Since the beginning of March customers are no longer capped at 5TB for SharePoint Online storage and they may consume up to 25TBs.
Default SharePoint Online storage for customers is available based on the following equation : 10GB + (500MB * no of users) and customers can buy extra storage up to 25TB – see Understanding Storage Allocations in SharePoint Online
The price of SharePoint Online Extra Storage is now $ 0.20 Per GB/month. Coming from $ 2.50 this represents a reduction of 92%. See the full blog post here.
Additional storage can only be purchased with other SharePoint Online plans or any Office 365 E Plan
See also
SharePoint Online users have a Recycle Bin where deleted content is stored. You can access the Recycle Bin to recover deleted documents and lists if you need to. This is sometimes called the first stage Recycle Bin. If you delete a file from your Recycle Bin the file is taken to a second stage Recycle Bin called the Site Collection Level Recycle Bin.
First stage Recycle Bin
Second-Stage/Site Collection Level Recycle Bin
Example
You delete a file e.g a document from a document library...
The deleted file goes into your Recycle Bin...
If you delete the file from the Recycle Bin...
It goes into the second stage recycle bin – the Site Collection Level Recycle Bin (accessible to you if you have the Site Collection Administrators Role)...
When you restore the file from the Site Collection Recycle Bin...
Its restored to its original location...
The following data types are captured by the Recycle Bin:
The following data types are not captured by the Recycle Bin:
*The Recycle Bin in SharePoint Online for Enterprises provides a safety net when an entire site collection is deleted. When a SharePoint Online administrator deletes a site collection, it is placed in the Recycle Bin where it is kept for 30 days before it is automatically permanently deleted - read more here
In the current version of Exchange Online, you create and configure shared mailboxes using the Windows PowerShell command line. You must create the shared mailbox, configure quotas, and then assign permissions so that users can open and send messages from the shared mailbox. To make this task a lot easier, we created a GUI-based tool that you can use to create and configure shared mailboxes.
For instructions about how to install and use the Office 365 Shared Mailbox Tool, check out this wiki article: http://community.office365.com/en-us/w/exchange/1712.aspx (note: in the article its suggested that you use Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned if the tool doesnt open - it that doesnt help you can try Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted)
Get the tool (posted in a .zip file) from the Office 365 Downloads forum here: http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/183/t/45006.aspxe
The tool will make it a lot easier to create Shared Mailboxes. It looks like this:
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 **
Many customers have asked us to support Outlook 2003 in order to help accelerate their migrations to Office 365. We have heard these requests loud and clear.
In an effort to better facilitate the transition for our customers, we will now offer support for Office 365 customers connecting to Outlook 2003 via POP or IMAP. Outlook 2003 will only connect to Exchange Online via POP or IMAP, as MAPI-based connection is not possible with this client version and a cloud service. Using Outlook 2003 with POP or IMAP enables standard email functionality, but does have key limitations including:
While we strongly recommend that Office 365 customers use Office 2010 to ensure the best user experience and support, we hope this new support for Outlook 2003 helps make the move to Office 365 even faster and easier.
SharePoint solutions are packaged as .wsp files that can contain features, site definitions, Web Parts, and assemblies. There are two kinds of solutions: farm and sandboxed. Farm solutions are deployed on front-end Web servers by a farm administrator, have full access to the server object model, and are not subject to any usage limits.
In SharePoint Online you cant access the farm.
By comparison, sandboxed solutions can be deployed by a site collection administrator — or by a user who has the Full Control permission level at the root of the site collection — into the solution gallery for a site collection e.g. on SharePoint Online in Office 365.
Sandboxed solutions have limited access to the server object model and run in a security restricted context that provides isolation and monitoring of the sandboxed solution's code. It is not always easy for a developer to remember which restrictions apply to sandboxed solutions in SharePoint Online.
IntelliSense to the Rescue
Most Visual Studio developers find IntelliSense tremendously useful for discovering API features, syntax, and usage. But it’s less than useful if it shows APIs your project can’t use. In Visual Studio 11 IntelliSense has been improved when developing remote solutions to display only APIs that are applicable to sandboxed solutions. Also, red squiggles and compile errors appear if your code contains any references to APIs that won’t work in sandboxed solutions.
This is only one of the improvements for SharePoint Online developers in Visual Studio 11 - read more in this blog post from the SharePoint Developer Team.
Are you tired of relying on email to facilitate project collaboration? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a more efficient project collaboration solution out there? Office 365 can take your project collaboration practices to the next level.
The folks from the Microsoft Project Team compiled a bunch of videos to help you utilize Office 365 with Microsoft Office, Project and Windows Phone to enhance your project collaboration. You'll find the videos here
They also wrote a white paper, in which you can learn and see how to easily facilitate better project collaboration with your colleagues utilizing existing tools that you already use like Windows, Microsoft Office, your mobile devices and even non-Microsoft platforms. The intended audience for this whitepaper includes project teams that rely on email, Microsoft Office tools like Excel, Word, Project and who have yet to implement an enterprise project management platform such as Microsoft Project Server, but need the ability to collaborate with project resources via current Microsoft Office tools or through Office 365
As we rapidly add customers, the cost to run Office 365 becomes more efficient. This is the beauty of the cloud where we can deliver economies of scale through our worldwide data centers and economies of skill with our engineers, administrators, and support teams operating the service. For example, we take advantage of bigger and cheaper storage, delivering significant efficiencies at scale. With these efficiencies, we're able pass on savings to make it even more affordable for customers of all sizes to move to Office 365
We're lowering the prices of most of our Office 365 for Enterprise plans by up to 20%.
