TechEd Europe kicks off Monday, Nov. 9 at the Messe Berlin Convention Center in Berlin, Germany. More than 5,600 IT Pros and Developers are expected to attend, and the event is sold out.
The Microsoft Online Services team is partnering with the Windows Azure group to deliver conference sessions in the Cloud Computing and Online Services virtual track.
Following are the planned sessions for Microsoft Online Services technologies:
|
Monday, Nov. 9 |
|
Timeslot |
Code |
Room |
Session Title |
Speaker |
Session Type |
|
09:00-10:15 |
UNC203 |
New York 1 – Hall 71a |
Implementing and Administering Microsoft Online Services |
Cyril Sultan |
Breakout Session |
|
Tuesday, Nov. 9 |
|
17:00-18:15 |
OFS209 |
Europa 2 - Hall 7-3b |
Microsoft SharePoint Online Overview: Today's World |
Kimmo Forss |
Breakout Session |
|
Wednesday, Nov. 11 |
|
10:45-12:00 |
SIA08-IS |
Interactive Theatre 6 |
Security Services in the Cloud |
Mike Chan |
Interactive Theatre |
|
17:00-18:45 |
UNC205 |
Berlin 2 – Hall 7-3a |
Tips and Tricks for Planning, Deploying and Troubleshooting the Microsoft Office Live Meeting Service |
Cyril Sultan |
Breakout Session |
|
Thursday Nov. 12 |
|
13:30-14:45 |
UNC310 |
London 3- Hall 7-1b |
Migrating Data, Co-Existence, and Directory Synchronization with Microsoft Online Services |
David Anderson |
Breakout Session |
|
17:00-18:15 |
ITS213 |
Europa 1 - Hall 7-3b |
Critical Infrastructure and Operations for Delivering Secure, Enterprise-Class Software Services |
Gail Warren |
Breakout Session |
Visit Microsoft Online Services in the TLC
The Technical Learning Centers provide the heartbeat of TechEd events, where attendees have one-on-one interaction with speakers and subject matter experts and get personal product demonstrations.
If you’re attending TechEd Europe, make sure you visit the Microsoft Online Services pavilion. The Windows Azure and Microsoft Online Services teams will be providing product demonstrations. Plus, attendees can sign up for 30-day trial accounts of the Business Productivity Online Suite.
Follow us on Twitter
Those not attending TechEd Europe can follow activities at the conference via the Microsoft Online Services account on Twitter. The @msonline account will have regular updates from Berlin.
The Microsoft Online Services Service Update for November 2009 is currently being deployed into production data centers and is scheduled to be available to all customers in early December. Updates to the deployment status will be posted to the comments section of this blog post.
Upgrades and Enhancements
The following features and capabilities are included in this Service Update:
Mailbox Access Permissions
PowerShell commandlets will be added to provide a range of mailbox permission setting, including granting Full Mailbox Access permissions plus Delegate Send As and Send on Behalf permissions. These mailbox permissions provide administrators a range of capabilities, such as setting up shared mailboxes, granting “send as” permissions for administrative assistants, and enabling full mailbox access for third party applications, such as archiving applications and fax servers.
Previously, granting these permissions required opening a ticket with Microsoft Online Services Technical Support.
Mailbox permission commandlets added in this Service Update are:
· Add-MSOnlineMailPermission
· Remove-MSOnlineMailPermission
The mailbox permission commandlets require an update to the Microsoft Online Services Transporter Tools (aka Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools), which will be made will be available for download at the Microsoft Download Center upon completion of the deployment of this Service Update into production data centers for all regions. Please watch this Team Blog for the availability of the updated Transporter Tools.
Bulk User Management
Adding and removing users is streamlined with the addition of another set of PowerShell commandlets. The bulk user management commandlets give administrators a new option for adding groups of users. Together with the bulk activation commandlets provided in the previous Service Update, administrators have a rich set of tools for automating user management.
