This week Microsoft opened up for a customer preview of the next major update to Office 365 – called Office 365 Preview. You can try it out here.
The Public Folders page is a new feature for Exchange Online introduced with Office 365 Preview. It provides an easy and effective way to collect, organize, and share information with other people in your workgroup or organization. It is not designed for Archiving Data or Document sharing and Collaboration.
In Office 365 Preview every public folder must live in a Public Folder mailbox. You will need to create at least one Public Folder mailbox before you can create Public Folders.
To create a Public Folder Mailbox
Navigate to the Exchange Admin Center (EAC)
Click Public Folders > Public Folder Mailboxes
Click (+) New
Enter a Name and click Save
Check the list to ensure the new Public Folder Mailbox is available
To create a Public Folder
Click Public Folders > Public Folders
Enter a Name and click Save.
Verify that the folder has been created (note - its has no subfolders and has not been mail enabled yet)
To create a Subfolder
Click on the name of the initial folder
Verify that the subfolder has been created (note its location in the hierarchy)
To Mail Enable Public Folders
Select the public folder and click Enable under Mail Settings
Click Yes at the warning.
Once the setting is saved, you can click Edit to configure the Public Folder
In the Public Folder window, note that several new options will be available, e.g:
Working with Public Folders
Open Outlook 2013 and verify that the Public Folders are listed at the bottom of the Folder Explorer
Note
UPDATE MAY 2013: New TechNet Content: "Migrate Legacy Public Folders to Exchange Online" - link
See also
Many are asking if they can make use of centralized auto signatures in Exchange Online in Office 365. The answer is yes - and its done using Disclaimers.
To automatically apply disclaimers to e-mail messages, you use Transport Rules. You create Transport Rules in the Exchange Control Panel - just click Manage My Organization > Mail Control > Rules and start building the desired rule.
Clicking New will present you with a dialog in which you can specify that you want the new rule to fire on all messages and you want it to append a disclaimer to evey message.
Next up is specifying the appropriate text in the disclaimer. The disclaimer text can include HTML tags and you can add user attributes to disclaimers. For example, you can add DisplayName, FirstName, LastName, Department, and Company to create personalized signatures. Here is an example of a (very) basic disclaimer:
DisplayName
FirstName
LastName
Department
Company
When the disclaimer is added to the message, the attribute names are replaced by the corresponding values from the sender's user account.
Testing the disclamer
Compose a message (with no signature to begin with - will be inserted by the transport rule)
The recipient sees the message with the signature inserted by the Transport Rule:
Here is more on how to build your own centralized auto signatures - Link
Bonus info: Loryan Stant (Office 365 MVP) elaborates a bit on the variables and an exception you can apply - link
If you are looking for a comparison between the P1 plan and the E plans in Office 365 you might find this table of notes helpful.
Please note that the table is without responsibility. It is compiled by myself and might not be accurate at the time you read it (things change). It should only be used as an inspiration as to which features you might want to take into considerations when comparing the P plan to the E plans.
Change log
Feature
Plan P
Plan E
Service*
Notes
AD synchronization
No
Yes
365
P plan customers are limited to managing their users in the Cloud Admin Interface. Many small businesses have Active Directory due to the success of the Small Business Server product line. E Plan subscribers can use the directory synchronization tool to replicate users, contacts, distribution lists, and other objects into Office 365 - P1 Plan users cannot. If you want directory synchronization, you must purchase an E plan.
Fee When Cancelling Subscription
Yes (see note)
Cancellations within the first 30 days are allowed at no fee (P plan is based on monthly payments, E on a 12-month subscription term). Cancellations within the last 11 months of the subscription term are allowed. You will be responsible for paying 25% of the remaining value of your subscription - see the Purchase and Support Guide for more - link
Combine w/ K plan
A combination of E and K workers might be less of a cost than all users on P (a 25 user scenario all on P compared to a 5 user on E1 and 20 on K1 will actually save 14%)
Domain Management
DNS manager on the Office 365 Admin page
Domain registrar, or on premises
A few but important differences exists in how you work with domains, set up public facing websites etc, in a P compared to an E subscription - link
Max # Org Users
50
“No” limit
If you plan to grow beyond 50 people you should not opt for the P plan. You can not switch from P1 to E plan.
