have several customers in education getting upgraded to the Office 365 Service Upgrade for 2013. Most have migrated smoothly but a few customers have seen some issues after upgrade so I decided to post some guidance/FAQ to help make it a better upgrade experience.
What does the Office 365 Service Upgrade for 2013 upgrade mean?
If you have been on Office 365 Education prior to February 27th 2013 this means you are you are on previous technology of cloud services (2010 technologies). We shipped a new Office 365 Education offering in February based on the 2013 technologies. We have been upgrading 2010 (wave14) customers to 2013 (wave15).
Where can I read more information on what new capabilities are in the Office 365 Service Upgrade for 2013?
Exchange Online here
Lync Online here
SharePoint Online here
Office 365 Pro Plus here
I also recommend you read and understand the new Office 365 service descriptions here as this is like the detailed functional specification of each service.
Is there end user or power user training available on these new capabilities?
Yes, it is available here.
Is there administrator training or guides on this new 2013 tenant?
Yes, great information available here and on my other blog post here.
Do I need to change anything on my side prior to this upgrade?
Potentially yes if you are not current on the latest service packs and cumulative patches for Office, XP or Exchange. This 2013 Service Upgrade has newer patch requirements that were not required in the 2010 version.
I have had customers experience Outlook client connectivity issues if they are not patched on the client or on the hybrid server for example. Please read here on the latest requirements for this upgrade. I strongly urge you to follow these requirements closely and not skip this step to keep your upgrade clean.
The other high priority item to remediate/evaluate prior to the 2013 upgrade is you also need to check your DNS, Outlook, and Autodiscover settings prior to the upgrade. Several other Outlook client connectivity issues may occur if you any of these are misconfigured prior to upgrade. See here.
Is there a 2013 upgrade step by step guide I can follow?
Yes, there a very useful Office 365 Service Upgrade 2013 guide here which I strongly recommend you follow closely to avoid issues.
How long does it take for me to get upgraded?
On average each tenant upgrades takes about 48 hours to complete. No loss of email connectivity or productivity will occur during this time. The end user will be asked to restart Outlook and assuming you followed the patching and configuration steps above there should be no further client touch required. SharePoint and Lync will not be interrupted either.
What do I have to do post upgrade?
You have still migrate all of your SharePoint 2010 site collections to SharePoint 2013 including your ‘My Site’ site collection to enable SkyDrive Pro for your end users. See here for site collection upgrade steps.
Do I need to install new clients?
No, there are no client upgrades are required. You can continue to use Outlook 2007, Office 2010, and Lync 2010 against the new 2013 upgrade provided you have patched them appropriately in the link provided above.
For more information on the upgrade please visit the Office 365 Service Upgrade Center for Enterprise here.
Office Mobile for iPhone
Today June 14 2013 Microsoft is releasing Office Mobile for iPhone in the US market and available in the Apple App Store at no additional charge for Office 365 subscribers. Starting June 18, Office Mobile for iPhone will become available in 135 international markets in 29 languages. Office Mobile for iPhone is free of charge for Office 365 subscribers, and provides a great mobile viewing and editing experience across Word, PowerPoint and Excel. To utilize Office Mobile for iPhone it requires the user to have Office 365 Pro subscription with the A3 SKU plan (or E3 for commercial customers) as well as an Office365 SIGN IN account. Screenshots noted at Office blog HERE
Similar to Office Mobile on Windows Phone, Office Mobile for iPhone offers great Office content viewing and on-the-go content editing capabilities for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Compatible with iPhone 4, 4S and 5, iPod Touch 5th Generation running iOS 6.1 or later.
Some of the key benefits:
How do I get Office Mobile for iPhone?
Office 365 subscribers can download the application in 2 ways:
1. Go directly to the Apple App Store and search for Microsoft Office Mobile, and then download it.
2. Or go to your Office account page, select their type of phone, operator, and mobile number and we’ll send a text message to their phone with a link to Office Mobile in the app store.
What about the iPad or Android?
Enjoy!!
I have some exciting news!
One of the most popular features of Live@edu, from a “techy” perspective, was the ability to synchronise the passwords from your local AD user accounts into the cloud using the Password Change Notification Service (PCNS). This was a great way to provide a consistent sign-in experience to users since their password would always be the same in both their AD account and their email account – simple!
In Office 365 we introduced the ability to have federated authentication using ADFS – this gave institutions a more flexible solution for managing authentication for their users, and allowed a true single sign-on implementation for users. One username, one password.
