Microsoft Online Services Team Blog : Live Meeting

Service Update: July 2009 Release Availability, Features Announced

paulenglis — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:09:00 GMT

The Microsoft Online Services Service Update for July 2009 will begin deployment into production data centers on July 7 and is scheduled to be available to all customers by mid-July; updates to the release deployment status will be posted to the comment section of this blog post.

No scheduled downtime is planned for the Microsoft Online Administration Center or the availability of the services in the Business Productivity Online Suite. Downtime is expected for the Microsoft Online Customer Portal, which will affect an organization's ability to set up trials, buy subscriptions, and modify their subscriptions. Watch this Team Blog for additional information on planned downtime.

The following features are included in this Service Update for July 2009:

Increase for SharePoint Online File Uploads. The maximum file size for documents uploaded to SharePoint Online increases from 50MB to 250MB.

More Live Meeting Attendees. Meetings hosted in Live Meeting Standard can accommodate up to 250 attendees, an increase from 15 attendees per meeting. This change applies to all users of Live Meeting Standard, including those that own Live Meeting licenses as part of their Business Productivity Online Suite. The upgrade will be available for new customers after July 13; existing Live Meeting customers will be upgraded by August 13.

Microsoft Online Services Trials for India. India becomes the newest market for Microsoft Online Services and the Business Productivity Online Suite. Trial accounts will be available to organizations in India with this service update. Commercial availability is targeted for Fall 2009.

Quick Trials. The process for getting a Microsoft Online Services trial is significantly streamlined. With updates to the Microsoft Online Customer Portal, user actions required to set up a trial account are reduced by 75 percent and better integration with Live ID authentication.

Worldwide User Provisioning. Administrators can assign user licenses to worldwide users, an important addition for multi-national organizations with users in numerous countries. Previously, administrators could only assign user licenses to users located in countries where Microsoft Online Services are marketed and sold. Users located in a country where use of Microsoft products is prohibited or restricted, however, still cannot be provisioned. Customers and Partners should consult with their Microsoft contact for additional information on these prohibitions and restrictions.

Microsoft Online Services at TechEd

paulenglis — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:20:00 GMT

TechEd North America kicks off on Monday in Los Angeles, and the Microsoft Online Services team will be on site presenting technical education sessions, providing demonstrations of the Business Productivity Online Suite, meeting with IT Professionals from across the country and around the world, and tweeting regular updates via Twitter.

If you plan to be in Los Angeles at TechEd, make sure you stop by the Microsoft Online Services kiosk and talk with us. We will be located in the Unified Communications Technical Learning Center (TLC).

If you are not going to be at TechEd, you can follow Paul Englis on Twitter. Paul will be tweeting on the Microsoft Online Services Twitter feed: twitter.com/msonline. Look for Paul’s tweets with the ^PE identifier.

TechEd attendees can also take in a number of breakout sessions and interactive theatre sessions about the services. Following is a list of the Microsoft Online Services sessions at TechEd:

Breakout Sessions

• Microsoft Office Live Meeting Implementations from an IT and Business Perspective (UNC202, Mon. May 11 | 1:00 PM-2:15 PM | Room 511)

Diane Mayer and Sean Spradling, from Microsoft Online Services partner Corvent, focus on the technical and business requirements for executing a successful implementation of Office Live Meeting, including guidance for building the right team for a proof of concept, key technical and non-technical considerations for launch, and overcoming end user adoption challenges to drive immediate ROI.

• Tackle Compliance and Discovery Needs in the Cloud Using Microsoft Exchange Hosted Archive (WSV204, Wed. May 13 | 8:30 AM-9:45 AM | Room 408A)

Joel Soderberg and Ann Vu, from the Exchange Hosted Archive engineering and product management teams, examine requirements and challenges with organizational governance and e-Discovery that organizations face when dealing with e-mail. The session provides guidelines that can help IT professionals and business decision makers prepare for these requests and demonstrates how Exchange Hosted Archive can assist organizations in these endeavors.

