Microsoft Lystavlen - the Online display board

Lystavlen is the danish word for 'the display board'. This blog is all about sharing the beauty of Microsoft Online Services

August, 2012

  • Quick Tip - change the target email address for Alerts in SharePoint Online

    Alerts

    Do you need to stay on top of the changes done to documents in a document library?  No need to visit the document library every five minutes to see if anything changed – just set an alert for the library.

     
    By default the delivery method for the alert is an email to the email address you use for logging into Office 365


     
    When ever (if you prefer that frequency) someone commit changes to one or more documents in the document library you’ll get an email in your Office 365 Inbox


     
    Changing the email address

    In case you’d like the email to go to another email address, you’ll need to edit the “work e-mail” attribute in your User Profile found in your MySite

    1. Open your Team Site, click your name at the top right and then click "My Profile"

    2. Click "Edit My Profile" (under your picture)


     

    3. Scroll down to the Contact Information section, and type the email address of your choice in the Work e-mail box

     

    Unlocking the work e-mail attribute 

    By default the Work e-mail attribute is read-only for the users of SharePoint Online. However the SharePoint Administrator can allow users to edit the attribute.

    1. Open the SharePoint Online Administration Center and click "Manage User Properties"

     
    2. Scroll down to the Contact Information Section, hover over the area a little to the left of the reordering arrows in the Work e-mail row, click to tiny menu arrow and then click "Edit"


     
    3. Scroll down a bit to the Edit Settings sectiion and change the setting to Allow users to edit values for this property and you are done


     
    From now on the users can edit the work email address and have their alerts sent to the email address of their choice (please note that the changes can take up to a day or two to kick in)

    The new email address now listed in the Delivery Method section of the alert

    And the alert now goes to the email address of my choice

    See also

     

  • New Feature - Work Offline in Outlook Web App

    You can now launch Outlook Web App (OWA) in the browser and start working even if there is no network connectivity. The work you do while disconnected is automatically synchronized the next time connectivity is restored. This allows you to be productive using OWA even when you have no network connectivity. It also makes OWA faster and a better experience from remote locations with slow or intermittently connected networks.

    Our goal for OWA offline is to support the most common user actions, as far as HTML5 offline capabilities allows. This does not take us to the complete offline support of Outlook on the Windows or Mac desktop, but it matches or exceeds the offline capabilities offered by most Exchange ActiveSync phone clients.

    Most email triage and calendar management actions work in OWA while offline. You can:

    • send email and calendar invites
    • delete email
    • get reminders
    • decline meetings
    • flag and categorize messages
    • etc.

    The offline capability in OWA makes most of your email, calendar and contact information available offline. Some of the available features and limitations are:

    • The last few days of messages. Supported folders include Inbox, Drafts and any folder viewed within the last three days, up to 15 folders
    • The previous month and future year of your Calendar
    • A limited set of upcoming Calendar reminders (2 months)
    • All of the items in your Contacts folder, plus any people that you email often and any that you have emailed recently
    • Offline access does not include archived folders, team folders or tasks
    • Full-text indexed search is not yet possible with OWA offline, or HTM5 offline in general

    You can enjoy OWA offline in IE10+, Chrome 17+ or Safari 5. Over time as the offline capabilities of browsers mature, so will OWA’s offline capabilities  You must enable OWA offline functionality on every computer where you want to be able to use OWA without network connectivity. Administrators have the ability to control which users can use OWA offline.

     

    To enable OWA Offline

    1. Log into Office 365 Preview, click "Outlook" to launch OWA, open the Options menu next to your name in the to right corner of the browser and then click "Use mail offline"


      .
    2. OWA will inform you that the OWA data you are about to cache will be available for all users who log in under the account you are currently using on the PC (Internet Explorer will store the data in %systemdrive%\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Indexed DB) If you are ok with that (e.g. if you are the only person logging in under the account) click yes to proceed..
    3. OWA will suggest to you, that you add OWA to your Favorites for easy accessibility
    4. Name the entry for OWA in your Favorites

    Using OWA Offline

    Now imagine a scenario where you are working on your messages in OWA, and suddenly connectivity is lost

    Even if in a no connectivity situation, you can continue working in OWA e.g. compose a new mail

    Write the mail and choose the recipient(s). In this example I'm working from my Office 365 Preview account (on my Office 365 Preview tenant @modernoffice.onmicrosoft.com) and I'm composing a mail to my everyday work email @microsoft.com. I hit send and continue working on other tasks.

    Now imagine a while later, when connectivity is restored, I open OWA 2010 to read my work mail and sure enough - the mail sent in the Offline scenario is there for me to read (see left side of graphics below).

     

    Caching 

    OWA offline is enabled via a new feature in IE10, called Cache and databases. To access the settings for the cache

    1. open "Internet Options"
    2. click the "General" tab
    3. click the "Settings" button to open the Website Data Settings dialog
    4. click the "Caches and databases" tab

     From here you can e.g delete the cache (will disable OWA Offline) or change notification settings.

