Microsoft Education in the Cloud

Your Privacy is Our Priority

jamesbmarshall — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:28:17 GMT

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...(read more)

Over 18 million students and staff to benefit from faster, more secure cloud-computing

jamesbmarshall — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:53:14 GMT

As part of our on-going commitment to add value to the education community we serve, we are thrilled to be working with Janet to provide additional support and services to their user base. Janet provides and develops a network infrastructure to support...(read more)

Administrator Access to SkyDrive Pro

Mark Dunkel — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:16:40 GMT

SkyDrive Pro is an excellent web-based, enterprise ready, personal storage and collaboration tool for faculty, staff, and students. Unlike the consumer version of SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro provides institutions with rich features to remain compliant. Technically, each SkyDrive Pro site created is its own site collection. The user who creates the site is provided independent ownership of their personal site. This user has full control to grant and remove user permissions to their site. In other words by default even administrators do not have access to a personal SkyDrive Pro site!

What's an Admin to do?

As I mentioned before SkyDrive Pro is enterprise ready. Office 365 Education administrators can access a users (i.e., student) SkyDrive Pro account to meet compliance requirements and for investigations.

If you are an administrator of Office 365 Education you can follow these steps:

Under the "Admin" tab select "SharePoint"
Select "User Profiles"
Under "People" select "Manage User Profiles"
Search for the User in question
Scroll over the search results and select the "down arrow" for the user in question
Select "Manage Site Collection Owners" and add the appropriate admin account under "Site Collection Owners" (you can't gain access without assigning these permissions)
Select the "down arrow" again and select "Manage Personal Site"
You should now have access to the site.

Visuals

At this point you can access the SkyDrive Pro site. Hope this helps!

Virtual Teams Project at NUI Galway – uses Office 365

jonnychambers — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:59:00 GMT

When we first launched Office 365 for education back in June 2012, UMass Amherst and NUI Galway recorded a showcase video with us, highlighting their use of our Office 365 platform . If you have not seen that, check it out!

Following on from this, NUI Galway students just recorded a video about their experiences as part of a final year project. In it, they discussed what they were able to achieve and their takeaways. I will let the video speak for itself:

The collaboratively run course now spans 3 institutions: UMass Amherst, taught by Prof. Gino Sorcinelli, NUI Galway, taught by Murray Scott and Amr BadrElDin at the American University in Cairo.

As I watched the video, I picked up a few themes and benefits:

Learning from anywhere and with anyone
Building virtual relationships and teams in geographically and culturally diverse and dispersed teams
Workforce-ready for a global workforce by linking the classroom to the real world

I cannot wait to see where this course and its students go next.

Jonny

Connecting SharePoint Online to CRM Online using BCS

jonnychambers — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:49:46 GMT

Girish Raja from our CRM team just posted a fairly extensive blog on how to connect SharePoint and CRM Online using Business Connectivity Services (BCS).

Check it out!

Now why would an education customer want to do this? I can think of a number of scenarios. All of them dashboard-related.

Perhaps an institution is using CRM Online to maintain their alumni donor network and they want to provide an executive overview of their fundraising activities to campus leadership?

Perhaps an institution is using CRM Online to track student recruitment and they want to provide insights based on student applicant background to the Dean of Admissions?

Perhaps an institution is using CRM Online to track calls to campus maintenance services and the Facilities Director wants to track activities by type and average duration to fix?

Who knows…? Almost anything can be defined as a CRM problem if you think about it :)

Jonny

Is there a way users can self-migrate from Google Apps Gmail into Office 365?

markga — Sat, 11 May 2013 14:16:55 GMT

I get asked about how to migrate from Google Apps for Education to Office 365 Education every day from my education customers. There are several ways to do this: native Office 365 IMAP migration tools, 3rd party IMAP migration tools, 3rd party cloud based migration tools (if you also want to migrate Google calendar and contacts too), and now a new self-service email migration option that I found by accident.

This discovery came about from a campus in California who asked about self-service Google Apps Gmail migration options for Office 365 Education. I thought about it and I know Outlook could certainly do this but what about OWA since in a student scenario they would likely only have OWA as their client?

I logged into OWA and I took a guess about using the ‘connected mailbox’ approach and it worked!! I didn’t know this would work for Google Apps Gmail but it does. I think this is a great option for student/faculty self-service migrations from Gmail/Google Apps or other IMAP solutions on campus.