Bulk user management commandlets added in this Service Update are:
· Add-MSOnlineUser
· Set-MSOnlineUser
· Remove-MSOnlineUser
· Get-MSOnlineUser
The bulk user management commandlets require an update to the Microsoft Online Services Transporter Tools, which will be made will be available for download at the Microsoft Download Center upon completion of the deployment of this Service Update into production data centers for all regions. Please watch this Team Blog for the availability of the updated Transporter Tools.
SharePoint Auditing
The SharePoint Auditing feature is being enabled for SharePoint Online. This feature gives administrators the ability to view data and report about activities occurring within a site collection, such as items added to a shared documents list, changes to permissions, and documents that have been viewed and read.
Partner Name on Microsoft Online Services Invoice
Customers that have a relationship with a Microsoft Online Services Partner and have designated that partner as their “partner of record” will now see the name of their partner on their subscription invoice. Partners are technical and business professionals who specialize in Microsoft products, and they are an important part of Microsoft’s delivery of your software services.
New countries for trials and commercial availability
As was announced earlier this week, customers in the following 14 countries can sign up for Microsoft Online Services trial accounts: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Taiwan.
In addition, customers Singapore can purchase Microsoft Online Services subscriptions.
Because many of you have asked to use your Macs with Microsoft Online Services, we’ve been developing a Mac Sign-In application to provide Mac users with the same “single-sign-in” functionality provided to our PC users.
After installing and signing-in to this application, you can send and receive Exchange Online e-mail and access SharePoint Online sites from your Mac without having to sign-in multiple times. This application will also configure Entourage to connect to your Exchange Online mailbox.
Preview the Mac Sign-In Application
To get an early look at the Mac Sign-In application, register via the Microsoft Connect site using this Invitation ID: MAC-Y689-6QBR. After downloading the application and the documentation, you’re ready to get started.
If you have any issues connecting to the site, downloading or using the sign-in application, send e-mail to the BPOS Mac Preview Program team.
The Microsoft Online Services Team
Follow Microsoft Online Services on:
Today, Microsoft announced the availability of the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite for trial in 14 additional countries and the commercial availability of the suite in Singapore coming later this week.
In addition to the geographic expansion of Microsoft Online Services, today’s announcement highlighted key customers adopting and transitioning to the services, expansion in the Microsoft Online Services partner eco-system, and new reduced pricing for the Business Productivity Online Suite and its components.
Starting Nov. 7, organizations in the following countries and regions will be able to set up trial accounts: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania, Taiwan. In addition, Singapore, which has been offering BPOS trials for months, will launch the service commercially.
Today’s news was highlighted by the announcement of the following new Microsoft Online Services customers as well as this video Q&A with Tony DeGregorio, CIO of Tyco Flow Control:
Organizations including Aon Corporation, Aviva PLC, Hofstra University, Lions Gate Entertainment, McDonald’s Corporation, Rexel Group, SkyTeam Alliance, Swedish Red Cross, Tyco Flow Control, the University System of Ohio and hundreds of others have chosen the Business Productivity Online Suite in recent months.
Reduced pricing for the Business Productivity Online Suite is now US$10 per user per month, with a five seat minimum purchase. In addition to new pricing for the Suite, pricing for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Communications Online is also reduced when purchased individually. Details of the new pricing can be found here.
Read the full announcement, view a recording of Stephen Elop's call with media, and find related materials on Microsoft Press Pass. Also, check out these customer case studies:
· Credit Immobilier de France
· GlaxoSmithKline
· REEDS Jewelers
You probably already know that you can use Microsoft SharePoint Online to store, share, and manage files as well as build collaboration solutions for your organization. Have you ever wished that you could:
- Customize the content and layout of SharePoint Online pages to look exactly the way you want?
- Create views and forms that use the data view Web part to integrate with external data sources?
- Use custom workflows to automate your business processes without writing code?
Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer can help you with these and many other tasks, and the SharePoint Online Developer Guide is a good resource for instruction and tips for using the Designer to customize your SharePoint Online collections.
SharePoint Designer 2007 provides the powerful tools you need to deliver compelling and attractive sites, workflow-enabled applications, and reporting tools on the SharePoint Online platform. SharePoint Designer 2007 is available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center.
For more information about SharePoint Designer 2007, see:
Dave Thompson, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Online Services, kicks off the Microsoft Online Services Executive Video Series on Microsoft Channel 9. Dave began building the Microsoft Online Services team about three years ago and delivered the first version of the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) in November of 2008.
Watch the interview to hear Dave's thoughts on building and running software services. He talks about the challenges encountered while building BPOS v1, and what’s on the top of his mind while working with his team to provide the best possible customer and partner experience in future versions of Microsoft Online Services.
Post your comments to the video or to this blog post and Dave will respond in a future video.
The updated Microsoft Online Services Transporter Tools (aka Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools), announced in the October Service Update, is now available via the Microsoft Download Center.
The updated Transporter Tool supports PowerShell commandlets for bulk activation of users for Microsoft Online Services. The new supported commandlets include:
· Enable-MSOnlineUser
· Get-MSOnlineSubscription
· Set-MSOnlineUserPassword
Exchange Online now supports POP e-mail, so you can send and receive Exchange Online e-mail using any POP e-mail client. For information about other recently announced features, see Service Update: October 2009 Release Availability, Features Announced.
NOTE: POP e-mail does not provide Free/Busy, presence, calendar, tasks, and other rich features normally associated with Exchange Online e-mail. Additionally, POP e-mail access cannot be enabled for Deskless Worker accounts.
Prerequisites
· If you are a Microsoft Online Services administrator, you can contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support to request POP service, and provide them with the list of e-mail addresses to POP enable. You can specify a list of individual mailboxes or every mailbox in your organization. You can track the status of your service request on the Support tab of the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.
· Any POP e-mail client.
· Microsoft Online Services user account with a Standard (not Deskless) Exchange Online license.
· Port 995 in through your company’s firewall.
Configuration
When Support notifies you that POP e-mail has been enabled, follow your POP e-mail client instructions to configure your e-mail client. You’ll need to provide the following information:
· Port number: 995
· Security protocol: SSL
· User account: For example, jim@example.com
· User account password
· POP Server: select from POP Servers by Location table below.
NOTE: If you want Exchange Online to keep a backup of your e-mail, select the configuration option that allows you to keep your e-mail messages on the server.
More than 7,500 attendees descend upon Las Vegas this week for the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009. The conference, Oct 19-22 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, will feature numerous opportunities to learn about Microsoft Online Services, including these SharePoint Online breakout sessions:
· SPC 200: Overview of SharePoint 2010 Online
David Gorbet and Charles Ofori
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 10:30 AM; Room Islander G
· SPC 201: SharePoint 2010 Online Standard, Everything you Need to Know!
Jason Cahill and Troy Hopwood
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2:45 PM; Room Mandalay Bay J
· The Sky’s the Limit, the Journey to the Cloud
Brett Kirkland, Collaboration Architect, Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE)
Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2:45 PM; Room Breakers E
· SPC 202: SharePoint 2010 Online Dedicated, Why Get Dedicated!
Scott St. Jean and Charles Ofori
Thursday, Oct. 22, 9:00 AM; Room Mandalay Bay J
In addition to SharePoint Online content in the conference curriculum, attendees can visit the SharePoint Online booth at the conference exhibit hall. The team will be providing demos of the current SharePoint Online service as well as the SharePoint Online Community Technical Preview (CTP), based on SharePoint Server 2010 code.
The SharePoint Conference Ask the Experts Night, 5:45 to 7:00 PM, Wednesday, Oct. 21, will include a SharePoint Online table, where attendees can interact one-on-one with the SharePoint Online team.
