Often customers I speak to like the idea of a hybrid deployment in order to keep their staff users on their local Exchange servers, while taking advantage of Exchange Online in Office 365 for education for their students and maintaining a rich co-existence between the two environments.

With the continued push for cost savings and more efficient use of IT in schools, colleges and universities there is a growing number of customers who want to go “all in” and remove the local Exchange servers altogether, and in doing so, decommissioning their hybrid deployment.

Helpfully, the fantastic Exchange Team Blog recently talked about how to go about doing this, so go and check it out!

Decommissioning Exchange 2010 servers in a Hybrid Deployment

I have always been meticulous awful when it comes to keeping notes; whether it’s actions from meetings, shopping lists, things to do, I just seem unable to get it right. I’ve tried it all – sticky notes, notepads, email flags, writing on the back of my hands, nothing seems to help; until OneNote came along, specifically, being able to easily sync my notes across devices easily.

One of the great advantages of Office 365 for education is that SharePoint Online and the Office Web Apps are free for students and faculty. Every user can have their own “My Site” storage area to keep private files, and these can be access through a number of clients and devices. Your students and staff can use the power of SharePoint Online to access content from anywhere, anytime.

Example Scenario

Seeing as we’re in the festive season, I wanted to keep a little list of things I’d like for Christmas so that when people ask the question I don’t panic and say that I’d just like socks. Ideas come to me all the time, whether I’m at my PC or not, so it would be really useful if I could access this list from anywhere.

I’m also a bit of a gadget geek and have 2 laptops and a desktop running a mixture of Windows 7, Windows 8, Office 2010 and Office 2013, a Surface with Windows RT, and a Nokia Lumia 920 running Windows Phone 8 – some of these devices have the native OneNote application installed, others have the OneNote Modern app, and others just a browser so ideally I’d like to being to access my notes across the range of devices, too.

Browser:

First up, it’s the browser. I can access my content from practically any Internet-connected PC or Mac running a compatible browser. In the screenshot above I’m using Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, but Firefox and Chrome also work. I have options to edit the notes via the browser or even to open up in OneNote client, if I have it installed. This is great because I don’t have to be on my own device; I could be with friends, on holiday, or just at someone else’s desk and I’m still able to sign in and access my notes.

Find out more about supported browsers, and operating systems at the Office 365 community.

Phone:

Most often I see something I like when I’m out and about. With my Windows Phone I’m able to sync my notebook using the OneNote app that comes installed as part of the Office Hub. The awesome thing about using this is that I can take pictures and add voice notes straight from the phone into the notebook, which I can then retrieve later from other devices. This would be fantastic if I was out on a field trip or fact-finding exercise in class because I could take rich notes as I go and not have to worry about transferring them to a different device later on.

Find out more about OneNote, and Office Mobile on Windows Phone 8.

Desktop Applications:

Next is the OneNote desktop application, pictured above is OneNote 2013 which has my notes nicely synchronised from my My Site in SharePoint Online. This is great for me when I’m at my desk as I can have OneNote open in the background and I can paste content in, or just type notes as I go and I know that it’s all automatically synchronised online.

Last, but not least, is the OneNote Modern app available for Windows 8 and Windows RT. I can use the snap feature to have my notes on screen at the same time as the desktop so that I can keep working and taking notes at the same time. This could be great for taking notes during a class where other content would need to also be on screen, such as a textbook, video conference, etc. With the snap feature I don’t need to sacrifice one task to make a note – I can do both together.

Find out more and download OneNote from the Windows Store for free!

Now you know how I make my Christmas lists, let us know how you use OneNote in the classroom in the comments!

I like to get out of the office whenever I can, and last week I visited a local junior school to help them with their upgrade from Live@edu to Office 365 for education. This was the first time I had hands on experience of a live upgrade, so here are my 5 top tips for upgrading from Live@edu to Office 365 for education.

My top tips, as well as a whole bunch of other useful information can be found in the Live@edu upgrade wiki, so be sure to check that out too!

1. Document your existing configuration

It’s probably been a while since you deployed Live@edu – in fact, you might not even be the person who did it in the first place. Not every feature is carried over to Office 365 for education during the upgrade; specifically, the supervision policies that are available in Live@edu need to be manually re-created once the upgrade has completed.

