Partner Technical Services Blog

SharePoint Online, External Sharing End-to-End (Ignite Webcast)

2013-05-22T22:17:02Z

Time/Date: Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 @ 10am PT (60 minutes)

Description:
SharePoint Online has a revamped experience for sharing documents, folders and sites. Users can now share with people outside the company using Guest Links (anonymous) and External Access (authenticated) invitations. And there are key controls for IT administrators to comply with their company’s business preferences, with granular controls unique to individual business units. In our latest Ignite webcast we will share and show the new experiences for sharing, permissions, access requests, external invitations, and how IT can flexibly manage the experience end to end. This is a great opportunity to join Microsoft employees and other Office 365 users for a productive discussion.

Our webcast will be led by Mark Kashman. Mark is a Senior Product Manager on the SharePoint team focusing primarily on SharePoint Online and SharePoint Mobility – Microsoft’s business collaboration platform in the Cloud. He has worked at Microsoft since 2000, starting with the Academy team – whose focus is on internal training and readiness for the Microsoft Field – then worked for a few years building an asset management solution built on top of SharePoint 2007 before moving to the SharePoint team and into the SharePoint Online role. This is a great opportunity to join a discussion with our Microsoft presenters. Bring your questions!

And stay until the end for a fun Office Doc scavenger hunt - chance to win a Amazon.com gift card.

Speaker: Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager – SharePoint (@mkashman)

Link to all info & “add calendar reminder”: http://ignite.office.com/learn/webcasts/ignite-webcast---external-sharing-end-to-end-2

Office 365 PowerShell Series

2013-05-20T22:16:58Z

For Partners only, we have a series of 3 training videos that have just been released to the Partner Learning Center.

Office 365: PowerShell Series Part 1 - Introduction to PowerShell

Automation is the key to efficiency. Microsoft Windows PowerShell ® provides a more powerful method of accessing the intimacies of Microsoft Online Services whilst also opening up the possibility to automate Office 365 administrative tasks. This webinar is part 1 of a 3 part PowerShell series. In Part 1 we provide an introduction to PowerShell usage with Office 365. This includes how we connect of Office 365 using PowerShell and an Overview of Office 365 PowerShell cmdlets.

Office 365: PowerShell Series Part 2 - Digging into PowerShell

In Part 2 of the PowerShell webinar series we cover essential concepts that are required to get the best understanding of how to interact and use PowerShell. This includes Windows PowerShell Navigation, Working with Objects and PowerShell ISE.

Office 365: PowerShell Series Part 3 - Dynamic PowerShell Scripts

In Part 3 of the PowerShell webinar series scripting concepts are introduced to provide the essential knowledge required to dynamically automate and / or simplify repetitive or lengthy tasks. PowerShell functionality covered includes Looping, Conditional Statement Flow, Working with external data and Creating Reusable Scripts.

For everyone else, make sure to check out Jon Horner’s PowerShell for Common Office 365 Operations, an excellent primer on how to administer Office 365 from the command line!

Migrating Mailboxes to Office 365

2013-05-20T19:10:38Z

In the previous Office 365 Mailbox Migration Strategies session, Gabor discussed the options for migrating mailboxes to Office 365, considerations for choosing a particular migration strategy, and provided an overview of basic and advanced migration methods.

Now, he dives into how to perform the migration itself:

Session PowerPoint available here: Migrating Mailboxes to Office 365

Lync Online Hybrid Deployment

2013-05-20T15:51:26Z

Interested in learning more about your options for deploying Lync in a Hybrid configuration with Office 365?

Join Partner Solution Consultant Saleesh Neduvayalil as he discusses how Microsoft envisions the Lync Hybrid offering in the marketplace, and the various functionality introduced with the offering. This session covers different scenarios which might require a hybrid deployment of Lync 2013, as well as the requirements and approaches for deploying and migrating services. The course will conclude with a review of the feature parity between deployment models, user profiles associated with each, and a brief review of the shift from Hybrid Voice to Split-Domain.

Session PowerPoint Deck available on SkyDrive here:

Lync Online Hybrid Deployment

Is Your App Failing Certification?

2013-05-16T20:01:00Z

The Microsoft Services team is often called in to help when an application fails certification. In the videos below, we’ve compiled some of the top reason’s we’ve seen an app fail certification. If you are building a Windows Store application it just might be worth your time to spend a little time watching these videos. If you have other tips to avoid certification blockers, please share them in the comments below.

Windows Store - Preparing for Certification (Part 1)

Windows Store - Preparing for Certification (Part 2)

Happy Developing.

Windows Store App Development - Skill Builder Training

2013-05-16T19:35:27Z

In case you missed the kickoff to our Windows Store Skill Builder Series, head on over to part 1 to check it out. In the Intermediate portion of this training we’re excited to bring two new videos.