    Note:

    • You can enjoy OWA offline in IE10+ (using HTML5’s IndexedDB for storage), Chrome 17+ (with WebSQL) or Safari 5 (also using WebSQL)
    • At the time of writing this article (august 28, 2012) the 'boot from offline' scenario (booting IE in a no connectivity environment) does not work in my Office 365 Preview (Beta) environment. But its expected to work after the beta.

     

    See also

    • Offline access in Outlook Web App 2013 - link (deep dive from the product group - Nov 6th 2012)

     

     

     

     

  • Recover deleted-deleted mail in Exchange Online

    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.

    See also

  • Silence in your Lync Online Conference?

    If you are using an Audio Conference Provider (ACP) - and you experienced the following: after you dial in to a Microsoft Lync Online conference by using your ACP access number, you cannot hear other users who are connected to the Lync Online conference through their computers, and vice versa - one thing to check is if you've configured your Lync Online service to Open domain federation.

    Open domain federation is required for Lync Online meetings that involve an ACP. This is true because the ACP joins the Lync Online conference as an anonymous user. If domain federation is not configured to use the Allow federation with all domains except those I block setting, the audio will not bridge between the ACP and the Lync Online VoIP users.

    To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

    • Open the Lync Online Control Panel , click "External communications", and select "Turn on external communications with all except blocked domains"
    • Hang up, and then dial in to the conference again to verify that the correct conference ID is entered.
    • Users who are connected through Lync Online should verify that ACP participants are displayed in the attendee roster and that the participants have the correct number.
    • Users who are connected through Lync Online should verify that they have a solid network connection and that they receive no errors about degraded network or audio quality.
    • Make sure that the toll number and toll-free number are entered without any punctuation or parentheses when provisioning dial-in conferencing for a Lync Online user.
    • The meeting organizer’s Lync Online account and the ACP account must be configured in the same geographic region. For example, if your Office 365 organization is based in North America, you cannot use an ACP account that is configured for the United Kingdom.  Contact your ACP to verify that your account was created in the appropriate region

    See also

  • New Feature - Rights Management Services

    With Windows Azure AD Rights Management, you can protect your data by encrypting and managing access rights, including Office documents, Exchange email, and SharePoint document libraries across your Office 365 Enterprise Preview services and applications.

    The technology is highly integrated into Office 2013 Preview, Exchange Online Preview, and SharePoint Online Preview, and offers a seamless experience for both end users and administrators in document authoring, email, and SharePoint publishing.

    • Office IRM Integration – Rights Management enables Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 Preview and Microsoft Office 2010 users to be able to IRM protect content using predefined policies provided by the service within a company. Office applications that include these capabilities are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and InfoPath.
    • Exchange Online Preview IRM Integration – Rights Management enables users of Microsoft Exchange Online Preview to IRM protect and consume email messages in Outlook Web Access (OWA) and consume IRM protected messages via Exchange Active Sync for devices that have implemented IRM support including Windows Phone 7. Exchange administrators can enable additional features, such as Outlook protection rules as well as transport rules for protection and decryption, to ensure content is not inadvertently leaked outside of the organizational boundary and edit the content of the message to include disclaimers.
    • SharePoint Online Preview IRM Integration – Rights Management enables Microsoft SharePoint Online Preview administrators to create IRM protected document libraries so that when a user checks-out a document from the IRM document library, IRM is applied to the document and the user has the rights to that document as they were specified for the document library by the administrator.

     All you have to do to get started is:

    1. Enable Windows Azure AD Rights Management for your organization (download a module for Windows Powershell and run a couple of commands)
    2. Configure Office 2013 Preview for Windows Azure AD Rights Management (run a registry update command on your Office 2013 machines)
    3. Start using the IRM functionality (from the File/Protect Document menu)

    Read all the details in this blog post "Enabling Windows Azure AD Rights Management in Office 365 Enterprise Preview" from the AD RMS Team Blog.

     

    See also

    • What's New with Information Rights Management in SharePoint and SharePoint Online? - link (published 11/9/2012 )
  • New Feature - Site Mailboxes in SharePoint Online

    One of the most requested features in SharePoint Online in Office 365 is mail-enabled document libraries.

    In the next major update to Office 365 - currently in Preview and called "Office 365 Preview" - we will bring you what is called Site Mailboxes.

    A Site Mailbox is a shared inbox in Exchange Online that all the members of a SharePoint Online site can access. It is implemented in SharePoint Online Preview as what is known as an app. An app is best described as a solution that carries a light footprint and uses standards-based technologies such as HTML5, JavaScript, and OAuth.

    The Site Mailbox is accessible from the site in which it is created. It allow access to users who are individually listed in the Owners and Members groups of the site - security groups or distribution lists are not supported by Site Mailboxes. The email address of the site mailbox will be generated automatically from the name of the site.