The Microsoft Online Services Service Update for October 2009 is currently being deployed into production data centers and is scheduled to be available to all customers before the end of October. Updates to the deployment status will be posted to the comments section of this blog post.
Upgrades and Enhancements
The following features and capabilities are included in this Service Update:
Bulk Activation of Users
PowerShell commandlets will be added to streamline the activation process, enabling administrators to easily automate the activation of a set of users. Most commonly, these commandlets will be used to activate a set of users that have been migrated from an Active Directory forest to Microsoft Online Services via the Directory Synchronization Tool. Previously, administrators were required to activate users one-by-one with the User Administration tools in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.
Commandlets added in this Service Update are:
· Enable-MSOnlineUser
· Get-MSOnlineSubscription
· Set-MSOnlineUserPassword
A new version of the Microsoft Online Services Transporter Tool supporting these commandlets will be available for download at the Microsoft Download Center upon completion of the deployment of the October Service Update into production data centers for all regions. Please watch this Team Blog for the availability of the updated Transporter Tool.
POP Mail Clients
Supported e-mail clients for Exchange Online are being expanded to include POP-based clients. Previously, Exchange Online supported only Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and 2007.
To enable POP e-mail client support for your organization, administrators should contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support to open a Service Request.
Please note: Service Requests for POP enablement will be accepted upon completion of the deployment of the October Service Update into production data centers for all regions. Please watch this for deployment updates. Additionally, POP e-mail access cannot be enabled for Deskless Worker accounts.
Support for 30,000 Users
The Microsoft Online Services Administration Center will support as many as 30,000 users, improving management and administration for larger organizations. Previously, Microsoft Online Services supported up to 10,000 users.
Please note that SharePoint Online will retain previously established limits (e.g., 20 site collections per company, 50 gigabytes (GB) per site, and 1 terabyte (TB) per company).
Enhanced Support for Mac OS
The Service Update includes several enhancements that will provide a more efficient communication and collaboration experience for organizations with Mac users.
A new Sign-In Client for the Mac OS provides a single sign-in experience and auto-configuration of Office for Mac applications and the Safari browser for use with Microsoft Online Services.
Other Mac features in this Service Update include:
· Support for Entourage 2008 Exchange Web Services (EWS), including Global Address List (GAL), Calendar Free/Busy Lookup, and Out-of-Office notifications
· Global Address List support for Entourage 2004 and 2008 when using the Sign-In Client for Mac
· SharePoint Online support for Document Connection for Mac to improve the collaboration experience for users
· Improved Firefox and Safari support for My Company Portal
The Sign-In Client for Mac will be available for download at the Microsoft Download Center in early November. Please watch this Team Blog for the availability of the Sign-In Client for Mac.
Timeline
Deployment of the October Service Update into production data centers has started, with deployment to all regions anticipated to be complete before the end of October.
The deployment schedule is subject to change. Updates to the deployment schedule will be announced via the comments section of this blog post.
Notes from the Cloud is a new series for the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog bringing you a summary of news and blog posts related to Microsoft Online Services, cloud computing, and our competitors published by partners, blog writers, and news sources across our online community.
· InformationWeek’s Mary Hayes Weier writes about Microsoft’s movement toward cloud computing, including an interview with our own Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Online Services.
In May, 2004, Markezich was Microsoft's CIO, and doing very CIO-type stuff, like overseeing HR and ERP applications, and running the overall IT Infrastructure. That was, until Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer called him into a meeting. They told him there was a major new strategy in place, and his experience in operational IT was critical to make it happen. "They said that the future of the company is not selling a license, but selling our software over the Internet as a service," Markezich recalls.
· More from Mary Hayes Weier in an InformationWeek cover story. Weier writes about the changing attitudes of CIOs toward cloud computing. Bill Louv, GlaxoSmithKline CIO and Microsoft Online Services customer, is quoted in the article:
Louv bristles at any notion that he's chasing a trend. "The evolution here isn't, 'Gee, let's do something in the cloud or SaaS,'" he says. "Our Lotus Notes platform was getting to end of life. The question came up innocently that, given we'll have to spend a lot of money here, is there something we can do that's smarter?" What he decided is to move all 115,000 employees worldwide to the online, monthly subscription Exchange and SharePoint offerings that Microsoft made available in April.