Intermediate Part 1

In this workshop you’ll learn how to work with Tiles, Snapped Views, and Fill Views when building your app.

Partner Learning Center - full course.

Intermediate Part 2

In this workshop you’ll learn how to implement sharing and search in your app.

Partner Learning Center - full course.

Happy Developing!

Coming Soon - 4 new “advanced” modules.

Spotlight – Windows Dev/Design Center

2013-05-16T19:14:58Z

If you have ever built a Windows Store application without browsing to Design Center: http://design.windows.com and Dev Center: http://dev.windows.com then you have missed out on some of the best practices and a wealth of resources you could have leveraged.

These two sites should be the first destination for anyone building Windows Store Apps. These sites include detailed guidance on:

User Experience Design

UX Templates

UX Patterns

Monetization

Design Assets like Adobe Photoshop Files

Sample Applications

And more…

For developers, the sites can be overwhelming when you first visit them as they contain a lot of information for anyone to absorb on a single visit. I recommend you start at the basic tutorials here:

Create your first Windows Store app using C# or Visual Basic

Create your first Windows Store app using JavaScript

Or there is a fantastic HOL for building a Contoso Cookbook.

For UX designers, the site provides planning & guidance based on already successful apps.

How to Demonstrate Office 365 to Customers

2013-05-15T15:28:13Z

In the past, it could be difficult to demonstrate the Office Server products (SharePoint, Lync, or Exchange) to prospective clients. You had to setup up your own server, load some demo data, add some sample users, decide what to demo, and carry around a beefy laptop with enough RAM and hard drive to run those servers.

Fortunately, in an Office 365 world, the process is much simpler.

As a Microsoft Partner, you have access to the Microsoft Office Demos site at https://www.microsoftofficedemos.com site.

This site has been set up to allow you access to a demonstration environment and guide materials for the new Office and Office 2013 without requiring a full installation locally.

Your Microsoft Office demo environment consists of a personalized Office 365 trial tenant created, configured, and populated with demo-ready content by a special provisioning tool (accessible from the Create Demo page of this site). That tenant includes access to trials of the latest Office client products as well. Once your Office 365 tenant is set up, it can be used along with a demo guide to deliver an effective demo to a customer or partner that covers the full range of Office products – including backend (Exchange, SharePoint, Lync) and client (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) products.

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) images of the Office 2013 server and client products are hosted on the web and also available for download for those who cannot use Office 365 to perform their demos.

Your personalized Office demo environment uses the following:

Office 365 Enterprise SKU trial tenant (note: this tenant is subject to trial restrictions, including a 30-day expiration) or VHD environment
Office Enterprise Hero Demo guide which provides talking script and clicking guidelines

The set of demo personas and preconfigured content deployed by the provisioning tool correspond to the demo guides and Hands-on Labs created for the new Office and Office 2013 environment. These demos focus on a small set of "hero" personas which are used to walk through the demo steps with minimal changes of user context.

Talking script and click guideline documents for these demos and Hands-on Labs, as well as more information on the Office demo environment, can be found here.

With the Demo Content Provisioning wizard, you can create a new demo environment from scratch (which includes setting up and configuring a trial tenant), refresh a demo (so the demo “dates” on e-mails and newsfeed posts are up-to-date), or load the demo content on an existing tenant. Choose a location for the demo and pick a tenant name, and then sit back and relax as the tenant is provisioned

While the tenant is provisioning, head over to the Resources page and download the demo guides. There are separate demo scripts for Enterprise, Small and Midsize Business, as well as for each individual product.

To help get you started with your Demo, Partner Solution Consultant Jon Horner has recorded a session on “How to Demo Office 365”. Check it out!

Advanced Windows Store App Development using C# Jump Start

2013-05-14T13:29:15Z

Coming soon is a GREAT opportunity to join us for some exciting learning. This Jump Start provides an accelerated overview of Advanced Windows Store App Development Using C#. This is a course for intermediate to advanced learners and will help you prepare for Microsoft exam 70-485. Microsoft Technical Evangelist Jerry Nixon and the co-founder of Crank211, Daren May will share numerous demos and samples of simple and complex techniques on how to add animations and transitions in a Windows Store app to improve the user experience, how to optimize various storage mechanisms, choose a suitable caching strategy for their Windows Store app, to name a few topics. Get ready for a packed fun and fast paced event!

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/liveevents/Adv-Windows-Store-App-JumpStart

Dealing with Documents: How (not) to use the documentsLibrary capability in Windows Store apps

2013-05-10T14:30:53Z

Check out the recent post from one of our escalation engineers, Rob Caplan. If you are building a Windows Store App or know someone who is this just might prove helpful.

Dealing with Documents: How (not) to use the documentsLibrary capability in Windows Store apps

Happy Developing!