This week’s webinar is the first of several SharePoint Online webinars that you requested. In this week’s webinar, Ryan Phillips will provide you with insights into the BPOS-S SharePoint Online environment, what you can customize and how to do it. Ryan will discuss the following SharePoint Online capabilities:
- Site creation and management
- Site customization
- Site & List/Library templates
- Themes, webparts, etc.
- SharePoint Designer 2007
- Site collection features
- Publishing – Content Query webpart
Date: Thursday, February 11, 2010
Time: 11 AM Pacific Coast Time (PCT)
Click here to register for this webinar.
This webinar is in response to your requests. We want to hear from you. Send mail to our community mailbox. Follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
Microsoft Online Services is now a BlackBerry® certified partner and BlackBerry Alliance Elite Member. For the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, licenses and support are now a part of the Microsoft Online Services Hosted BlackBerry service, which customers buy directly from Microsoft. Previously, customers had to purchase and provide their own licenses and support agreement, purchased through a third party, in order to use the Hosted BlackBerry service.
The Hosted BlackBerry service from Microsoft Online Services offers the most commonly requested BlackBerry capabilities, including wireless access to e-mail, calendar, tasks and contacts with global address list (GAL) integration, and device management such as device wipe and password reset. Details about the Hosted Blackberry Service can be found in the Microsoft Online Services Mobility Solutions Description, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. The document includes a full solution description and service pricing.
To learn more or to request a Hosted BlackBerry service agreement, contact your Microsoft representative or a Microsoft Online Services partner. If you do not have a Microsoft partner or representative, you may request the Hosted BlackBerry service agreement through Microsoft Online Services Customer Service.
For additional details please about the Microsoft Online Services mobility offerings, visit www.microsoft.com/online/mobility.
Just a quick post to let you know that the long awaited release of the next version of the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools is finally here! The 32 bit and 64 bit versions were released to the download center on Tuesday, 2/2/2010.
The big news is that this version contains the new Windows PowerShell commandlets that Microsoft Online Services administrators can use to automate some of their user management tasks. For more information about using PowerShell with Microsoft online services, see the Webinar: Using PowerShell with Microsoft Online Services blog post with links to the webinar recording and the PowerPoint file with the details of how to use each commandlet.
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Microsoft Online Services offers regular live webinars on a variety of topics. This blog post lists each webinar and provides a link to the video of that webinar. This post is updated at the beginning of each month.
We want to hear from you. If you’d like to present a webinar, or to suggest a webinar topic, send mail to our community mailbox. Follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
This week, Robert Story shows us how to connect an iPhone to Exchange Online.
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This month’s Microsoft Online Services executive video features an interview with Ron Markezich, the Microsoft corporate vice president responsible for Microsoft’s Online Services business.
In this Microsoft Channel 9 interview, Ron talks about his career at Microsoft, and his thoughts on the past, present, and future of Microsoft Online Services. When did Microsoft form its online services vision? What does Ron think about the current state of online services? What are the next steps for Microsoft’s online services and the online services industry? How does online services fit into Microsoft's future plans?
Previous Microsoft Online Services Executive Video interviews are available below.
Click here to register for a free Microsoft Online Services trial subscription.
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Join Darrin Hanson for this week’s webinar at 11 AM (PST) Thursday, 2/4/2010. Darrin will show us how to use the MOSDAL support toolkit to perform network diagnostics and collect system configuration, network configuration, and logging information for Microsoft Online Service. MOSDAL collects log files, registry keys, and configuration settings that would otherwise require time-consuming and labor-intensive collection by using separate tools. The information gathered by this tool helps technical support professionals troubleshoot configuration, network, installation, and other service-related issues.
Date: Thursday, February 4th
This webinar has already occurred. Click here to view the video of this webinar.
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Microsoft Online Services strives to provide exceptional service for all of our customers. On January 28, customers served from a North America data center may have experienced intermittent access to services included in the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and your employees.
We hold ourselves to the very highest standard. And yesterday, we didn’t meet it. The connectivity issue underlined our commitment to service excellence, and all resources were brought to bear to correct and learn from the issue at hand. Within our team, we approach things with a “better every day” attitude; where we will continuously learn and improve to ensure customers can rely on Microsoft now and in the future. This includes customer communication. We are committed to communicating with our customers in an open and honest manner about service issues and the steps we’re taking to prevent recurrences. Based on customer feedback, we are actively working to improve our incidence response communications.
In the meantime, this is a summary of yesterday’s issue:
- What happened?
- Monitoring alerted us to a possible issue with networking.