Of course, as awesome as ADFS is to have, it does sometimes require institutions to deploy extra hardware, and that can mean extra cost. At a time when schools, colleges and universities across the UK are being driven hard to reduce costs and be more efficient with their spending it can often be a challenge to make a highly available and robust ADFS infrastructure a reality.
Yesterday Alex Simmons, director of program management, posted up on the Active Directory Team Blog:
I'm happy to let you know that as of last Friday (5/31) we've made it dead simple to connect AD to Azure AD, enabling users to log into Office 365, Windows Azure and any other cloud app integrated with Windows Azure AD using their on-premise username and password. We've done this by updating Windows Azure Active Directory Sync Agent (a.k.a. DirSync) adding the ability to sync hashes of users' on-premise AD passwords into Windows Azure AD.
You can download the new version of DirSync from TechNet or via the Office 365 portal today. My colleague Mark Garcia, over on the US education cloud blog, has posted up a great FAQ all about the new version with a screenshot guide of how to replace your existing DirSync version with the new one!
This release has been a capability which has generated a lot of interest with my customers going with Office 365 Education. I have put together a quick FAQ to help with this.
What is Azure Active Directory Dirsync with Password Sync?
Formerly known as Dirsync, this tool has been updated to allow for the synchronization of local Active Directory passwords to Azure Active Directory. in addition to the syncing of users, groups and contacts. This new feature will allow for Same Sign In with Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365 Education powered by Azure Active Directory since the username and the password from local AD will by synced up to Azure AD. See here on TechNet for more details.
Where can I get the new Dirsync with Password sync bits?
You can grab the latest version of Dirsync here or it is available in the Office 365 portal under ‘users' and then Dirsync.
What version of Dirsync has Dirsync with Password sync?
Dirsync with password sync is available in versions 1.0.6385.12 or newer version.
How can I quickly tell if I have the right version downloaded?
The first way you can tell is by size. The file size is about 183+MB vs. the older version is 99MB. The other way you can tell is by the icon. The application icon should be our new Windows logo with the four blue squares. The final way to confirm this is by hovering over the dirsync download and check the version the version with Dirsync with password sync or later is:
note: I renamed the default ‘dirsync’ filename since I already had the older dirsync in the same directory.
What do I need to do to replace my older dirsync?
You do have to remove the existing installation of Dirsync prior to installing the new version with password sync.
You don’t need to remove other components such as SIA or SQL express. I left everything else in place. Here is the setup I did on an existing Dirsync Server:
1) Important: If using ADFS with federated ID, you must first convert your domain namespace to managed ID PRIOR to installing and running Dirsync with password sync. See steps below under “What if I am federated…”
2) Remove existing Dirsync application from control panel.
3) I took screenshots of the rest:
What if I am federated and using ADFS and want to switch to Dirsync with Password Sync?
You will need to convert your domain from federated to managed. Using the
convert-msoldomaintostandard –domainname foo.edu –skipuserconversion $false –passwordfile c:\password.txt
Azure AD cmdlet. See here on TechNet for more details. Note: the password file is for dumping all users temporary passwords into.
How can I tell if it is configured correctly for Dirsync with Password Sync?
You should see event ID 656 and 657 in your application event log to show that it is syncing the password hash to the cloud.
What are the advantages of Dirsync with Password Sync vs. ADFS?
There are a couple of advantages of using Dirsync with Password Sync over using ADFS 2.1 with Dirsync:
1) A single server is needed vs. redundant and scaled out ADFS servers.
2) No dependency with on prem hardware/data center – if Dirsync with Password Sync server dies – just replace it. There is no impact accessing cloud services with an onprem outage because the identity is a managed identity in Azure AD vs. a federated identity using ADFS 2.1.
3) No complex ADFS architectures – No ADFS Proxies, load balancers, certificate management are required. It keeps the deployment less complex with fewer moving parts.
What are the disadvantages of Dirsync with Password Sync vs. ADFS?
ADFS 2.1 with federated login provides true Single Sign On (SSO) with Office 365 where as Dirsync with Password Sync allows for Same Sign On which implies users will be prompted for credentials when accessing Office 365 even in domain joined scenarios. ADFS 2.1 also allows for better access control based on IPs, etc.
Where can I find more information on troubleshooting Dirsync with Password Sync?
There is an excellent KB article here to help you.
SADA Systems, Inc., a leading Microsoft Cloud Partner, has introduced a new single sign on, or SSO, service to the Microsoft Cloud: ADFS in Azure for Microsoft Office 365.
