To discourage users from sending unsolicited bulk messages, Exchange Online has restrictions that prevent users and applications from sending large volumes of email. Customers who send a lot of e-mails will need to understand the limits to how many messages can be sent from a single account in a period of time in the different Office 365 plans.
The recipient per user per day limit is enforced by Exchange and applies to all traffic (internal and external). It is enforced by a hidden “counter” stored as a property in the user’s Exchange mailbox (Exchange throttling controls). Once this reaches the maximum number of recipients, Exchange won’t let the user send any more mail until 24 hours after the user sent the first mail counting against the recipient rate limits (see example below) . The limit is separate from (and more restrictive than) limits in FOPE.
Each Exchange Online mailbox can send messages to a maximum of 10,000 recipients per day in the Enterprise plans (E) and 10,000 per day in the Small Business and Professionals plan (P1). (in December 2011 the P1 was increased from 500 to 1,500, and in November 2012 both plans was increased from 1,500 to 10,000).
Example: An E plan user sends a mail to 500 recipients at 09:00, another mail to 500 recipients at 10:00 and yet another mail to 500 recipients at 11:00, hitting the limit of 1,500. The user will be able to send mails again 09:00 the next day (for more detailed examples see this help topic.)
So you might wonder: if you send 10 messages to the same person (over the course of a rolling 24 hour window), does that count as 10 recipients for the purpose of these limits? Or just 1?
The answer is, that it actually counts as 10 recipients (for the purposes of these limits). Each time you send a message, Exchange Online counts each recipient and adds this to your total. The fact that you sent a message to the same recipient earlier the same day doesn’t make any difference.
If you think the answer to the question "Is Office 365 more expensive than Google Apps" is "Yes" (and many people do), you might want to read this white paper. You'll find that many of the elements included in the Office 365 service (e.g AV/AS) is extras in Google Apps:
Getting started as an Office 365 partner is easy - especially if you know where to find the right information.
I've compiled the resources I find relevant in an easy read document intended to help MPN partners get started with Office 365. Most of the links are labeled with a (T) for technicians and an (S) sales people if applicable.
Find the document here (updated November 18, 2011 to version 1.3).
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.
See also
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.
Are you evaluating how Office 365 fits into your overall communication and collaboration strategy plan, both today and into the future? Specific to SharePoint, are you planning for full cloud adoption within your firewall, or will you begin your move to the cloud with a mixed deployment across SharePoint environments – both on-premises and online within Office 365?
To provide insight in this area, we’re excited to announce the new “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365” whitepaper - downloadable here
As of June 28th, 2011, Office 365 introduced the ability to achieve single sign-on (SSO) via Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). Once established, this enables end-users to securely move between on-premises and online boundaries.
The “Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365” whitepaper provides step-by-step guidance for extending SharePoint and SharePoint Online beyond SSO – covering
The paper equally weighs a variety of business scenarios providing clear guidance about which deployment approach might make the most sense in your organization.
Happy reading and happy hybriding
To enable you to do a structured evaluation of a Office 365 30 day Trial in your organisation, we've published a couple of Trial Guides for you to download. One for Midsize and Enterprises (the E plan) and one for Professionals and Small Businesses (the P plan).
The guides are intended for administrators and technical decision makers in your company who want to gain experience with Office 365 to evaluate better its benefits for your company. They both begin with a review of the services that are available in Office 365, and a description of their capabilities. The rest of each guide is designed to be used as a real-time road map that provides step-by-step instructions to help you understand quickly how to configure your environment, manage your company’s account, and then work with the services that are available in Office 365.
The step-by-step procedures for the E plan trial are grouped into the following scenarios:
There are differences in capabilities between the E and the P plan that affect step-by-step instructions. Hence the step-by-step procedures for the P plan trial are grouped into the following scenarios:
Happy trial