Summer’s here!

At least, that’s what I’m told – I just wish the weather would show it… I also know that for many IT administrators the next few weeks can be the busiest of the year. One of the processes that many will be familiar with is deleting the leavers and creating accounts for all the joiners. So, what are the choices in Live@edu? Do you delete everyone or are there other options?

First, lets look at some of the reasons why you’d want to delete your Live@edu users once they leave your institution:

• Makes managing users less cumbersome
• Increases accuracy of usage figures
• Ensures no abuse of the institution name either by rogue students, or would-be hackers for those dormant accounts
• It’s a clean break from your institution’s IT facilities.

So why would you want to keep the accounts?

• Builds your institution brand with your alumni – particularly in universities this can be a powerful tool
• Provides an easy way to stay in touch with students after leaving
• Allows students to keep their Windows Live SkyDrive contents, as well as Xbox Live and Zune points and purchases
• Leaves students an account they can continue to use when going through the UCAS process, or applying for jobs after graduation

De-Provisioning

Thankfully there are a few options for de-provisioning users that allow you to get the user experience you want. You can choose to delete the mailbox and corresponding Windows Live ID completely, thereby removing access to the entire service including SkyDrive, Xbox Live, Zune and any other Windows Live service. Alternatively you can delete the mailbox but keep the Live ID.

In PowerShell, to delete the mailbox and the Live ID:

Remove-Mailbox <Identity>

To delete the mailbox and keep the Live ID:

Remove-Mailbox <Identity> –KeepWindowsLiveID

This can also be done through the Exchange Control Panel. There are some things to consider, though:

• Typically, a deleted mailbox is visible when you run the Get-RemovedMailbox cmdlet or on the Deleted Mailboxes page in the Exchange Control Panel. To access the Deleted Mailboxes page, select Manage My Organization > Users & Groups > Mailboxes > Deleted Mailboxes .
  If a deleted mailbox isn't recoverable, it won't appear on the list. When isn't a mailbox recoverable? See Deleted Mailboxes.

• To recover a deleted mailbox, see the following topics:
  • Recover a Deleted Mailbox
  • Recover a Deleted Mailbox in Windows PowerShell

• When you delete a mailbox and keep the Windows Live ID using the Remove-Mailbox cmdlet with the KeepWindowsLiveID parameter, you can associate the Windows Live ID with a new mailbox. See Create a New Mailbox for an Unassociated User ID.

• When you delete a mailbox and don't keep the Windows Live ID, you can recover the associated Windows Live ID when you recover the deleted mailbox. However, you need to change the password.

Alumni & PCNS

If you’re using some identity management software, such as Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager 2007 FP1, with the Password Change Notification Service you will need to consider how you’re going to manage alumni IDs, as you’ll likely have disabled the feature in the Service Management Portal for users to be able to manage this through Live@edu. If you want to keep alumni accounts in the same domain as your other users you will need to keep the alumni users in your Active Directory too, and manage password change requests accordingly; however, if you move alumni into a separate domain (i.e. an accepted domain), you can allow those users to change their passwords manually.

Photo by Loren Sztajer

Live@edu users may be familiar with Microsoft OneNote in its Web App form, and how you can use OneNote 2010 as part of the Microsoft Office suite to synchronise your notes to SkyDrive. The great news is that we’ve taken that a step further, and you can now get OneNote for your iPhone, too!

Some of the features in OneNote Mobile 1.2 for iPhone include:

• Search — retrieve important information quickly within text in your notebooks, sections, and pages.

• Pin recent notes — keep your favourite notes at the top of the Recently Viewed list.

• Sync shared notebooks — sync notebooks that others have shared with you on Windows Live SkyDrive.

• Choose which notebooks sync to your phone — save bandwidth by excluding less important notebooks.

• Set the image size for photos — choose between faster syncing or higher quality images.

You can find out more about the release of OneNote Mobile for iPhone 1.2 over on the OneNote blog, including details of how to get it if you’re outside of the United Kingdom. Alternatively, click on the button below to get it free in iTunes:

Live@EDU (Outlook Live) has a number of well published and documented security and compliance features, a few of them I have listed below (as well a reference for more information about each topic) – 1. Spam Filtering – http://help.outlook.com/en ...read more

Most (if not all!) schools across the United Kingdom are now off for the summer break and won’t be back until the first week of September. Apart from the most committed students and teachers most people will probably be checking their email accounts less frequently than normal and for many students “school” becomes a dirty word. I suspect this is also the case for many teachers!

Of course, not everyone has this long break and, for those outside of education, the next 6 weeks will be ‘business as usual’ so how can you help avoid some of the confusion, delay, and anger that can come about when someone sends you an email and you don’t pick it up for over a month?

Automatic Replies

If you spend more than a few days working at Microsoft you’ll invariably hear or see the term “OOF” when describing someone who is out of office; the reasons why it is known as “OOF” and not “OOO” are part of Microsoft lore but whether you’re out of office for a day or a month setting your “OOF” reply is essential.

Fortunately Outlook Live Help has a handy little guide and video talking about how to set your automatic reply response in Live@edu.

So before you clean the whiteboard, tidy your desk and lock your classroom door, take a moment to set your automatic reply and let others know you’ll be “OOF” for a while!

Lots of people ask me about the ways that Live@edu can help them save money, or become more efficient but occasionally I get asked about how Microsoft makes its cloud services accessible to as many people as possible. Over at our education webcasts site we’ve posted up a webcast that talks about exactly that!

"Our vision is to create innovative technology that is accessible to everyone and that adapts to each person's needs. Accessible technology eliminates barriers for people with disabilities and it enables individuals to take full advantage of their capabilities." - Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, microsoft.com/enable

Live@edu and Microsoft Office 365 bring together cloud versions of Microsoft's most trusted communications and collaboration products with the latest version of our desktop suite for educational institutions of all sizes. These Internet-based services are designed to help meet customer needs for institutional productivity, anytime anywhere access, and 24/7 reliability.

In this webcast, Alex Li, a Microsoft Senior Accessibility Strategist, outlines accessibility investments made in core components of Live@edu and Office 365: Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online, the Office Web Applications and Office. Alex also provides demonstrations of our most compelling accessibility features, tying to the usage scenarios they enable.

Find out more about the webcast, including details of how to register and watch at the education webcasts site.