Why self-service vs. other migration approaches for Google Apps Gmail or other IMAP systems

· easy to do - fast

· no administrator involvement – no scheduling, etc.

· Admins don’t have to gather user passwords – a lot of IMAP migration tools require knowledge of the end-user password in some cases

· no IMAP migration tools necessary to leverage or purchase

This connected mailbox migration can be used as a quick way to migrate from Google Apps/Campus IMAP systems/Zimbra or other IMAP solutions.

How do you conduct a self-service Google Apps Gmail/Other IMAP system migration:

1) Have the user log into their Office 365 mailbox with Outlook Web App. Next, have them click the Cog icon in the upper right hand corner and then click options > account > connected accounts

2) Hit the ‘+’ sign – add in their Google Apps account email and password

3) Wait until status says ‘OK’ and then check your Office 365 Education inbox and that fast you just completed a self-service migration from Google Apps Gmail or other IMAP solution. All of the mail will appear in the Office 365 Exchange inbox.

4) Your self-service migration from Google/other IMAP system email is complete to Office 365

5) To avoid confusion, the end user will remove Google Apps account after complete sync into Office 365 inbox under connected accounts.

6) Optional: End user can add any personal Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, other (Comcast, AOL, etc) under connected accounts to sync into a single Office 365 inbox

Step 6 is a useful feature since all personal emails can sync into a single inbox and and you can even reply using the other email system addresses all from within OWA. I think students or faculty would really like this option of a universal inbox for all their emails.

For more information on using connected accounts in Office 365 see here.

A Faster, More Effective Way to Communicate With Students Using SharePoint Online and Connect Yard

bill hagen — Tue, 07 May 2013 02:30:00 GMT

Once upon a time, e-mail was the fastest and easiest way to
reach your student body, particularly when the message contained an attachment
such as a photo, document or slide deck. However, today it's one of the last places
students check for something new or interesting. There are simply too many
other communication options available that are more social and engaging.

So it should come as no surprise that students these days prefer interacting on
mobile devices and social media sites over traditional forms of communication
such as email, which may sit unread in an inbox for days or even weeks. What is
surprising however is that some institutions still rely heavily on email
listservs to promote campus events and other activities that are key to overall
student success.

A new approach! ConnectYard extends the reach of Microsoft
SharePoint and Office 365 to today's most popular social media and mobile
devices. With more and more employees working remotely, ConnectYard enables
organizations to bring the right people and information together instantly, by
increasing the speed of communication, which ultimately raises productivity and
reduces technology deployment, training and support costs.

SharePoint Online:

With the ever-expanding number of communication options
available to students, faculty and administrators, institutions are recognizing
both the opportunity and necessity of extending communications beyond
traditional email in order to facilitate greater student engagement and
increased participation.

The ConnectYard App for SharePoint Online (SharePoint 2013
running on Office 365) allows your institution to easily deliver important and
timely notifications to students via SMS (text, picture and video messaging),

Facebook:

Twitter:

LinkedIn :

and other places they are more likely to check and interact
with than email. This serves to speed message receipt and response times as
well as creates a more cohesive, connected learning environment.

To see the ConnectYard App for SharePoint Online in action,
checkout their video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62vnio1kJ5I

For a free trial of ConnectYard for SharePoint Online, visit
the Microsoft Office 365 store at http://tinyurl.com/cy365app

Grants for educators using Windows Azure in their curricula

jonnychambers — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:40:40 GMT

On April 16, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services. This new service now makes it possible for customers to move applications into the cloud. Microsoft is now the only cloud provider with fully supported infrastructure and platform service offerings. Microsoft provides a comprehensive hybrid cloud solution that integrates customers' existing IT infrastructure with the latest cloud technology.

As a faculty member, you and your students can use Windows Azure for free, no credit card needed. To read about and apply for a Windows Azure Educator Grant please go to Windows Azure Educators. After receiving your application and verification of your faculty status, we will send you a grant letter to sign and send back to us to get passcodes for your Azure accounts. Neither you nor your students will pay or provide a credit card for access to Windows Azure. Accounts are valid for 12 months for faculty and 6 months for students and can be extended if needed.

To help you get started with Windows Azure in the classroom, we have developed resources and course and lab material you can access at Windows Azure Resource Kit or on Faculty Connection Web Site. Additionally there is a wealth of information on Windows Azure Documentation for you to use.