If you’re using the Closed Campus, Bad Word, or Anti-Bullying policies at the moment you’ll need to note down how they’re configured. For example, you might have the closed campus policy enabled for students, but members of staff can email anyone – it’s this sort of thing you need to write down (or put into OneNote!).

Follow the links below to find out more about the pre-upgrade tasks you should carry out to ensure a smooth upgrade.

Read More:

• Document your supervision policy settings prior to the upgrade
• Before upgrade checklist for administrators

2. Make sure everybody knows a change is coming

There are likely to be some changes that your staff and students will see once the upgrade is complete. This might include new services, or a change to the URL they use. Whatever the change, ensuring that your users know it is coming is important.

Consider sending out an email (before the upgrade!) to every user with some information about new features they might be getting, such as Lync Online, or SharePoint Online. You could also create some posters to go up in the IT suites, or maybe include a note in the staff bulletin. Some larger customers even printed up some t-shirts for their IT staff to wear as they worked around campus so that everyone knew about the new services.

3. Plan your downtime

You can kick off the upgrade any time you like up to the point when you’ve been scheduled for automatic upgrade. This means you don’t have to do it during work hours. In fact, it is better to wait until the end of the working day, or the weekend to complete the upgrade. While my first hand experience of the process showed that you can successfully complete a small school in an afternoon, bigger customers will take longer. A weekend might be better.

4. Re-create your configuration

Following on from step 1 you’ll need to re-create any policies as transport rules. Refer back to your notes and follow the links below for tips on how to go about re-configuring.

This is an ideal time to familiarise yourself with PowerShell if you’ve never used it before. PowerShell is a great way to simplify big tasks and reduce the time it takes to carry them out.

Read More:

• Re-create supervision policies after the upgrade
• Use Windows PowerShell to manager Office 365

5. Consider password resets

Password security is important – that goes without saying. Whether you opt to go for identity federation through AD FS 2.0 or Shibboleth, or to manage your passwords in Office 365 you could use this opportunity to encourage everyone to update their passwords – you could even set passwords to expire every so many days if you wanted to be extra security conscious.

If you do not opt for identity federation users will have to go through the self-service password reset process.

Read More:

• Implement federation or create Office 365 passwords
• Single sign-on roadmap

The Microsoft Accessibility team  run a wide range of initiatives, including a global network of accessibility centres, an online accessibility tutorial programme for Windows, Office and Office 365, which includes Office 365 for education. They also publish a comprehensive range of general guides for specific types of impairments:

• Vision Impairments
• Dexterity and Mobility Impairments
• Hearing Impairments
• Learning Impairments
• Language and Communication Impairments
• Age-related Impairments

Accessibility in Office 365 for education

The precise details of the accessibility features available to you will depend on which components of Office 365 for education that you use, and which web browsers your users select, but I've summarised the accessibility for the key components and features below:

• Accessibility features in Office Web Apps
  Office Web Apps provide screen reader support, keyboard accessibility, and high contrast modes. Office Web Apps run in a web browser so you can also use your web browser's accessibility features to improve the readability and accessibility of Office Web Apps, such as screen zoom, colour and font controls.
• Support for assistive technology products in Word and PowerPoint Web Apps
  The Word Web App and PowerPoint Web App have display modes that make them accessible to screen readers. If you use assistive technologies, such as a screen reader or speech recognition software, you will have the best experience in Office Web Apps if the assistive technology that you use supports WAI-ARIA.
• Accessibility in Lync Online for instant messaging, calls, and meetings
  Lync provides many accessibility features including keyboard navigation, high contrast, keyboard shortcuts, sharing notification, and screen reader support. You can setup Lync to hear incoming messages read aloud, as well as using keyboard shortcuts to make it easier to navigate and move between active windows
• Accessibility in SharePoint Online for team document collaboration and websites
  SharePoint Online includes More Accessible Mode, keyboard shortcuts, easy tab navigation, and help for web managers who want to ensure the webpages created are accessible.
• Accessibility in Exchange Online for email and calendaring
  With Exchange Online, you can listen to email on your desk or mobile phone, manage your calendar, and use familiar keyboard shortcuts when you are managing email and your calendar online.

There's plenty of detailed information on the Microsoft Accessibility website but perhaps better still, a handy downloadable hand-out, "Accessibility in Microsoft Office 365" for education, to share with colleagues who are starting to use Office 365 for education.