    Site mailboxes are surfaced in Outlook 2013 and give you easy access to the emails and documents for the projects you care about. Site Mailboxes are listed in the Folder Explorer in Outlook 2013 (the rich client), letting you file emails or documents into the shared project space simply by dragging the email, document, or attachment into the site mailbox.

    You will not see your site mailboxes when you sign into your mailbox with Outlook Web App. However, if you are in the default owners or members lists of the site you can use the Site Mailbox app to see an OWA web part that displays the messages in that site mailbox.

     

    To set up a Site Mailbox for at site

    1. Log into Office 365 Preview, click "Sites" in the top navigation bar and then click "new site"

    2. Type the name of your new site, e.g TheMailHeavySite...

    3. Click “Keep email in context” to install a brand new app called “Site Mailbox”...

    4, Click the "Add" button to install the app...

    5. Click the newly installed "Site Mailbox" app to create the shared mailbox and make it accessible on your site...

    The mailbox is being setup...

    6. Select your prefered language and time zone...

    The mailbox is ready, complete with a mail listing the email address of the mailbox - in this example TheMailHeavySite@modernoffice.onmicrosoft.com since my trial domain is modernoffice.onmicrosoft.com. People can now send mail to the site using that email address.

    Back on the site home page you and other site members can access the newly created mailbox using the link created under the header "Recent" or by clicking "Keep email in contect"

    If you open Outlook 2013 you will see the Site Mailbox(es) you are a member of listed in the lower left corner of the Folder Explorer in Outlook. Under each Site Mailbox a subfolder called "Documents" exists. You can drag attachments from any email to these "Documents" subfolders and they are automatically uploaded to the corresponding document library "Documents" in the SharePoint Online site to which the Site Mailbox is related.

    To learn much more about Site Mailboxes please see the newly published blog post by the Exchange Team "Site Mailboxes in the new Office".

    See also

  • New Feature - Office on Demand

    The next major update to Office 365 - currently in Preview and called "Office 365 Preview" - will bring you Office on Demand in the "Office 365 Enterprise Preview" edition.

    Office on Demand is a technology that delivers a single Office application, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher or InfoPath on demand to you as an Office 365 user. This can be used on a PC temporarily accessed by you, such as a in business center, a relative’s PC or a borrowed PC. Lync, OneNote, and Outlook are not available via Office on Demand delivery.

    The Office program is streamed instantly to the PC and is not permanently installed. Office on Demand will work on Windows 7 and newer PCs that have Internet access. For an in-depth blog post about Office on Demand click here.

     

    To temporarily use e.g. Word 2013 on any Windows 7 and newer PC

    1. Log into your Office 365 Preview and click "SkyDrive"

    2. At the lower left corner click "Use Office 2013"

    3. On the "Stream and use your Office subscription" screen click "Word" to start the streaming

    3. After just a few minutes Word 2013 starts...

    ... connects to your account (to give you your recent documents, settings etc)

    4. And you can start enjoying Word 2013

    If you havent done so already you can sign up for a trial account here and start testing all the new capabilities of the new Office 365.

    See also

     

  • Must Read: "Top Ways to Prepare for an Office 365 Deployment"

    Based upon areas that caused delays for customers in the past, a group of Microsoft Office 365 deployment experts har compiled a must read article "Top Ways to Prepare for an Office 365 Deployment".

    The sound advice in the article hopefully will help ensure a positive deployment experience to Office 365.

    See also:

  • Quick Tip: Get more Inbox Rules in Exchange Online

    If you use Exchange Online in Office 365 together with Outlook you are limited to 64 KB worth of inbox rules (or appx 45 rules).

    When you reach the 64 KB limit, you'll be warned that you can't create any more rules. If that happens, you'll have to delete or simplify some of your existing rules before you can create more. Some ways you can reduce the space used by rules are:

    • Delete rules you no longer need
    • Shorten the names of your rules
    • Combine one or more rules that do the same thing
    • Remove criteria from rules

    Quick Tip

    A less known tip to obtain more rules than 45 from the 64 KB is to type an alias manually instead of selecting it, when prompted to browse to the desired user alias/DL in the rules wizard.

    1. Open the Rules Wizard, and click the "people or public group" link

    2. Instead of browsing to a person or group, simply type the alias in the "From ->" field

    3. The alias is known to Exchange

    If you browse to the alias (instead of typing it manually) Exchange will use the Distinguished Name (DN) which takes up significantly more space, thus limiting the amount of inbox rules you can fit into the 64 KB.

    UPDATE september 2012: A recent update made in Office 365 Exchange Online allows Tenant Admins to increase the Inbox Rules Quota limit for their users. The update has been deployed to the Office 365 Service and you can benefit from it today! See this article for more: Tenant Admins can now increase Inbox ‘Rules Quota’ limit for their users!