• SharePoint Online Features, Functionality, and Customization (OFC314, Wed. May 13 | 4:30 PM-5:45 PM | Room 502A)

Kimmo Forss and Sharma Kunapalli, from the Microsoft Online Services deployment and product management teams, discuss the features and functionalities of SharePoint Online. The session explores the customization models and how they differ for SharePoint Online Standard and SharePoint Online Dedicated. The session also provides recommendations on how to address various customization needs.

• Protection: Targeting Spam with Microsoft Forefront (SIA319, Wed. May 13 | 4:30 PM-5:45 PM | Petree Hall D)

John Gargiulo and Terry Zink, from the Forefront engineering teams, look at the next generation of Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server (FSE) including integration with Forefront Online Security for Exchange (FOSE), formerly known as Exchange Hosted Filtering.

• Migration to Microsoft Online Services from Exchange and Non-Microsoft Platforms (UNC310, Thu. May 14 | 4:30 PM-5:45 PM | Room 403B)

Keith Ridings, from Microsoft Online Services partner Quest Software, and Erik Ashby, from the Microsoft Online Services engineering team, focus on migration to Microsoft Online Services from Exchange and non-Microsoft systems such as Lotus Notes, GroupWise, and POP3/IMAP. The session demonstrates tools used to perform the migration and discuss best practices based on learnings from customer implementations. The session also discusses Microsoft Online Services synchronization with Active Directory.

• Realizing the Promise of Software-Plus-Services by Customizing Microsoft Online Services (UNC203, Fri. May 15 | 9:00 AM-10:15 AM | Room 408B)

Dattatreya Kulkarni and Sanjay Kumar Madhva, from Microsoft Online Services partner Sonata Software, focus on building applications on top of the Business Productivity Online Suite using Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Web services to leverage these cloud-based communication and collaboration services. The session uses WorXpace from Sonata Software as an example of an application that builds upon the Business Productivity Online Suite.

Interactive Sessions

• Managing Messaging and Collaboration in the Cloud with Microsoft Online Services (UNC01-INT, Tue. May 12 | 2:45 PM-4:00 PM | Yellow Theatre 1)

Paul Robichaux, Exchange MVP, walks through the process of setting up and administering the Business Productivity Online Suite. In addition to a tour through the Microsoft Online Administration Center (MOAC), this interactive session demonstrates the Single Sign In Client and Company Portal, which allow users to access the Microsoft Online Services capabilities delivered from the cloud.

• SharePoint: To Online or Not To Online? (OFC04-INT, Wed. May 13 | 1:00 PM-2:15 PM | Yellow Theatre 1)

Kimmo Forss and Richard Riley, from the Microsoft Online Services deployment and SharePoint product management teams, lead an interactive discussion on the differences between deploying SharePoint on premises as a server and in the cloud as a service.

• Next Generation Messaging and Collaboration Protection Drilldown (SIA01-INT, Thu. May 14 | 1:00 PM-2:15 PM | Orange Theatre 1)

Mike Chan, from the Forefront product management team, leads an interactive discussion about the advances in malware detection and filtering technologies that will help keep Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint environments free of malware, spam, and inappropriate content.

Cannot Create a User in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center

erikgun — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:48:00 GMT

There are currently two situations that may prevent you from creating a user account in the Microsoft Online Administration Center:

· You cannot access your company’s Live Meeting Conference Center.

· You are creating a user account with the same e-mail address as the one used to register with Microsoft Online Services.

Live Meeting Is Not Available

User account creation currently requires access to your company’s Live Meeting Conference Center. If the Conference Center is offline for maintenance or can’t be reached for some other reason, user account creation will fail. In this situation, please wait several hours before trying again to create the user account. This dependency will be removed before Microsoft Online Services is released.

User Account E-Mail Address Cannot Be Reused

Microsoft Online Services currently does not support creating a user account with exactly the same e-mail address as the one used to register with Microsoft Online Services. For example, if you use Jim@contoso.com when you register with the Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal and you try to create a new user account with the same e-mail address, creation of this user account will fail. If this occurs, contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support. They will be able to help you create this user account. This issue will be resolved before Microsoft Online Services is released.