- Troubleshooting procedures ultimately pointed to a problem with network infrastructure, resulting in intermittent access for customers.
- What actions have been taken to prevent a recurrence?
- We have identified the root cause, and have taken steps to remediate the network issues.
We understand that any disruption in service may result in a disruption to your business. As a gesture of our commitment to ensuring the highest quality service experience, we are proactively reaching out to impacted customers to provide a credit.
We encourage customers to contact us with any additional questions. Our customer support is available 24 hours a day by telephone or via Service Requests submitted from the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.
We thank our customers for choosing Microsoft Online Services to host their business productivity applications. We aim to live up to your – and our own – expectations every day.
Sincerely,
Michael Ziock
Sr. Director, Business Productivity Online Service Operations
The Microsoft Online Services Team
When you create a SharePoint Online site collection, Microsoft Online Services uses the name of the domain you have selected as your default domain to build an address (URL) for your site collection. Your site collection URL will be in one of two formats. For example:
Why are there two site collection URL formats?
Because SharePoint Online site collection URLs are built using your default domain, and there are two types of default domains, there can be two formats of site collection URLs. The types of default domains are:
- The trial domain created by Microsoft Online Services when you subscribed
- A registered domain, that you added to Microsoft Online Services
Trial Domain
When you sign up for Microsoft Online Services, you are asked to provide a domain name. We use that domain name to build your trial Microsoft Online Services domain. For example, if you provide the name contoso, we create a domain for you that looks something like contoso-1.microsoftonline.com. This trial domain is intended for use while you’re evaluating Microsoft Online Services, and for companies that don’t want to register a domain name with a domain registrar.
If your trial domain is selected as your default domain when you create your site collection, your site collection URL will be formatted like https://contosomicrosoftonline-1.sharepoint.microsoftonline.com.
Registered Domain
If your company has registered one or more domains with a domain registrar, you can add them to Microsoft Online Services. Using a registered domain allows you to use a shorter domain name that’s easier to remember. For example, if your company has registered the contoso.com domain, you can add it to Microsoft Online Services, and make contoso.com your default domain.
If your registered domain is selected as your default domain when you create your site collection, your URL will be formatted like https://Contoso-1.sharepoint.microsoftonline.com.
How do I add a domain?
Adding your registered domain to Microsoft Online Services can be a little tricky. Before you start, you must have:
- A domain registered with a domain registrar
- The ability to edit that domain at the domain registrar’s website, so you can verify that you own the domain
When you’re ready, you can find more information about adding and verifying domains by searching for “domain registrar” in Microsoft Online Services Help and How-to.
How do I select my default domain?
If you have added one or more domains to Microsoft Online Services, you can select your default domain on the Domains page in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.
- Sign in to the Administration Center.
- Click Users, click Domains, and then select the domain that you want to make your default domain.
I created a site collection based on my trial domain, and now I want to change it. What can I do?
The URL assigned to a SharePoint Online site collection when it is created can’t be changed. If you want to change the URL associated with a site, you must specify a different defalut domain and create a new site collection.
Can I create site collections based on different domains?
Yes. If you have added several different registered domains to Microsoft Online Services and verified that you own them, you can create site collections based on each domain by selecting each of them your default domain before you create the site collection. For example, let’s say that your company has registered two domains: example.com and contoso.com. If you make example.com your default domain and then create a site collection, the URL of that site collection will look like https://example-1.sharepoint.microsoftonline.com. Next, you can make contoso.com your registered domain and create another site collection with a URL that looks like https://contoso-1.sharepoint.microsoftonline.com.
Can I create several site collections based on the same domain?
Yes. When you do that, the number portion of the site URL will be incremented by one for each site. For this example, let’s assume that you have registered and verified the contoso.com domain, and selected that as your default domain. If you create three site collections based on that domain, your site URLs will look like:
If your default domain is your trial domain that looks like contoso-1.microsoftonline.com, and you create three site collections based on that domain, your site URLs will look like:
For more information about creating a SharePoint Online site collection, see Create a SharePoint Site.
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This week, watch Jim Glynn show you how to connect your windows Mobile phone to Exchange Online.
What other features would you like to see? We want to hear from you. Leave a comment on this blog post, send mail to our community mailbox, and follow us on Twitter.
Join Jenna Lyday (Microsoft Online Services PM responsible for e-mail Migration) on Thursday, 1/28/2010 for the third webinar in our migration series. In this webinar, Jenna will demonstrate how to use Windows PowerShell commands to:
- Provision and activate users
- Perform a simple migration from Hosted Exchange to Exchange Online
- Grant a user Full Mailbox Access permissions on another user's mailbox
If you like managing your environment from the command line, or scripting common administrative tasks, don’t miss this week’s webinar.
