Great news! We just publically announced today at Educause that Office 365 ProPlus will be offered to students at no additional charge if all your faculty and staff are already licensed for Office 2013 Professional Plus via EES/OVSES agreement or via Office 365 ProPlus subscription.

This is incredible news for students as they can now take advantage of all that Office 365 ProPlus has to offer.

I put together a quick FAQ for what this means for your education institution:

What is included with Office 365 ProPlus subscription license?

• Office 365 ProPlus for PC (Office 2013 ProPlus base applications)
• Office 365 ProPlus for Mac (Office 2011 for Mac base applications)
• Office for iPad (see here for new update 3.27.14)
    

How many machines/devices can I run this subscription on?

Each subscription license allows you to run Office on up to five machines being Mac or PC. You can also run Office for iPad on up to 5 tablets.

Is this a full version Office and available for offline use?

Yes, this is full Office on the PC, Mac, tablet, mobile platform and all are available for offline use.

What applications come with Office 365 ProPlus for PC?

Word 2013

Excel 2013

PowerPoint 2013

OneNote 2013

Access 2013

Publisher 2013

Outlook 2013

Lync 2013

InfoPath 2013

What comes with Office 365 ProPlus for Mac?

Word 2011

Excel 2011

PowerPoint 2011

Outlook 2011

What comes with Office Mobile for iPhone? (update 3.27.14 – now free)

Word Mobile

Excel Mobile

PowerPoint Mobile

OneNote and Lync Mobile available as separate download.

See here for more options.

What comes with Office Mobile for Android? (update 3.27.14 – now free)

Word Mobile

Excel Mobile

PowerPoint Mobile

OneNote and Lync Mobile available as separate download

See here for more options.

What are the PC requirements for Office 365 ProPlus?

• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows 8

32-bit Office can be installed on 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems and 64-bit Office can only be installed on 64-bit operating systems.

Computer and processor
1 GHZ or faster x86 or 64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set.

Memory

1 GB RAM (32-bit)

2 GB RAM (64-bit) recommended for graphics features, Outlook Instant Search, and certain advanced functionality.

Disk space
3 gigabytes (GB)

Monitor resolution
1024 x 768

What are the Mac requirements for Office 365 ProPlus?

• A Mac computer with an Intel processor.
• Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or later.
• 1 GB of RAM recommended.
• 2.5 GB of available hard disk space.
• HFS+ hard disk format (also known as Mac OS Extended or HFS Plus).
• DVD drive or connection to a local area network (if installing over a network).
• 1280 x 768 or higher resolution monitor

What are the iPhone requirements for Office Mobile for iPhone?

iPhone 4

iPhone 5

iPhone 5s

iPod Touch 5th generation

All devices above must be running iOS 6.1 minimum

What about Office on the iPad?

Office for iPad is now available as of 3.27.14.  See new blog post for details here.

What are the Android requirements for Office Mobile for Android?

Android OS 4.0 or greater

Android touch enabled smartphones only

Do students have to sign into Office 365 to use any of these applications with Office 365 ProPlus?

Yes, a valid Office 365 ProPlus license tied to a valid Office 365 login for students is required to enable any of the four Office 365 ProPlus features.

How long can a student leverage Office 365 ProPlus?

The guidelines are they can leverage this until they graduate or are no longer attending your school. At that point, you must disable their Office 365 ProPlus license.

How is this different from Office 2013 Professional Plus?

The Office 2013 applications are exactly the same however there are some differences including patching, license sign in for usage, and Click-to-run (C2R) technology for rapid installs (2 minutes for quick usage).

Can I run a local image of Office 365 ProPlus to install from and can I customize the install share?

Yes, you can install Office 365 ProPlus for PC from a local share and still leverage C2R technology for a few minutes installation of Office and with the Office Deployment Tool you can also customize the Office installation. See here for more instructions

Where can I get training on Office 365 ProPlus?

There is some excellent end user training on Office 2013 here.