Phone support
P plan customers in need of support will have to search for answers on the Community section of their Office 365 portal (or call their partner if they have a support agreement)
Single Sign On
With single sign on the customer need only to provide the domain password
Administer AV/AS
EXO
Administer FOPE (white list, black list)
IRM/RMS
IRM provides online and offline protection of e-mail messages and supported attachments. IRM protection can be applied by users in Outlook or Outlook Web App, and it can be applied by administrators using transport protection rules and Outlook protection rules. IRM helps administrators and users control who can access, forward, print, or copy sensitive data within e-mail messages. Note that IRM requires that you have an Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) server deployed in your on-premises organization
Direct Offboarding/deprovisioning
The ability to do direct offboarding to Exchange 2003 or 2007 or 2010 on-premises (requires Exchange 2010 CAS server)
Recipient Rate Limits
500
1500
The maximum number of recipients that can receive e-mail messages sent from a single cloud-based mailbox in a 24 hour period - see "Understanding Recipient Rate Limits"
1/6/12 - in December 2011 the P1 plan increased from 500 to 1500 - link
Rich coexistence (Hybrid)
If you already have an Exchange Server on prem and needs to maintain some of the users there
Transport Rules
Transport rules let you control the flow of and apply messaging policies to e-mail messages sent within your organization and sent in to and out of your organization. Using transport rules, administrators can define specific message attributes, or conditions, and the actions to apply to any message that contain those attributes. For example, you can use transport rules append a disclaimer to message sent outside your organization or prevent e-mail communication between specific groups of users. Transport protection rules let you use transport rules to IRM-protect messages by applying an AD RMS rights policy template.
Disclamers - see this article
Journaling
Journaling can help your organization respond to legal, regulatory, and organizational compliance requirements by recording inbound and outbound e-mail communications. Journal rules are used to record, or "journal", the e-mail messages sent to or from specific recipients. When a message matches the criteria defined by the journal rule, a journal report that contains the original message is generated and sent to a journaling mailbox
Litigation Hold
Yes (E3/4)
You can put a litigation hold, also known as legal hold, on a mailbox to preserve e-mail messages and other mail items for an extended period. Litigation hold also prevents items from being permanently deleted. When a user's mailbox is put on litigation hold, the user can purge items from their mailbox but the items are retained indefinitely on the servers in the Microsoft datacenter. Litigation hold also maintains the version history for items that are modified
Multi-Mailbox Search
Discovery harnesses Multi-Mailbox Search, a GUI-based tool that allows legal and human resource professionals and other discovery managers to search primary and archive mailboxes across your organization for messages that match specified criteria. Because discovery searches don’t require full administrative permissions, you can assign regular users the necessary permissions to search mailboxes and limit the scope of mailboxes that a person can search. The results of a multi-mailbox search can be printed or exported to a .PST file by using Microsoft Outlook.
Personal Archive
Yes Combined total size of 25 GB for primary and archive mailboxes
Yes Combined total size of 25 GB for primary and archive mailboxes for E1/2* 100 GB default quota for E3/4**
You can create an archive mailbox, called a personal archive, for a user's primary cloud-based mailbox. Users can use the archive mailbox to store historical messaging data by moving or copying messages from their primary mailbox to their archive mailbox. Administrators and users can use MRM (Messaging records management) features to automatically move messages that reach a certain age to the archive mailbox. Because items in a user’s archive mailbox are indexed, archive mailboxes are included in a multi-mailbox search
*E1/2 will be able to add compliance archive to the subscription as an add-on
**a default quota of 100 GB is set on the personal archive, which will generally accommodate reasonable use, including the import of one user’s historical email. In the unlikely event that a user reaches this quota, a call to Office 365 support is required. Administrators cannot adjust this quota upward or downward.
No option to add compliance archive to P plan
Unified Messaging
Voice Mail in the Inbox (no need to call up the voice mail service from your phone)
Lync Rich Client
E3/4 rich client via OPP
LYN
A limited time offer gives one licensed copy of Lync 2010 at no cost to every trial or paid E1, E2 and Lync Online standalone subscription license.
Online Meetings # participants
50250
250
Online meetings – e.g. product presentations/launches
2/24/12 updated to 250 for P also - link
Integration with Messenger
(Temporarily removed)
Temporarily removed to avoid users using vanity or custom domain (i.e. yourcompanyname.com) with both Office 365 and Messenger being unable to access their Messenger accounts.
Microsoft Support will post updates to this article
Office Web Apps
Yes – but no editing in E1
OfWA
The Office Web Apps in the E1 plan only allows for read only access to the documents
# Site Collections
1
300
SPO
If you have projects that need to be isolated from each other, you should create separate site collections for them. For example, it might make sense for the engineering department to have a site collection that’s separated from the legal department.
Each site within a site collection shares attributes inherited from the site collection such as templates that can be applied, permissions, and other settings that flow down from the site collection to the sites.
Having one site collection will probably not create a large impact for most small businesses of 25 users or less. Multiple site collections are useful when unique teams want their own workspace and separate security settings. You can still control security within sites, but there are considerations to manage, such as giving external users access to sites, which can give them access to the entire site collection.
Access Services
Yes*
P plan customers can publish Microsoft Access databases to SharePoint Online and share them with other users. Reduce database versioning problems, and simplify deployment of Access forms and reports, while reducing governance risks.