Date: Thursday, January 28th
Start time: 11: AM Pacific Standard Time (UTC – 8 hrs)
Duration: 1 hour
Click here to view the recording of this webinar. Download the PowerPoint slides from the attachment link below. Click the links to download the 32 bit and 64 bit version of the Migration tool, which contains these PowerShell commandlets.
We want to hear from you. Leave a comment on this blog post, send mail to our community mailbox, and follow us on Twitter.
Microsoft Online Services is releasing a new version of the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In application (version 1.0.1423.65). This new version includes bug fixes and new capabilities announced via this Team Blog in the December Service Update. The capabilities include support for additional languages as well as support for service lifecycle prompts within the Sign-In application; these prompts provide notification about the status of your subscription.
The new version of the application will be available from the Microsoft Download Center for users and IT administrators that wish to manually download and install the application.
Installation of the new version of the Sign-In application is optional. However, unless you explicitly disable end-user notifications before February 24, 2010, your end-users will begin receiving desktop notifications about the new version of the Sign-In application, prompting them to install the update.
If you want your end-users to be notified about the new version of the Sign-In application and install the new version themselves, your end-users simply need to follow the instructions provided in the Sign-In application prompts for automatic download and installation.
However, in a managed IT environment, an IT Administrator may not want end-users to receive prompts or notifications from the Sign-In application. Administrators can disable the update notifications by performing registry edits on users’ machines or applying a Group Policy administration. Instructions for disabling update notifications and service lifecycle prompts are published via this Team Blog post: Disabling End-User Notifications in the Sign-In Application.
If you have questions, do not hesitate to contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support.
There are three instances when configurable end user notifications are displayed in the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In application. This article identifies those instances and provides instructions to disable Sign-In Application notifications via registry edits and Group Policy administration.
The instances when Sign-In application notifications are displayed include:
1. When a new version of the Sign-In application is available
After a predetermined period of time has elapsed after Microsoft Online Services releases a new version of the Sign In application, end users will begin to see notifications from the Sign In application that a new version is available for installation.
2. When a new configuration update is available
When an application such as Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office Outlook requires a configuration update, end users begin to see notifications in the Sign-In application to reconfigure the application.
3. When the Microsoft Online Services subscription associated with the Sign In application is about to expire
When the Microsoft Online Services subscription that is associated with the Sign In application is nearing expiration, the Sign In application will start to show a message notifying the end user that the subscription is about to expire.
In a managed environment, IT administrators may want to control whether end users receive any of the above notifications. For example, end users in a managed environment may not have adequate permissions on their own computers to install new software and thus may experience warnings or errors if they try to install a new version of the Sign In application, possibly creating support calls for IT administrators.
There are two ways to turn off end-user notifications in the Sign In application:
· Update the registry files on end user computers
· Use Group Policy
Disable Update Notifications by Updating Users’ Registry Files
If you manually update your users’ computers, then you can disable update notifications with a Windows registry file (.reg).
Note: Updating registry files requires domain administrator permissions or local administrator permissions for the computer you are updating.
The registry keys for the three notification types referenced above are located at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\MOCHA\Preferences
The following table describes the three registry keys that you can modify to disable update notifications:
|
Option |
Registry Key |
Value |
|
New version notification |
ShowUpdateAlerts |
0 = Not Set
1 = Set
|
|
New configuration notification |
ShowConfigAlerts |
0 = Not Set
1 = Set
|
|
Subscription expiration notification |
NotifyExpiredSubscriptions |
0 = Not Set
1 = Set |
To turn OFF all three notification types by using a registry file
1. Open Notepad.
2. Copy the following registry settings into the new Notepad file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MOCHA\Preferences]
"HideDash"=dword:00000001
"ShowUpdateAlerts"=dword:00000000
"ShowConfigAlerts"=dword:00000000
"NotifyExpiredSubscriptions"=dword:00000000
Note: If you want to leave a specific notification type enabled, then remove the corresponding registry setting from the example text. For example, to continue displaying subscription expiration notifications to your users, but disable new version and new configuration notifications, remove the following entry from the example:
"NotifyExpiredSubscriptions"=dword:00000000
3. Save the file as a .reg file, and then run it on every user’s computer.
To enable the notifications, create a new registry file that enables the registry settings.
