We just launched the new Office 365 Education suite last week so you might be asking where can I learn about the new offering from an Office 365 Administrator/IT perspective or where can I find new tools to help me onboard?  We have just added some new readiness tools and training content which I have listed below:

New Office 365 service descriptions

We have just updated all the new Office 365 service descriptions which are excellent source of information for describing in great detail all of the capabilities of Office 365 Pro Plus, Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange Online services within the new Office 365 offering:

Visit it here.

New Office 365 ONRAMP tool

This is a new useful tool which walks you through a questionnaire to ensure you are familiar with all the settings, limits, etc. with Office 365 to identify possible areas to resolve prior to going to production:

It also has a new Office 365 Readiness Assessment tool to check your Active Directory, infrastructure, etc. This replaces the old readiness tool (DRT) which has been retired. This new readiness tool is available after you run through the questionnaire.

Visit the ONRAMP readiness questionnaire and readiness assessment tool here.

Grab the IDFIX tool here to help identify and remediate your local AD prior to Office 365 configuring Dirsync.

New Office 365 deployment guide

We have a new deployment guide available:

Visit here.

New Exchange 2013 Deployment Assistant

The new EDA has been updated to support Exchange 2013 Hybrid step by steps.

Visit it here.

Some awesome guided labs on the new Office 365

Some useful Office 365 Ignite training for the new Office 365 release has updated training here:

New Office 365 admin features click below:

 New Office 365 Portal click below:

New Exchange Online OWA click below:

Exchange Hybrid configuration click below:

 ADFS configuration click below:

 Dirsync configuration click below:

Useful live or prerecorded webcasts for the new Office 365 click image below:

Visit here

New Office 365 deployment center

We have a new Office 365 deployment center which can be used for rapid pilot/testing:

Visit here.

Get a trial tenant:

The best way to learn about the new Office 365 Education is to get a trial tenant here.

Pilot or trial steps here.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s top user tip about SkyDrive Pro we’re back with our fifth instalment all about multiple calendar views in OWA (Outlook Web App).

This isn’t a feature that’s new to Office 365 Education, but it’s a question I get asked about all the time so it makes for a perfect top tip!

By default in the new Office 365 Education you are presented with your own personal calendar in which you can manage your own time and control view such as day/week/month, jump forwards and backwards in time, colour-code events by category, etc. Calendars can also by synchronised with mobile devices using Exchange ActiveSync so that your calendar is available wherever you go and is always kept up to date.

What happens if you need to manage more than one calendar? Maybe you want to have a calendar for school, and a calendar for personal events. Often, there is the need to see other people’s calendars; either to check availability or to manage their time on their behalf. Something people overlook is that you can do this right from within the Outlook Web App!

By right-clicking on the “Other Calendars” section in OWA and selecting “open calendar” you can choose to add in other calendars to your view.

A new feature of Office 365 Education is the overlaying of calendars rather than a side-by-side view. Above, we can see that there are two calendars visible: one is coloured green and we can only see free/busy information, and our own personal calendar is visible in the same space.

Office 365 Education is FREE to academic institutions and you can sign up in minutes. Why not get started with a pilot in your institution today?

We’re over half way through our top user tips series (there are only 10, I promise!) and today we’re looking at the latest Outlook Web App (OWA) and how it works on mobile devices such as tablet PCs and smartphones.

When you’re on a traditional device OWA can be a really powerful, browser-based, tool for managing your email, contacts and calendar; however, when you switch to more mobile, smaller and touch-enabled devices having an interface that’s been built for those environments makes more sense.

OWA is sensitive to the browser it’s being viewed on, and the great news is that in the new Office 365 Education there is a version that is specifically optimised for mobile and touch! Here’s how it looks on an iPad:

As you can see, the icons are bigger, the interface focuses on the content and it’s very easy to get access to your information. Here’s how the interface looks on smartphones:

Having looked at the new social networking features of SharePoint Online back in the 2nd edition of our top user tips it’s time to look at following sites that interest you, too.

If you find a SharePoint Online site in your institution that you want to access again, you can follow it to keep it handy. In addition, people who follow you get an update in their newsfeed about the site you’ve started following. This helps build your reputation as a collaborator—without any extra work from you. So following a site is similar to ‘liking’ it but with some added benefits.

Once you start following a site, you can:

• Find the site easily in your list of followed sites.
• See activity from the site feed in your own newsfeed.
• Share your find through an automatic newsfeed post that people who follow you can see.

Find out more about following sites that interest you on Office.com!

We’re into the final three top user tips in our series, and today it’s all about a topic we covered back in August last year: Excel Surveys! Available in both Office 365 Education, and the consumer SkyDrive service, Excel Surveys have a huge potential application in the classroom and are accessible via a browser on your PC, tablet device, or even your smartphone.

Surveys are very straightforward to create; especially in SkyDrive Pro:

Discovering & Sharing with Microsoft Tag

A great way to extend the reach of your survey, apart from the usual URL shortening services, is to use Microsoft Tag, a service to help you create Tag barcodes, QR codes, or even an NFC URL to add to an NFC tag.

One scenario in real life could be the inclusion of Tag barcodes on posters around a school, on the sports day programme, or in the school newsletter to get feedback and opinion from students, teachers and parents.

Why not check out our survey – you can scan it using your favourite scanning app for your device, or download the free mobile app!