*E1 and E2 users are not allowed to access Enterprise Features of SPO, whereas E3 and E4 users can build and visit Access-based webpages
The missing InfoPath option in P can be mitigated by the Access Forms options
Buy Additional SPO storage
You may need more storage at some point in time. On the E plan you can purchase extra storage up to 5 TB 25 TB in total. P1 limited to 35GB.
3/8/12 updated to 25 TB
See also: Understanding storage allocation in SharePoint Online
Communities Capability (Tags, Ratings and more)
No*
The ability to tag content (metadata) and rate content for easy discovery
*most features unavailable, but blogs and wikis supported, see: Comparing features in SharePoint Online across Office 365 Service Plans for more
Dual Rights
E plan users are licensed to access information on on-premises SharePoint servers (important in hybrid scenarios).
Whitepaper: "Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365" - link
Enterprise Features like Forms Services, Excel Services, and Visio Services as well as Business Connectivity Services (BCS)
Many business productivity scenarios opens up with the Enterprise capabilities (Electronic Forms for e.g. Timeregistration, simple BI like performance indicators, process support like Workflows and Workflow visualization)
*E1 and E2 users are not allowed to access Enterprise Features of SPO. E3 and E4 users can view and upload Visio diagram, build and view embedded Excel graphs and create/publish, fill in and submit InfoPath forms.
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint Online enables customers to connect to external data sources via Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web Services endpoints in both read and write modes (implemented in SPO Nov 2011) - link
See also: Comparing features in SharePoint Online across Office 365 Service Plans
Number of free Partner Access Licenses (PALs, "External Users")
no ability to increase cap
10,000
ability to increase cap
The "Extranet" capability is very attractive to many Office 365 customers.
The P plan does not include the ability to increase the cap beyond 500 PALs.
My Site
The My Site can be positioned as “your new C: drive – a central yet private location for your personal documents”.
SSL
SSL encrypts the traffic between your computer and the Microsoft data center hosting SharePoint Online. Since SSL is not available with SharePoint Online in the P1 plan, documents you transmit to and from the Microsoft data center are transmitted “in the clear”. This may be an important consideration in your choice of plans.
In addition, the unavailability of SSL affects several SharePoint Online features :
More information here under the heading “Plan for SSL considerations”
Built-in Workflows
5
The Three-state workflow is built into both plans
The following four workflows are built into the E plan, but are not supported in the P plan: Approval, Collect Feedback, Collect Signatures, Disposition Approval
See also: About the workflows included with SharePoint
Workflow Actions
Some Unsupported
You can create and customize workflows in SharePoint Designer. The following workflow actions are not supported in the P plan:Start Document Set Approval Process, Capture a Version of a Document Set, Send Document Set to Repository, Set Content Approval Status of the Document Set, Start Approval Process, Start Feedback Process, Start Custom Task Process, Declare Record, Undeclare Record, Lookup Manager of a User, End Task Process, Set Content Approval Status (as author), Wait for Change in Task Process Item, Set Task Field, Rescind Task, Append Task, Delegate Task, Escalate Task, Forward Task, Insert Task, Reassign Task, Request a Change, Send Task Email - link. No workaround is available.
To use these SharePoint workflow actions, you must have the E plan - link
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for SharePoint
No support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for SharePoint in the P plan
In the E plans Sharepoint Online supports full integration as well allowing document management of your CRM created customers/contacts to be held within your Sharepoint online site
*service: SPO = SharePoint Online, EXO = Exchange Online, LYN = Lync Online, OfWA = Office Web Apps, 365 = Office 365
Fair Warning
Since the launch of the New Office 365 early 2013, this 2011 blog post has become outdated. SkyDrive Pro is now the way to sync files from SharePoint Online to your Windows 7 or 8 desktop. Read more here.
//Jesper Osgaard, July 2014
*********************
I often get asked if its possible to map a SharePoint Online Document Library in Windows Explorer e.g. for easy opening of files a.s.o directly from Windows Explorer.
It is certainly possible:
Create a Document Library - in this example called "DocRepository". Since the name of my Office 365 tenant in this example is "mso365wiz" the URL to the Document Library is "https://mso365wiz.sharepoint.com/DocRepository"
In order to map the files in this Document Library in Windows Explorer the trick is to:
In my example the URL is "https://mso365wiz.sharepoint.com/DocRepository" and should hence be "\\mso365wiz.sharepoint.com@ssl\DocRepository" after the above changes.
You should now be able to access the Document Library from your Windows Explorer.
See also this support article
Update #1 (February 2012):
SharePoint Online in Office 365 uses forms based authentication and the user is authenticated using a SAML token. This SAML token expires every 2 hours (some say longer though). After that the mapped drive for the SharePoint library cant access the library unless the user signs in to the SharePoint Online site again from the browser, even if the user tick off "Keep me signed in". As an alternative you can add the URL of the document library to Favorites in Windows Explorer. You'll need to do that via e.g. Word.