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) allows organizations to deliver a true Single Sign-On experience to their end-users for Office 365 and other cloud based applications. There are two common drawbacks to ADFS: Office 365 users are dependent on authentication using their corporate Active Directory in order to access Office 365 services, and organizations are required to introduce additional on-premise infrastructure to enable Single Sign On capabilities. If ADFS services are interrupted due to an ISP, power, or other outage, it could prevent end users from accessing email or other Office 365 services.
ADFS in Azure Video Demo is available here:
ADFS in Azure with SADA Systems from SADA Systems on Vimeo.
ADFS in Azure service bundles from SADA alleviate these dependencies by leveraging the high availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service to deliver scalable, redundant, authentication services, with 99.95% uptime for our clients.
SADA’s ADFS in Azure solution gives our clients a modern server infrastructure using Windows Server 2012. ADFS in Azure also provides highly-available, geo redundant Active Directory and Directory Federation Services. Benefits to using ADFS in Azure include automated business continuity, high-availability and disaster recovery for identity services. All of this is packaged in a low-cost, easy-to-budget-for operational expense.
SADA is excited to be part of the evolution to an increasingly cloud-centric model, and is already working with several clients to implement this visionary, new cloud solution.
SADA Systems, Inc. is a privately-held global leader in cloud computing solutions and IT consulting, developing innovative business solutions by implementing leading edge technologies, processes and systems. SADA works closely with leaders in the cloud computing industry and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and finalist for the 2013 Microsoft Cloud Partner of the Year award focused on creating tools, methodologies, change management, and business transformation strategies for your cloud initiatives. Visit us at www.sadasystems.com!
This week the SharePoint team had something pretty cool to announce! The SkyDrive Pro client is something that a lot of education customers as me about, so I’m really excited that it’s available now.
Here’s what the team had to say:
We are pleased to announce that the SkyDrive Pro sync client is now available for Windows and can be downloaded here. This standalone client allows users of SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online in Office 365 to sync their personal SkyDrive Pro and any SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 team site document libraries to their local machine for access to important content on and offline. The SkyDrive Pro client can be installed standalone and does not require any version of Office to be installed. It can also be installed side-by-side with previous versions of Office (Office 2010, Office 2007). Please note if you have one of the following versions of Office 2013 installed, then you already have the SkyDrive Pro sync client and do not need to install it separately: Office 365 Pro Plus Office 365 Small Business Premium Office Professional Plus 2013 Once installed, simply click SYNC in the top right corner of your SkyDrive Pro library, SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 team site document library and you'll be on your way to keep your files in sync across your machines. Happy syncing with SkyDrive Pro--cloud storage for employees!
We are pleased to announce that the SkyDrive Pro sync client is now available for Windows and can be downloaded here. This standalone client allows users of SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online in Office 365 to sync their personal SkyDrive Pro and any SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 team site document libraries to their local machine for access to important content on and offline. The SkyDrive Pro client can be installed standalone and does not require any version of Office to be installed. It can also be installed side-by-side with previous versions of Office (Office 2010, Office 2007).
Please note if you have one of the following versions of Office 2013 installed, then you already have the SkyDrive Pro sync client and do not need to install it separately:
Once installed, simply click SYNC in the top right corner of your SkyDrive Pro library, SharePoint 2013 or Office 365 team site document library and you'll be on your way to keep your files in sync across your machines. Happy syncing with SkyDrive Pro--cloud storage for employees!
Microsoft has been investing in a comprehensive privacy program, consumer education and policy initiatives for more than a decade. Our customers tell us they expect strong privacy protections to be built into our products, devices and services, and for companies to be responsible stewards of their data. We prioritize privacy and take our privacy responsibilities seriously. We take steps to use people’s data responsibly, be transparent about our privacy practices, and offer people more meaningful privacy choices. Privacy by Design at Microsoft means building meaningful choices into our products, devices and services to help people protect their privacy and control use of their information. By collaborating with advocates, industry partners and governments worldwide, we develop solutions and promote effective public policies to help meet the privacy challenges of the 21st century.
Our recent survey of people in the US, UK, France and Germany showed that while the vast majority (85 percent) is concerned about the privacy of their online information, only 51 percent of UK respondents are taking action. That’s why we are establishing a dialogue with consumers, government, business and others to help address concerns and develop common solutions.
To this end, we recently launched a consumer awareness campaign in selected European countries including the UK. You can visit our new “Your Privacy” web page. The page offers resources as well as a quiz called “Your Privacy Type” (YPT) to help you understand your privacy behaviours. By asking a few simple questions, the YPT can quickly reveal your personal privacy type, along with a number of recommendations for improving privacy.
We hope you take the quiz and browse through the useful resources available on the site to help you manage your privacy needs better.