Finally, if you want to get more involved, work with us and collaborate with other Azure faculties around the world on Windows Azure content, teaching material and research projects, apply to become a Windows Azure University Faculty. Send an email to AzureU@microsoft.com with subject line “RSVP AzureU Faculties” with your name, email, university, phone number and address in the body. Please indicate if you have or will be teaching Azure in close future.

Enjoy!

Jonny

Update the Live@edu SSO Toolkit to maintain single sign-on access on Office 365 Education

Zion Brewer — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:55:00 GMT

The Live@edu SSO Toolkit 4.5 Update is supported as an interim solution in Office 365 Education until December 31, 2014 to give you more time to implement federation after the upgrade.

This new update enables the Live@edu SSO Toolkit to continue working before, during, and after the upgrade from Live@edu to Office 365 Education.

Important: It is recommended to install the Live@edu SSO Toolkit 4.5 Update before the Live@edu Upgrade and verify users can still sign in to Live@edu via your web portal.

If you have not applied the Live@edu SSO Toolkit 4.5 Update, the SSO Toolkit will stop working partway through the Live@edu Upgrade .

What is the Live@edu SSO Toolkit

The Live@edu SSO Toolkit allows users to access SkyDrive or Outlook Live from an on-premises web portal without a secondary credential challenge from the Live@edu authentication platform.

A pre-installed security certificate (provided to the school by Microsoft) establishes a trust between the on-premises web portal and the Live@edu authentication platform. This trust relationship delegates user authentication to the on-premises web portal and eliminates the need for the user to provide a password for authentication to Live@edu.

Basic overview of Single Sign-On with Live@edu

A user browses to a school’s on-premises web portal, e.g. https://portal.contoso.edu, and provides her/his on-premise username and password.
The web portal presents to the user an HTML page containing a “My Mailbox” link.
When the authenticated user clicks the "My Mailbox" link, the web portal looks up the user's Microsoft account ID in the on-premises directory service.
The on-premises web portal server passes the Microsoft account ID and the pre-installed security certificate to a Microsoft SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) service, and a Short-Lived Token (SLT) from Microsoft is received by the on-premises web portal server over SSL.
Skip ahead a few steps...Single Sign-On happens.
The user transfers seamlessly to her/his SkyDrive or Outlook Live mailbox without being prompted for credentials a second time.

What about PCNS (Live@edu Password Synchronization)?

The Live@edu SSO Toolkit is a Single Sign-On solution for browser clients.

If you are using Live@edu Password Synchronization in combination with the Live@edu SSO Toolkit to allow email rich-clients, smart phones, and other devices to connect to Live@edu, then you may need to investigate third-party tools for password synchronization on Office 365.

Microsoft does not currently support password synchronization with Office 365.

Is Office 365 Password Synchronization a requirement for your Live@edu Upgrade?

Ask for Password Synchronization! Submit feedback to http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BX11EN/135.

______________________________

Thanks for joining us today!

Zion Brewer

______________________________

Can’t convert domain to federated

markga — Wed, 01 May 2013 04:54:01 GMT

I ran into an interesting problem setting up ADFS 2.1 on Windows Server 2012 for Office 365 federation. It is now a supported server OS for ADFS and Office 365 as long as you run the Azure Active Directory PowerShell.

ADFS setup worked flawlessly and I setup the web certificate, etc. You can follow the ADFS 2.1 on Windows Server 2012 for Office 365 steps here now.

I went to convert my domain to federated in Azure Active Directory Powershell (steps here) to setup a Trust with Office 365 and it failed when I used the convert-msoldomaintofederated cmdlet. I received an this error:

Convert-MsolDomainToFederated : Microsoft.Online.Administration.Automation.Iden
tityInternalServiceException
At line:1 char:30
+ Convert-MsolDomainToFederated <<<< -DomainName domain.edu
     + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Convert-MsolDomainToFederated
    ], FederationException
     + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Online.Administration.Automation.Ident
    ityInternalServiceException,Microsoft.Online.Identity.Federation.Powershel    l.ConvertDomainToFederated

I found a fix that resolved this. You must run this PowerShell cmdlet first:

Set-MSOLpasswordpolicy validityperiod 90 –notificationdays 10 –domainname domain.edu

After I ran that – waited about 20 minutes – then ran:

convert-msoldomaintofederated –domainname domain.edu - went through without issue.

It would appear that your password policy must be set to 270 days or less or you cannot convert your domain to a federated domain.

Finally, you should run get-msoldomain to check that you are indeed federated for that domain.