Read the full blog post on the official Office 365 blog here and the official SharePoint Product Group blog here
The Conversation Translator provides a real-time language translation service for Lync instant messaging (IM) conversations.
With Conversation Translator, both the sender and receiver can converse in their native language, and Conversation Translator handles the translation. Powered by the Microsoft Translator Web Service, Conversation Translator currently supports translation between 35 languages.
So lets say I would like to engage in a conversation with my Finnish coworker Kristian Tuomilehto. Kristian is very fluent in english but for the sake of this demonstration he has agreed to reply to my Finnish IMs (Thank you Kristian).
After installing the tool, I just click the double chevron at the upper right of the Lync conversation window (see below) and choose Conversation Translator
The Lync client is extended with a conversation area to the right (see below) in which I can select sender and receiver language and start the conversation.
Download it here. Enjoy :-)
We are adding a significant to our Partner Value Proposition this month; starting late March, our MCS consultants are going to share with you their experience, guides and tools for you to build your technical skills and capacity around Office 365.
SPECIAL OFFER – Practice Accelerator for Office 365 is available at NO COST to Cloud Essential and Cloud Accelerate Partners (ordinary price is 10 Partner Advisory Hours). It’s delivered Online at set dates across the world. Check out the short description below, the dates and times of the regional sessions and register asap!
Build a Services Practice to Fast Track Your BusinessPractice Accelerator (PA) is a Microsoft offering designed to help partners build a technical services practice around Microsoft solutions. PA is a comprehensive set of reusable tools, resources, and best practices introduced in training delivered via Microsoft Live Meeting. PA enables you to identify customer requirements, analyze their needs, scope projects, plan solution requirements, and deploy Microsoft solutions. Practice Accelerator can help you build your business capacity. The complete, reusable documentation set includes project guides, templates, architecture guidance, and planning and design guides, as well as leave-behind materials for your customers.
Practice Accelerator for Office 365Become ready to help your customers transition to the cloud with Practice Accelerator for Microsoft Office 365. Office 365 takes the industry's most recognized set of productivity and collaboration tools and delivers them as a subscription service. With these cloud services, your customers’ organizations can lower overall costs and deliver the right set of tools for the right users, all with appropriate layers of security and compliance.
Practice Accelerator for Microsoft Office 365 is presented by Microsoft experts via Microsoft Office Live Meeting for 4 hours per day over 4 consecutive days (totaling 16 hours).
The session outline is centered around the different phases in an Office 365 deployment project; the Plan phase, the Prepare phase, the Migrate phase and the Post-Deployment phase (you can read more about those in the Deployment Guide)
Register now - click here
Microsoft Lync Server 2010 offers a number of flexible deployment options. Amongst other things it can be deployed on premises and hosted directly by Microsoft:
Lync Server 2010 provides all the functionality that is available with Lync Online. In addition, Lync Server includes Voice and PBX capabilities that enable organizations to replace or enhance traditional telephony solutions with the Lync next generation communications platform.
Limitations
It is important to note that the Lync technology does not support coexistence between Lync Online and Lync Server using a single domain. Therefore, it is not possible to deploy a subset of users in Lync Online and other users on-premises using a single domain name. Lync federation can be used to enable users to communicate between Lync Online and Lync on-premises deployments, using different domain names. It is not possible to split Lync workloads (IM, online meetings and Voice/PBX) between the cloud and on-premises. For example, it is not possible to deploy IM and meetings in the cloud with voice on-premises for a single user. If you want voice you will need to run your own server (or have it hosted at a hoster).
Picture 1: Plan E3 and lower
Picture 2: Plan E4
Picture 3: Licensing and Deployment
Licensing comparison
So how does the on-premises licensing compare to the Microsoft hosted E4 subscription if you look at a Lync scenario with enterprise voice? In either case you must purchase and deploy a Lync Server on-premises. The difference lies in the way you purchase the client application and the needed CALs:
On-Premises licensing If you purchased the CALs, the licenses would amount to USD 245* up front per user (Standard CAL + Enterprise CAL + Plus CAL)
SubscriptionThe E4 subscription is USD 27 per user per month and includes SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office Web Applications and Office Pro Plus. If you subscribe to Lync Online in a standalone scenario the USLs are as follows:
So the USLs amounts to USD 9.5 per user per month before service pack savings. Usually you'll save a little less than 40% if you subscribe to an Office 365 service plan (like E4) instead of subscribing to standalone plans. Taking into account the service plan savings we can set the total USL to appx USD 6 per user per month.
CAPEX to OPEXIn other words you have a choice between CAPEX and OPEX at a rate of appx 40:1. Thats more than three years.
*All prices in the blue column above reflect pricing for Open (No Level) retail purchases within the United States and are in US dollars as of December 1, 2010. The prices listed are license only estimated prices (not including SA); reseller pricing can vary by program and volume. Please note that prices are subject to change; contact a reseller or Microsoft account representative for specific pricing. See Microsoft Lync Licensing Guide for more.
If you are currently on Exchange Server, you most likely are using Public Folders in some sort or shape. Maybe you are considering Exhange Online in Office 365, and heard somewhere that Exchange Online does not support public folders?
Well, thats true.
The good thing is, many of the usage scenarios usually found in public folder solutions can be imitated in Office 365. The trick is analyzing how you are using public folders today and then imitate that in Office 365. Some of the common public folder scenarios are:
Based on the analysis you will imitate your public folder workloads using primarily Shared Mailboxes in Exchange Online and/or Document Libraries or custom lists in SharePoint Online.
E.g the calendar part in the first bullet above can be accomplished in two ways:
You can read much more about building an environment that mirrors your use of public folders in Exhange in the whitepaper "Migrate from Exchange Public Folders to Microsoft Office 365" - link