Update #2 (May 2013)
Since the launch of the new Office 365 in the beginning of 2013, the above has become obsolete. SkyDrive Pro is now the way to sync files from SharePoint Online to your Windows 7 or 8 desktop. Read more here.
The SharePoint Store is new to SharePoint Online - it will be available in the coming version of Office 365, currently referred to as Office 365 Preview. In the SharePoint Store you can find apps from SharePoint developers across the globe. You can filter the apps on several categories as well as on Price (Free and All).
One of the free apps currently available is the "Business Contact Manager" app - a mini-CRM right there for you to install in your SharePoint Online.
To put the mini-crm app to work in SharePoint Online
1. Click Sites, click the Gear icon next to your name, and click Add an app
2. Click SharePoint Store to open the store
3. Search for "Business Contact Manager" or filter on "Customer + Contact Management" at the refiner area at the left side of the page (if you dont see any apps in the store try selecting "English" a the languate in the top right corner of the page)
4. The app is displayed as your search result. Click the app to open the apps page
5. On the apps page, click Add It to add the app to your site collection as an app users can install
6. The app is added from the store
7. You are notified about the apps availability to users in your organisation. Click Return to Site
8. To allow the app to interact with basic information on your site click Trust It
9. The app is now available in the Site Contents page for you to install on the site
10. Click the app to open Business Contact Manager
11. You are first presented with an instructional video. Note that you can now work with four entities (company, contact, opportunity, and product) in many-to-many relationships
12. Click Companies to create, edit or view companies. You can add contacts to a company, as well as opportunities
13. Click Contacts to create, edit or view contacts. You can link contacts to companies, as well as opportunities
14. Click Oppornities to create, edit or view opportunities. You can link contacts, companies and products to opportunities
15. Click Products to create, edit or view the products and services you will bring to market. You can add products to opportunities
16. When done and back on the site, you can click the Business Contact Manager link to return to the app
The Business Contact Manager app is actually an application built on Access 2013 (you can customize it in Access 2013) and deployed in SharePoint Online as an Access Services app. In order for the app to work, please ensure you activated the Enterprise Features on your site collection
1. Click Site Settings
2. Click Site Collection Features under Site Collection Administration
3. Scroll down to the SharePoint Server Enterprise Site Collection Features and click Activate
In case you missed it - the latest Product Use Rights (january 2013) now includes a note under Additional Terms #3, page 82
"3. Each user may also use one of the five activations on a network server with the Remote Desktop Services (RDS) role enabled" (see screenshot below)
Update January 22nd, 2013 Its important to emphasize that the Office 365 ProPlus bits will not install or run on a server with RDS enabled, but the updated PUR enables organizations to Volume License bits (Office Professional Plus 2013) in lieu of Office 365 ProPlus on RDS servers. Any user licensed for Office 365 ProPlus can access an RDS-hosted install as one of the 5 concurrent installs allowed per user (blog post title adjusted to reflect this update)
Update 1 March 18th, 2013. As per the Microsoft Product List March 1, 2013 page 97:
"Media Eligibility with Remote Desktop Services (RDS)If the user to whom you have assigned an Office 365 ProPlus license uses the software on a network server with RDS role enabled, in lieu of installing a copy of the software provided with Office 365 ProPlus on one of the five permitted devices pursuant to the Product Use Rights for Office 365 ProPlus, that user may: 1) install one copy of the Office Professional Plus 2013 software on a network server and 2) access the Office Professional Plus 2013 software from any device. Upon termination of your Office 365 ProPlus subscription you must uninstall Office Professional Plus 2013 software from the network server"
Update 2 March 18th, 2013. As per the Office 365 ProPlus service description:
"Office 365 ProPlus is supported on user-dedicated virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). To use Remote Desktop Services (RDS), you must use a volume license version of Office Professional Plus 2013, which is available on the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center. For more information, see Microsoft Volume Licensing Product Use Rights".
Note: the above is valid for the upcoming version of Office 365
In case you missed it - four new draft courses now published to Microsoft Dynamics Readiness and Training (PartnerSource)
Start preparing for those CRM 2013 certifications now - your certifications is a very valuable asset to you and your company.
For updated links (since the original post above) please see this post:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/lystavlen/archive/2014/02/27/train-and-certify-for-crm-2013-moc.aspx
Microsoft just announced that the SkyDrive Pro apps for Windows 8 and iOS are now available in the Windows Store
... and Apple Store respectively ...
... for SharePoint Online users in Office 365 (please note that On-Premises SharePoint Server is not supported). After signing in to your Office 365 account, you can access, view, and upload your documents from anywhere.
You can use the SkyDrive Pro apps to view documents in your SkyDrive Pro folder, select specific content to take offline when you are traveling or have low bandwidth, organize your content by creating new folders, and upload new content and share with others.