There is some excellent end user training on Office for Mac 2011 here:

• Excel 2011
• Outlook 2011

• PowerPoint 2011
• Word 2011

Some end user help guides on Office Mobile for iPhone here and here.

Some end user help guides on Office Mobile for Android here and here.

Some end user Office for iPad training here:

• Excel for iPad training
• PowerPoint for iPad training
• Word for iPad training

Is there a deployment guide for Office 365 ProPlus?

Yes, there is an excellent IT Pro reference guide here and see my deployment blog post here.

When can I obtain this license for my students?

You can order it through your reseller. Please see these three part series on “How to get Student Advantage” - partI, partII, and partIII for guidance. Here is a new “Student Advantage Deployment Guide”.

This is a common question I get from customers deploying Office 365 Education. There are several training resources available for end user’s to learn Office 365 Education.

This site has excellent Office 365 end user video and text training resources here:

The videos are on Office 365 common usage scenarios:

A downloadable Office 365 video training series called ‘Get to know Office 365’ you can host in your internal training sites here:

Some SharePoint Online quickstart handouts here:

Sample downloadable SharePoint .doc training:

If you don’t have Microsoft IT Academy you really should get it for your academic institution since you can get access to Microsoft training courses and digital MS Press books.  This is an affordable training option for your end users where you can obtain a site license for your entire academic institution (contact your Microsoft account manager or Microsoft rep to sign up) to allow them to learn Microsoft technologies:

You can assign Office 365 specific/customized learning curriculums to your end users and you can track their progress and completion of content. You can also add other Microsoft products to their training plan such as Outlook, Lync, SharePoint, Office, etc.:

Sample of an Office 365 customized CBT curriculum you can assign custom courses to an end user or IT pro/admin:

View of the course outline for Communicating and Collaborating with Office 365:

Office 365 ProPlus/Student Advantage training would be here:

Since the recent announcement introducing Student Advantage almost a fortnight ago we’ve been inundated with questions. I’m super excited at the response to the news. As a result, we’d like you to join us for a live Q&A on Student Advantage at midday (GMT) on 31/10 on Twitter.

Live Q&A

We’ll be tracking your questions and conversation on all things Student Advantage on the #SAFAQ hashtag. The two accounts to follow are @ukeducloud and @microsofteduk.

We’ll kick off at 12pm, midday, GMT and we’ll be around “live” for an hour. Of course, we’ll answer any questions that come in at any point afterwards as well, just not so quickly!

To make things a bit easier we’ve already published an FAQ that might answer some of your questions, so please check it out!

Your Hosts

	I’m James Marshall, and I am the UK Office 365 Education technical specialist. I’ve worked with education cloud services since the days of Live@edu and I spend my days making sure people get the best experience from their Office 365 Education deployments, big or small! I can often been seen lurking as @jamesbmarshall on Twitter.
	Joining me is Tim Bush, the UK Education team’s marketing supremo. Tim’s been with the team almost as long as I have and runs the UK schools, FE and HE blogs, Twitter, SlideShare, as well as heads up all-things BETT for Microsoft. It’s safe to say that Tim is the go-to guy for all things education when it comes to Microsoft. Tim can also be found on Twitter as @tbush.

With a little under a month until Student Advantage becomes available (that's December 1st, put it in the diary!) one of the questions I am getting asked most frequently is: how do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education?

I’m going to cover this off in two posts, this first one to discuss how to get Student Advantage added to your existing Office 365 Education tenant. The second post will be a student-view; how to access and download the software.

Part One: How institutions get Student Advantage

Let’s start with a recap of how you qualify. Any institution will need to meet some criteria:

1. You must have an OVS-ES or EES volume licensing agreement.
2. You must cover 100% of your faculty/staff for Office on that OVS/ES or EES agreement.

As long as you meet the criteria you’ll need to contact your licensing reseller after December 1st to order the Student Advantage licences. What happens next depends on which volume licence agreement you have.