To turn ON all three notification types by using a registry file
1. Open Notepad.
2. Copy the following registry settings into the new Notepad file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MOCHA\Preferences]
"HideDash"=dword:00000001
"ShowUpdateAlerts"=dword:00000001
"ShowConfigAlerts"=dword:00000001
"NotifyExpiredSubscriptions"=dword:00000001
Note: If you want to leave a specific notification type disabled, then remove the corresponding registry setting from the example text. For example, if you want to leave subscription expiration notifications disabled, but display new version and new configuration notifications, remove the following entry from the example:
"NotifyExpiredSubscriptions"=dword:00000001
3. Save the file with a .reg file extension, and then run it on every user’s computer.
Use Group Policy to Disable Update Notifications
You can also use Group Policy to turn on or off Sign In notifications. Group Policy allows you to manage settings for a group (or all) of the computers in your network. To learn more about Group Policy, check out Windows Server Group Policy.
Before you can use Group Policy to update Sign In application settings, you need to add our administrative template file to your Group Policy Editor.
Note: A sample Group Policy administrative template (MOCHA.adm) has been includes as an attachment to this blog post.
To add the administrative template to Group Policy Editor
1. Download the administrative template, MOCHA.adm, to the computer you use to manage Group Policy settings. The ADM file is attached to this blog entry.
2. On the computer that you use to manage Group Policy, open Group Policy Editor, and expand Local Computer Policy in the left-hand pane.
3. Expand Computer Configuration, right-click Administrative Templates, and then click Add/Remove Templates.
4. In the Add/Remove Templates window, click Add.
5. Select the MOCHA.adm file, and then click Open.
6. Click Close to return to the Group Policy Editor.
After you have added the template file to Group Policy Editor, you can disable notifications for your users.
To disable notifications by using Group Policy
1. In Group Policy Editor, expand Computer Configuration, and then expand Administrative Templates.
2. In the Classic Administrative Templates (ADM) folder, click Sign In.
3. In the right-hand pane, double-click the Allow Update Alerts setting, the Show Config Alerts setting or the Notify Expired Subscriptions setting.
4. Select Disabled for any or all of the following settings:
|
Setting |
Description |
|
ShowUpdateAlerts |
Provide notification when update is available.
|
|
ShowConfigAlerts |
Provide notification when new configuration is available.
|
|
NotifyExpiredSubscriptions |
Provide notification if service license expires.
|
5. Click OK.
Changes that you make in Group Policy Editor are applied when users restart their computers. To update a modified Group Policy manually, start a command prompt, and then type gpupdate /force.
For additional information about how to use Group Policy to update Sign In application settings, see Group Policy Settings in the Sign In Application.
On January 21st, Jim Glynn will demonstrate how to explore Microsoft Online Services and demo the basic BPOS feature set. During this webinar, Jim will:
- Install the sign in application
- Send and receive e-mail via Outlook and Outlook Web Access
- Create and receive a meeting invitation
- Create a SharePoint site collection and a SharePoint workspace
- Schedule a Live Meeting
- Start a Meet Now meeting and invite an attendee
- Install and start Communicator
Date: January 21, 2010
Event Start Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (UTC - 8 hours)
Duration: 1 hour
Click here to view the recording of this webinar.
Presenter:
Jim Glynn
Senior Content Project Manager, Microsoft
Jim Glynn joined Microsoft in 1998 and currently works on the Microsoft Online Services community. During Jim's career with Microsoft, he has worked as a technical writer and program manager on projects like Windows Server, Active Directory, Small Business Server, Live Meeting, and now Microsoft Online Services.
For 14 years before joining Microsoft, Jim held several different positions, including Production Manager, Director of Technical Support, Technical Writing Manager, and Technical Sales Support in a 50 person Redmond, WA hardware and software company that developed products for the statistical process control (SPC) industry. He travelled extensively, participated in trade shows, and trained customers, support and field personnel. Jim also managed the company's network, phone system, BBS, and web site. During this time, Jim also earned his MCSE and MCT certifications, worked as a technical trainer, and consultant.
When he's not working, Jim can usually be found hiking and scrambling with friends and family in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
We want to hear from you. Leave a comment on this blog post, send mail to our community mailbox, and follow us on Twitter.
Mike Ziock, Director of Operations for Microsoft Online Services, is this month’s featured speaker in our regular Microsoft Online Services Executive Video series. Mike’s team is responsible for keeping Microsoft Online Services up and running.
In this Microsoft Channel 9 interview, Mike talks about the responsibility of providing Microsoft Online Services customers with business critical services, so they can concentrate their engineering and IT resources on their core business differentiators.
Previous Executive Video interviews are available below.
We want to know what you think. Leave a comment on this post or on Channel 9. Send mail to our community mailbox, and follow Microsoft Online Services on Twitter.