Read more at source here
PS: If you want to learn more about SkyDrive Pro directly from the Product Group, you can join this Live Online Meeting "SkyDrive Pro: Apps, Web, oh my!" Tuesday July 2nd, at 10:00 AM Pacific Time - link
Monday July 8th Microsoft announced that the upcoming CRM Online 2013 subcriptions will come in three flavors
Since you'll be able to mix and match these subscriptions between your users, the flexibility will enable you to consume just the right subscriptions for the right users, at the right price.
The high-level comparison of user capabilities per subscription would look like this
To help you decide which subscriptions will fit which user profiles I've laid out how I would assume the Use Rights for the CRM entities and features will be distributed between these three subscriptions in the table below. Please note that the table represents my personal assumptions. Nothing is certain untill the general release.
About the Use Rights color coding:
Green = Full
Orange = For actions performed only against records corresponding to entities included in the use rights
Red = No
See also (requires access to PartnerSource)
Disclaimer
"Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013" is a pre-release product under development. The information in this blog post represents my personal understanding and expectations as of the date of this blog post. All pre-release product release dates and features specified are preliminary based on current expectations, and are subject to change without notice.
If you are considering moving you data and documents to Office 365, you might wonder how you can perform the reverse operation - move data from Microsoft Online Services to file shares or to a local computer (called off-boarding). In this version of Microsoft Online Services, this is a manual process using the “Connect & Export” section of the Ribbon in SharePoint Online. This section is contextual and will be slightly different depending if you are in a Document Library:
or in a List:
or in a Calendar, Contact list a.s.o
So - which commands to use when? Below you’ll find a table listing which commands you can use to save a SharePoint document library or list content from a SharePoint Online environment to file shares, or to a local computer.
SharePoint Online Element
Backup Using
Ribbon Command
Calendars
Outlook
Connect to Outlook
Contacts
Discussion Lists
Document Libraries
SharePoint Workspace
Sync to SharePoint Workspace
Windows Explorer
Open with Explorer
List Content
Access
Open with Access
Excel
Export to Spreadsheet
Tasks
You need to be owner of the content or administrator to perform the above actions. Furthermore you must be aware of a couple of known limitations when it comes to downloading documents and exporting lists.
SharePoint document libraries can contain many different types of files and SharePoint maintains information about each file that it stores. Most of this other information is not preserved when files are downloaded. For example, the following information is not preserved when a file is downloaded using Outlook or Explorer:
Lists
SharePoint list content must be exported to Office Excel or to an Access database. Simple lists can be exported to Excel. However, if the content of a single cell exceeds Excel’s maximum cell size limit (32,767 characters), the information that exceeds that maximum is lost. If your lists contain large cells, you should export to Access.
SharePoint lists are used to host complex data like Wikis and Blogs. These complex data forms consist of several tables. For example, Blog tables are: Categories, Posts, Comments, Links, and Other Blogs. For the best results, export Wikis and Blogs to Access. When exported to Access, each of these tables is exported correctly, but all properties, permissions, and relationships between tables and contents are lost.
Sites
You can save your SharePoint Online site (including lists, views, workflows, logos, and other elements) as a template. You can also choose to include the contents of the site in the template.
By using this method, the template you create will contain the same files (for instance, the same .PDFs, .docx, and .xlsx files) as were on the site from which the template was made, up to a limit of 50 MB.
Attempt to create a template of a site and include greater than 50 MB of content will result in an error message stating “Error creating solution. The maximum total file size limit (52428800 bytes) has been exceeded.”
See the article "Save a SharePoint Online site as a template" - link for details.
Office 365 users wanted a better, more connected and governed experience when it came to working with PDF files within SharePoint Online document libraries.
Thanks to your direct comments and active voices in the Community forums, PDF files will now open directly into Adobe Reader without requiring that it be downloaded first. The PDF remains connected and stored in your SharePoint Online document library as you view and edit the file. You can even check it out like other Office documents.
After the SharePoint Online environment has been updated, users must have the latest Adobe Reader version (10.1.2) installed: http://get.adobe.com/reader/
This update is part of the second update to SharePoint Online (SPO) since the launch of Office 365 (O365). The updates are now beginning to roll out worldwide. Read all about them on the official blog of the Microsoft SharePoint Product Group - link
See also: "PDF Files in SharePoint Online" - link
Updated March 27, 2012
One of the very popular features of Exchange Online in Office 365 is the ability to create Shared Mailboxes. In Exchange Online you are free to create as many Shared Mailboxes you like. A Shared Mailbox smaller than 5GB in size do not require a license.
Many customers will want to have one or more shared mailboxes for e.g. info@company.com, reception@hotel.com types of purposes etc.
From a user perspective it's easiest if the shared mailbox is accessible from the users own mailbox, and the ability to drag and drop mail items beetween folders is preserved. This is default behavior in Outlook 2010. But what if the user is using his/her Outlook Web App (OWA) for working with mails?