· In another post in the run up to the SharePoint Conference, Oct. 19-22 in Las Vegas, Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President, SharePoint Server, writes about the process of designing and building SharePoint, including this nugget about the impact of SharePoint Online on the engineering process:
In the last couple of posts I mentioned that SharePoint Online is big part of our development cycle. It is a way to reach many new customers. It also gives us a much larger scale environment than our own SharePoint intranet, extranet and internet apps to analyze and tune. This release, we created a dedicated team called “The Grid” team to analyze and optimize in great detail the total costs, time, reliability and other factors of a SharePoint deployment we hope to reach 10s and eventually 100s of millions of users. Almost all of what we learn there helps make the product more reliable for customers and partners hosting their own servers from a small company to a 250,000 employee enterprise.
· UK-based Microsoft Online Services partner The BPOS Business has posted a video with instructions for synchronizing your Apple iPhone with an Exchange Online email account.
· Microsoft and Germany-based T-Systems announced an agreement for T-Systems to sell the Business Productivity Online Suite Dedicated solution in Germany.
· A French-language blog dedicated to the Business Productivity Online Suite is now online and included in our blogroll. The blog is edited and managed by our friends on the Microsoft Online Services team in the Microsoft France subsidiary. Bonjour!
The Microsoft Online Customer Portal is scheduled to be offline for upgrades and planned maintenance.
The portal will be offline on Saturday, October 10 from 10:00 to 11:00 Pacific Daylight Time (17:00 to 18:00 GMT). During this downtime, organizations will not be able to set up trial accounts, buy subscriptions, or modify current subscriptions. This downtime will not affect the availability of an organization's online services, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Office Communications Online, so users can continue to access these services as normal.
Watch the comments section of this blog post for updates on the availability of the Microsoft Online Customer Portal.
The most common user account states are enabled and disabled, which are pretty straight forward. However, if your company is using the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool, your user accounts can also be activated and deactivated. The combination of all of these states can be confusing, so let's look at what each state means.
The four states are:
· Enabled
· Disabled
· Deactivated
· Activated
Enabled and Disabled
If your company is using Active Directory, you'll be happy to know that enabled and disabled accounts work just like they do in Active Directory. You have the option to enable a user account when you create it. Users can log on with an enabled account and they are prevented from logging on if their account is disabled.
You may want to disable an account when someone goes on vacation, or if you want to temporarily lock an account for any reason. Disabled accounts continue to exist and use one or more licenses; they're just locked. Enabling the account unlocks it and returns it to service.
Deactivated
If you're not using the Directory Synchronization tool, you won't have deactivated user accounts. Deactivated accounts are visible in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center. The good news is that they don't use any licenses, so they're free. Think of them as shadow accounts waiting for you to assign services to them.
Deactivated user accounts are created by the Directory Synchronization tool when it synchronizes all user accounts, contacts, and mail-enabled groups from your company's on-premises Active Directory directory service to Microsoft Online Services. Synchronizing accounts to Microsoft Online Services is a fast, easy way to create user accounts. However, if you have a large company, you may not want to assign services to all of your users at the same time, so synchronized accounts are in a deactivated state until you activate them by assigning services to them.
Activated
Activated user accounts are accounts that have been assigned one or more services. Each activated account uses one or more licenses. If you create a user account in the Administration Center, the account is automatically activated when you create it and assign a service to it.
You can activate deactivated user accounts by selecting one or more accounts in the Administration Center and clicking Activate User Accounts. This lets the service know that this is now a "real" user account that will start using licenses. The rest of the activation process works just like creating a new user account.