OVS-ES Customers

Once you’ve placed your order with your reseller you’ll get sent a link to retrieve your keys from the Volume Licensing Service Centre (VLSC). Through here you’ll see your product keys and be able to access the redemption interface to enter your keys into your tenant.

After you’ve entered the keys you’ll have the licences available (note, the image below does not show the Student Advantage Office 365 ProPlus licences, it’s just for illustration):

You can then follow the process for assigning these licences to your student users in the normal way; either via the admin centre, or Windows Remote PowerShell. These will be in addition to any other Office 365 licences a user may already have, such as Exchange Online Plan 1 or Office 365 Plan A2.

EES Customers

As with OVS-ES you’ll need to contact your reseller to order the licences. Once the order is processed an email will be sent to the Online Services Manager, Notices Contact, or the Primary Contact. This email will contain two links: one to sign in, and one to sign up.

Whoever is going to process this email needs to ensure they are fully signed out of any and all Microsoft Online Services (this includes Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Xbox Live, Office 365, etc.). This will avoid accidentally attempting to associate the licences to the wrong place. Given that you’ll already have a tenant with users in place you’ll need to click sign in and authenticate with your Office 365 administrative credentials.

This process provisions the licences to your tenant, and once completed you’ll be able to assign them to your users following whatever process you currently use.

Check back soon for part two where I’ll cover how a student accesses their software once you’ve allocated their licence.

TOOLS YOU CAN USE:  how to change from the Exchange Only Plan 1 License to an A2 license after the upgrade from Live@EDU to Office 365:

Example PowerShell command to change from the "Exchange Online Plan 1" license to the "A2 FULL SUITE" license (with no service plans disabled) for one student user:

                Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName example@contoso.edu | Set-MsolUserLicense -RemoveLicenses contoso:EXCHANGESTANDARD_STUDENT –AddLicenses contoso:STANDARDWOFFPACK_STUDENT

(Always use caution when you remove a license since you have to add a new license or the mailbox is permanently deleted after the 30 day grace period.)

How to manage licenses with PowerShell or the GUI in Office 365:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11349.office-365-license-users-for-office-365-workloads.aspx (Bulk license assignment via PowerShell or the GUI in Office 365)

http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/deploy/granular-license-assignment-from-powershell.aspx (Granular license assignment from PowerShell)

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15905.how-to-use-powershell-to-automatically-assign-licenses-to-your-office365-users.aspx (Automatically create and license users with one PowerShell script)

http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/ee441218.aspx (Import Exchange Online users from a ".csv" file)

http://help.outlook.com/en-US/140/cc713521.aspx (Old - CSV Parser composed of Live@EDU PowerShell commands that need to be updated for Office 365)

How to use PowerShell in Office 365:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj151815.aspx (How to use Windows Azure AD PowerShell commands in Office 365)

http://help.outlook.com/140/cc546278.aspx (How to use Exchange Online PowerShell commands in Office 365)

http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/upgrade/windows-powershell.aspx (Live@EDU and Office 365 PowerShell Differences)

Forum Posts on managing licenses with PowerShell in Office 365:

http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/74033.aspx (Office 365 provisioning with PowerShell after upgrade from Live@EDU)

http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/58260.aspx (How to enable a single feature of an A2 license by PowerShell)

http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/17328.aspx (How to add A2 licenses by PowerShell)

http://modery.net/getting-all-licensed-office-365-users-with-powershell/ (PowerShell to find unlicensed users: get-msolUser where licensed = true or false)

http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/148/t/56329.aspx (PowerShell to find unlicensed users: Get-MsolAccountSku)

http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/172/p/63940/244113.aspx#244113 (List of Office 365 license names for PowerShell administration)

How to refer to Exchange Only Plan 1 Licenses in PowerShell:

Service Plan: EXCHANGE_S_STANDARD

SKU ID: contoso:EXCHANGESTANDARD_STUDENT

Enjoy!