In OWA two methods exists for opening other users folders:
Each has its advantages and disadvantages.
Method 1: Explicit logon
It will open the Shared Mailbox in a new window and you cannot drag and drop mails between the two windows. But the subfolders of the Mailbox's Inbox are visible and you can drag mails from the Inbox to its subfolders.
To open a Mailbox using Explicit logon:
1. Click your name in the top right corner of Outlook Web App
2. Type the alias of the Shared Mailbox
3. The Shared Mailbox opens in a new window. No drag and drop capabilities between your Inbox and the Shared Mailbox
Method 2: Mailbox Delegate Access
It will open the Inbox in the same browser window and you can drag and drop mail items between your folders and the Inbox of the Mailbox. But the subfolders of the Inbox are not visible.
To open a Mailbox (Inbox) using Mailbox Delegate Access:
1. Right click your name in the Folder list (your mailbox) to the left and click Open Other User's Inbox...
3. The Shared Mailbox opens below your primary mailbox in the Folder list
4. AND you can drag and drop mail from your Inbox...
... to the Shared Mailbox (and vice versa)
Best of both
So what to do if you'd like to have the best of both methods? Being able to drag a mail from your inbox to a subfolder of a Shared Mailbox's Inbox. Well - for now you will need to do a litte tab juggling in you browser.
You now have a working environment - you can drag emails from your Inbox to the Shared Mailbox (Inbox) in the first tab...
... and you can drag mails from the Shared Mailbox (Inbox) to its subfolders in the second tab
I hope this will serve as an inspiration to you for using Shared Mailboxes even if you are not using Outlook 2010 - the browser experience is quite userfriendly too :-)
** Feel free to chime in (comment) if you have suggestions to the Product Group for future feature updates **
People who need to see or work with your SharePoint Online site content but who don’t have user accounts for your SharePoint Online environment are considered “external users.” External users might be vendors or customers, for example. With SharePoint Online, after you activate the sharing feature, you can invite an external user to your site just by sending them an email with an invitation (the invitation expires after one use).
Just follow the simple three steps in the article "Share a site with external users" to enable the sharing feature and then follow the steps in this article "Grant permissions for a site" to grant and restrict access to your site and content. This is called managing permissions and you do it by using security groups, which control membership, or by using fine-grained permissions, which help you control content at the item or document level.
The Office 365 terminology for external users is Partner Access Licenses (PALs). A PAL
Bonus Info
Password expiration notifications in rich clients in Office 365
If you've read the Microsoft Support article: "Access Denied" error, or the user is repeatedly prompted for credentials, when the user tries to access an Office 365 resource from a rich client application, you will know that you must download and install the latest version of the Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Assistant to enable password expiry notification. However in the same article you may also have noticed the below paragraph:
For users of Office 365 rich client applications (However, this does not include Microsoft Outlook), a notification balloon is displayed on user's desktops 14 days before the 90-day password expiration time-out to notify users that they have to change their password. Users are prompted every day after that until the user changes his or her password
What about Outlook?
Office 365 customers using managed (OrgID Based) accounts will not know when passwords will expire (if enabled for expiration). Further, Outlook’s behavior when the password expires is to go into a disconnected state, without notifying the user of what the problem is or what is required to resolve it. Opening Outlook and providing an expired password will continually prompt the user just as if they had mistyped the password.
Two hotfixes can be downloaded here:
After the hotfix is installed, Office 365 users who use Outlook receive a pop-up message in the notification area on the right side of the taskbar if their password is about to expire in a certain time period. The time period is set by administrators (default is 14 days).
For Office 365 users whose passwords have already expired, Outlook displays the following message to notify the user:
In either scenario, Outlook provides a URL for Office 365 users to update their passwords through their web browser. When a user clicks the link, he or she is redirected to the Office 365 portal to update his or her password..
See this Support article for more. See also:
In my meetings with customers and partners I'm often asked which SharePoint Online features are found in which Office 365 Service Plans.
Its possible to find a high-level comparison here (see screen shot below), but to provide a more granular view I've compiled six tables corresponding to each of the six capabilities in SharePoint; Sites, Communities, Content, Search, Insights, and Composites
Please note that things change and the below might not be accurate by the time you read it.
Communities
Content
Search
Insights
Composites
For the most recent information please see the current Product Use Rights (in the April 2012 version the SharePoint licensing info is found on page 50 and 51 - see screenshot below) and Service Description (E-plans and P-plan)
To list the user profiles of all SharePoint Online users in your tenant you can follow these steps
In Office 365 your password will expire every 90 days (unless your admin has changed the policy). If you are using Outlook Web App (or other online apps), you'll receive directions to change your password when it is about to expire or has expired. But if you are solely using the rich apps (e.g. Outlook 2010) you won’t get a notification. You might end up in a situation where your rich app fail to authenticate without indicating the true cause and you call support. This has changed with the upgraded Microsoft Office 365 Sign-In Assistant application (MOS SIA) downloadable from here.The new version of MOS SIA will give you a password expiry notification bubble from the Windows tray every day within the last 2 weeks before your password will expire. Clicking the notification bubble redirects to you to the Office 365 portal so you can reset your password.
