Office 365

Configuring Your Android Device to Work with Office 365 - Lync and Learn Session

JoshT_MSFT — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:45:00 GMT

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Lync and Learn is an online session led by Office 365 Product Managers and Community Grid members. Lync and Learn sessions address different Office 365 subjects and scenarios and is beneficial to anyone who wants to learn more and expand their knowledge of the Office 365 suite. View past Lync and Learn sessions here.

Office 365 gives you the power of Microsoft and the Cloud anywhere and at any time. Are you taking Office 365 mobile? Then our next Lync and Learn Session is for you. Learn how to configure your Android phone to work with Office 365. Join John Ventry as he gives a step by step presentation on configuring your Android phone and Android tablet to work with Office 365.

John Ventry is a 17 year technology professional, currently working as an Office 365 and SharePoint consultant for St. Charles Consulting Group. John works with clients on developing SharePoint solutions, creating mobility strategies around SharePoint and Office 365, SharePoint migration strategies and Office 365 administration.

To join this webcast please join us on Thursday May 17^th, at 11:30 AM Pacific Time and see the Lync information below. Download and save the calendar invite on this blog post. We are excited to see you there!

Interested in being our next Lync and Learn presenter? Learn how to join the Office 365 Grid and become an Office 365 Lync and Learn presenter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Presenter: John Ventry, Office365/SharePoint Consultant for St. Charles Consulting Group, and Office 365 Grid member.

Date/Time: Thursday May 17^th, at 11:30 AM Pacific Time. (1 Hour presentation)

Live Meeting Information:
.........................................................................................................................................
Join online meeting
https://join.microsoft.com/meet/v-joshto/F00T8BQY
Join by Phone
+14257063500
+18883203585
Find a local number
Conference ID: 27579341
Forgot your dial-in PIN? | First online meeting? _[1033])!]
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Breadcrumbs in SharePoint Online - Grid User Post

JoshT_MSFT — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:21:00 GMT

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. We are excited to feature our latest Grid User post from Jethro Seghers. Jethro uses his extensive technical knowledge of Office 365 to share insights into how to customize breadcrumbs in SharePoint Online.

Written by Jethro SEGHERS

In SharePoint 2010/Online we don't have our breadcrumbs anymore. Or do we? If we look closely we see that the breadcrumbs are still available but in a different way:

But this not how we are used to deal with breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are on a page and look like this:

Now how do we get from picture 1 to picture 2? Well we use the SiteMapPath of SharePoint, put this in your masterpage.

<asp:SiteMapPath runat="server"
       SiteMapProviders="SPSiteMapProvider,SPXmlContentMapProvider"
       RenderCurrentNodeAsLink="false"
       NodeStyle-CssClass="BreadCrumb"
       CurrentNodeStyle-CssClass="BreadCrumbCurrent"
       RootNodeStyle-CssClass="BreadCrumbRoot"
       HideInteriorRootNodes="true"
       SkipLinkText=""/></div>

Now we need to define our css entries: BreadCrumb, BreadCrumbCurrent, BreadRoot

</style>

Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Exchange Online: Resource Mailbox settings - Grid User Post

JoshT_MSFT — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:21:00 GMT

Written By: Surya Begum, Office 365 Grid

Do you ever get an error message saying “Your meeting request was declined? This resource doesn’t accept meetings longer than 1440 minutes”. You can change the default meeting options to schedule meetings with more no of days. When you are scheduling meeting using the resource mailbox the default time is 1 day which is 1440 minutes, if you are scheduling the meeting more than 1 day you may get this error message when scheduling meeting, you can change this default meeting time by editing the resource mail box settings.

To change the settings through Outlook Web Apps:

Login to the Office 365 Portal
Click on Outlook >> Click Options at the top right corner>> Click See All Options >>

On the Top left corner near Options >> Click Another User.

Select the room mailbox that you need to change the Meeting options >> Click Ok.

After the room mailbox opens up, Click Settings.

Uncheck the Box which says Limit meeting duration and click Save.

To do this using PowerShell:

Install and configure windows PowerShell
- http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/cc952756.aspx
To connect exchange online to PowerShell check:
- http://suryawebtek.blog.com/2012/01/18/office-365-grant-and-revoke-access-to-mailboxes/
Run the following command to change Default meeting policy:
- Set-CalendarProcessing room -MaximumDurationInMinutes duration

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Surya Begum. Read the original post here. Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Delivering Professional Quality Webcasts using Lync Online – Lync and Learn Session

JoshT_MSFT — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:44:00 GMT

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Update 5/3: Thank you for attending this fantastic Lync and Learn session. You can find the Lync video recording and PowerPoint presentation below.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Are you intimidated when presenting online meetings? Do you feel you could polish your skills and make your presentations better? Then our next Lync and Learn session is for you! We will focus on delivering professional quality webcasts using Lync Online. Brett Hill will demonstrate how to plan and deliver a webcast using Lync Online. Brett is an Office 365 MVP and founder of Office365answers.com. This session includes planning for the user experience with different Lync clients, using video and audio, pre-configuring the meeting, and tips for presentation in real time.