Notes from the Cloud is a new series for the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog bringing you a summary of news and blog posts related to Microsoft Online Services, cloud computing, and our competitors published by partners, blog writers, and news sources across our online community.
· From Redmond Channel Partner Online, Stephen Swoyer writes Making the Most of BPOS, a profile of PointBridge, a Chicago-based Microsoft Online Services Partner and the 2009 Microsoft Online Services Partner of the Year.
· With the SharePoint Conference set for Oct. 19-22 in Las Vegas, Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President, SharePoint Server, looks at the history of SharePoint and provides an interesting retrospective on Microsoft’s collaboration standard bearer, including this hat tip to Microsoft Online Services:
Based on the SharePoint 2007 codebase, we released both a Dedicated (single tenant) version of SharePoint Online as well as a Standard (multi-tenant) version of SharePoint Online. This is all part of our Business Productivity Online Suite including SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office Communications Online and Live Meeting. The response to both the dedicated and multi-tenant offering has been outstanding. Customers have told us they like getting access to the most comprehensive and flexible set of collaboration and communication tools with the reliability, security and manageability they need.
· The editors at Computerworld give their opinion on the Technical Preview of Microsoft Office Web Apps, important work that our colleagues on the Office team are doing to move these powerful productivity applications to the cloud.
· The University System of Ohio and Microsoft announced an Education Alliance Agreement that will bring cloud-based messaging and collaboration solutions, including Exchange Online, to Ohio’s higher education and K-12 communities. Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor Eric D. Fingerhut is quoted in the announcement:
"The Education Alliance Agreement provides the University System of Ohio with major cost savings for messaging and collaboration products," said Chancellor Fingerhut. "This agreement advances Ohio's 10-year Strategic Plan for Higher Education by supporting a common technology infrastructure through collaboration and group purchasing, which makes the University System of Ohio more efficient."
· ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley does some oranges-to-oranges comparison by measuring the Microsoft Online Services Deskless Worker Suite against IBM's LotusLive iNotes. Mary-Jo notes that most analysts are comparing LotusLive iNotes to Google Apps:
IBM’s announcement of a new hosted entry-level communications offering has led to lots of punditry around how it compares to Google Apps. But I’m not sure that’s IBM’s main competition here.
· In his post SharePoint in the Cloud – A Real World Experience Using BPOS, Philip Plimmer, at New Zealand-based partner Intergen, writes about recommending SharePoint Online for an organization needing a collaboration solution that extends to partners and potential partners. Philip provides this explanation of BPOS and cloud computing:
The BPOS solution is one of a growing number of “cloud” services – that huge cloud of connected servers called the Internet. Your system is not running in your corporate data centre – it just lives out there in the cloud. In a way cloud computing is nothing different to what you already do if you have a personal email account such as Windows Live Hotmail or Google’s Gmail.
The big difference is instead of talking about personal email, we are now taking the corporate data centre to the cloud.
We want to hear more stories like Philip’s. Do you have a real world BPOS story to tell? Share it with us.
In response to customer feedback, the Microsoft Online Services engineering team is developing the Outlook 2003 Connector. This is an Outlook add-in that will enable customers to use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 to access all the features of Exchange Online. This includes free/busy information when setting up meetings, and the ability to access your organization’s global address list (GAL) from Outlook when you're offline. The add-in is currently in private beta testing with selected MVPs, Partners, and customers, and we’re ready to broaden the audience.
Help us make sure the Outlook 2003 Connector is ready
If you have purchased Microsoft Online Services, or are currently participating in a trial, and you’d like to use Outlook 2003 to access Exchange Online, navigate to to http://connect.microsoft.com, and provide the invitation ID below to participate in this beta program. Contact bpospb@microsoft.com if you need assistance.
Invitation ID: 2003-8PYX-K72K
If you’re not using Microsoft Online Services, but you’d like to take a look, go to the Microsoft Online Customer Portal and sign up for a free trial.
The Microsoft Online Services Team