Updates for MOS SIA are provided through Microsoft Update. Updates can be obtained directly from the Microsoft Update service or in managed environments through Windows Software Update Services (WSUS).
The new Office 365 Service Descriptions can be easily accessed in your favorite browser; just type office365sd.com in the address box, and you'll get a full list of service descriptions.
Each service description will give you tables comparing features across plans, making it easier to pick the plan that suits your needs the best. To provide an easy, visual overview I've compiled the below table comparing Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online across the P, M, and E plans.
In the table I'm using these abbriviations for the plans
...and this Color coding visualizing whether a feature is included in the plan or not
Table: Comparing Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync Online across the P, M, and E (and K) plans
(click here to get the source Excel file if you need to do filtering or other tasks)
In the E-plan you can opt to subscibe to various available add-ons, e.g.
The ability to share your SharePoint sites and documents with people outside your organization is a very compelling capability in SharePoint Online. You are allowed up to 500 unique external users per month on the P-plans, and 10,000 for the M and E plans at no cost.
The people outside your organization are called External Users. External Users means users that are not either your or your affiliates’ employees, or your or your affiliates’ onsite contractors or onsite agents.
Over the years I've had so many questions as to what an external user can or can not do in SharePoint Online.
Here is a couple of the things they can do (have the rights to)
And here is a couple of the thing they cannot do (do not have the rights to)
Read more here.
Note - the Online Services Use Rights and the Product Use Rights is the authoritative documents in use rights.
Synchronizing SharePoint Online document libraries with Windows Explorer has always been a hot topic. My post on the topic from October 2011 has been viewed more than 10,000 times.
In previous versions of Office 365 its been possible, yet a little frustrating to setup and use on a daily basis. Especially the authentication part (a saml token timing out) has caused lots of discussions.
In the current version of Office 365 the synchronization is taken care of by a component known as the "SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client". It installs with Office 2013 (soon available as a standalone download if you do not have/need Office 2013)
The SkyDrive Pro Windows Sync client
If you accidently delete a mail - and on top of that accidently empty the Deleted Items folder - you can still get to that ‘deleted-deleted’ mail using the Recover Deleted Items command.
A deleted mail will be kept in your Deleted Items folder until it is manually deleted from there by you, or until its removed automatically as per your company's Retention Policies (by default 30 days).
When a mail is deleted from the the Deleted Items folder, its kept for another 14 days in a folder called the Recoverable Items folder until it is permanently removed automatically. During this 14-day period you can recover the ‘deleted-deleted’ mail.
Just right-click the Deleted Items folder, click Recover Deleted Items to display the Recover Deleted Items dialogbox, click the mail(s) you want to restore and then click the Recover Selected Items button
If you are accessing your mail using the Outlook client (as opposed to Outlook Web App in the above example) then the Recover Deleted Items command is found in the Ribbon in the Clean Up group
To increase the above metioned Deleted item recovery (Single Item Recovery) period for all users from the default of 14 days to the 30 day maximum, you (if you are the admin of the tenant) can run a PowerShell cmdlet that resembles the following:
Get-Mailbox | Set-Mailbox -SingleItemRecoveryEnabled $True -RetainDeletedItemsFor 30
If you want to recover items for a period of more than 30 days, you must use Litigation Hold.
Mobile devices are an integral part of the business environment. Employees are using their devices for web browsing, personal email, corporate communications and much more.
Office 365 supports the native ActiveSync features and policies of Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1, including:
The Exchange Active Sync protocol is licensed to a lot of licensees, including Apple and Google.
Mobile Device Management Tools by Microsoft
Should you want to extend the above with e.g. management of mobile applications from an Application Catalog consider looking into System Center 2012 Configuration Manager or the Windows Intune service. They both enable mobile device management in Office 365 via the Exchange Server connector, supported by Exchange Online (Office 365)
Third Party
In general, third-party applications can integrate with Exchange Online if they utilize the Exchange Web Services API and do not require software or hardware to be installed in the Exchange Online datacenter. Applications that uses the Exchange Server MAPI/CDO API, which is not available in Exchange Online obviously doesn’t work. Microsoft does not test or certify applications for use with Exchange Online.
See also:
With the December 2012 Service update (aka "Polaris"), we introduced the ability for customers to provision and manage multiple CRM instances within a single subscription.
This opens up new enterprise customer scenarios such as separate instances for departmental use, regional use, development/test instances for application lifecycle management and more.
Use Case for Multiple Instances
Logically, you can imagine multiple CRM Online instances for an organization structured similar to multi-tenant high-rise or building. Each floor within a building can be logically considered as an application (Sales/Service, Vendor mgmt., Wealth mgmt., etc) and each unit within a floor can be considered as an instance for a specific purpose such as production (final), training, testing, development, etc.
The need for multiple instances varies from one organization to another. Some organizations might require just a few and others might need large number of instances depending upon their business needs.
It is important to note that multiple instances cannot be created across the globe. Currently, all the additional instances can only be created within the same geo (Americas, EMEA or APAC) as the subscription.
Scenario: Departmental Use
So - why would an organization need multiple instances of CRM Online if data segregation can be achieved using business units and role-based forms?
A common use for additional instances is to have separate instances for each department or region within an organization. For example a large financial organization might need separate instances for retail banking division, wealth management vision, separate ones for insurance business and vendor mgmt., etc. Another example might be to have separate instances for different regions (Northwest, South, East, etc) as the policies and business procedures might significantly vary from one region to another within the same organization.
Multiple instances are needed when segregation of plugins/workflows/admin resources are required which cannot be easily isolated using business units in CRM. In the below example - when Retail banking needs to make a change or install a 3rd party component for their needs, you wouldn’t want the wealth management users to be affected by those changes.
Additional instances are charged at a monthly rate per instance and do not require additional CRM user licenses (CALs). Each user with a CRM license can access all of the instances in their subscription. When a user is part of multiple instances, they’ll see an instance picker while logging into CRM Online. Security can also be applied to restrict users only to specific instances.
Instance Security Groups
Security groups defined within the Microsoft Online Services Portal (MOSP) controls access to various CRM Online instances. Any security group available within the MOSP can be used to control access to a CRM instance. If a security group is not associated with a CRM instance, all users with a CRM license will be created as users in the instance. If a security group is associated with an instance, only users with CRM licenses that are members of the security group will be created as users in the CRM instance
Security groups can also be nested, meaning one security group can encompass other security groups making it easy to map complex security and access requirements that is illustrated in the slide. For example, you can easily create an “All Sales” group that includes Corporate, Field Management and Field Sales/Service groups.
Administrators can view and create security groups within the MOSP. If you have configured your subscription for Active Directory synchronization, security groups you create in Active Directory will be replicated to the MOSP and can be associated with your CRM Online instance for simplified integration. Of course security groups within Active Directory can be used for controlling access to other products such as SharePoint, network shares and other applications making it easier to achieve end-to-end enterprise security.
Important reminders regarding the Additional Instance Add-On: 1. Additional instances can only be added to "paid" subscriptions (not trials or IURs) 2. Existing trials and/or subscriptions cannot be merged onto an Additional Instance; instead, the customer or partner will need to move their data and customizations 3. If the customer purchased their CRM Online subscription through Volume Licensing, they must go through their LAR to purchase the Additional Instance 4. Storage is shared across the primary subscription and any purchased Additional Instances 5. Separate security groups can be set up for each Additional Instance
For reasons of their own, some users create Inbox rules to auto-forward their work mails to their private mail or other external domains. As an administrator thats not necessarily at desired scenario.
To prevent internal users from auto-forwaring mails to external recipients you can create a Transport Rule.
Log into the Microsoft Online Portal, and navigate to the Exchange Online Control Panel (ECP)
In the dialog "New Rule", clicking ”More Options” …
...will enable adding more conditions
After clicking ”Add Condition” twice you have a triple AND-condition
For the first condition, in the "If..." section pick ”the sender….” and then ”is external/internal”
In the ”Select Scope” dialog pick ”Inside the organisation”
For the second condition repeat the above with ”the recipient…” and then ”is external/internal” and then ”Outside the organisation”
For the third and final condition pick ”the message properties…” and then ”include the message type”
In the ”Select Message Type” dialog pick ”Auto-forward”
Finally set the Action to be taken if the above condition is met. Under the ”Do the following….” click ”Add Action”
Pick ”Block the message…” and then ”Reject the message and include an explanation”
If the conditions are met and the message is rejected, a non-delivery report (NDR) is returned to the sender. You can create customized text, which appears in the NDR, to explain why a message was rejected (e.g. Auto-forwarding from internal to external is blocked)
Optional – name the rule
Click Save to save the rule.
The long awaited standalone SkyDrive Pro sync client has just been released!
The standalone SkyDrive Pro sync 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.
Until the release of the standalone version you would need an installed Office 365 Pro Plus, Office 365 Small Business Premium, or Office Professional Plus 2013 client on your PC in order to be able to sync SharePoint files to your desktop.
The SkyDrive Pro client can be installed side-by-side with previous versions of Office (Office 2010, Office 2007, etc)
Read more on the SharePoint Team blog here. You can download the standalone SkyDrive Pro sync client here