To join this webcast please see the Lync information below, and Download the PowerPoint presentation below on this blog post. We are excited to see you there!

Presenter: Brett Hill, Office365answers.com and the Office 365 Grid

Date/Time: Thursday May 3^rd, at 12:00 PM Pacific Time. (1 Hour presentation)

Microsoft Lync for Mac 2011 Update: April 2012

JimBr_MSFT — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:34:00 GMT

The Microsoft Lync for Mac 2011 14.0.2 update has released. It is recommended that all users install this update.

The update fixes the following critical issues:

Issues with Cisco and Juniper VPN clients.

An issue that causes an Active Directory lockout when the Kerberos protocol is used.

Several issues that cause Lync for Mac 2011 to sign out unexpectedly or to crash.

For a description of the update, see Description of the Microsoft Lync for Mac 2011 14.0.2 update.

To download the update, see Microsoft Lync for Mac 2011 14.0.2 Update.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses

Office 365 for enterprises

Lync Online Resources

Office 365 Community

Lync Online Technical Blog

Lync Online Wiki Portal

Lync Online Forum

Tell us What You Think About Office 365 in our Customer Survey

JoshT_MSFT — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:16:00 GMT

The Office 365 team is always excited to hear what customers think about the service. Now is your chance to tell us what you think. Take a few minutes to fill out this short survey about your experience with Office 365. It’s quick, easy, and a great way to let us know how we’re doing. This information helps us make the service better by understanding how you are using it and what’s working.

Click here to take the survey.

Audience:

Office 365 for enterprises
Office Live Small Business

Deploying Office 365 client applications with Windows Intune

JoshT_MSFT — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:14:00 GMT

Windows Intune software deployment capabilities can provide a solution for organizations who are looking to distribute Office 365 client software to their managed PCs. This blog article describes the steps involved to deploy Office Professional Plus 2010 and Lync 2010 to enrolled and provisioned Intune clients on Windows 7. This article is intended as an example of how this can be done, so the steps may need to be updated to accommodate changes in either Office 365 or Intune services. It does not cover topics such as deploying to Windows XP, upgrading from older versions of Office, or configuring Office applications to work with Office 365 online services.

Overview

Step 1: Acquire the necessary client software and updates.

Step 2: Prepare the Office installation package

Step 3: Upload the installation packages to Intune

Step 4: Deploy to computer groups

This procedure is the same as for deploying other software applications and is an effective way to rapidly distribute the Office 365 client bits to all of your managed PCs.

Step 1: Acquire the necessary client software and updates.

Your Office 365 subscription plan must be one that includes Office Professional Plus 2010. The setup files can be acquired through the Office 365 admin portal by logging in and selecting Downloads under Resources. Additionally you may wish to deploy Lync 2010, which is also available for download from the O365 admin portal.

Note that Office Professional Plus 2010 obtained through Office 365 channels (I'll refer to it as Office Subscription) contains different licensing binaries than the Volume Licensing version. Office setup will automatically convert an Office VL installation to Office Subscription, but one side effect of this is that there will be two Office Pro Plus entries in Add/Remove Programs. To remove Office you must uninstall both.

In addition to the Office client setup files, you will also need to deploy the Microsoft Online Sign-in Assistant (SIA). The SIA is a service and a set of DLLs that allows Office to validate users with Microsoft Online Services in the cloud. If SIA is not deployed, Office Subscription will autorun SIA setup in interactive mode, and your users will have to walk through the installation themselves. Once installed, SIA will automatically display a dialog that prompts for username and password. If a user does not enter his or her Microsoft Online credentials into the SIA UI, Office will enter a reduced functionality mode after a thirty day grace period. When deploying the Sign-In Assistant, you will need to deploy the architecture that matches the PC itself rather than that of Office. So for example, a 64-bit machine running 32-bit Office should have the 64-bit Sign-In Assistant installed.

Lastly, there are two updates that are necessary to ensure Office applications work well with Office 365. These updates are not available individually through Microsoft Update, therefore they will not be automatically available for approval in the Intune console.

By installing the Sign-In Assistant and updates, you are effectively performing the functions of Office 365 Desktop Setup. Note that configuration tasks are not performed by Intune, such as configuring applications to access Sharepoint.

What you will need	Where you can find it
Office Professional Plus for Office 365	https://portal.microsoftonline.com/download/
Lync 2010	https://portal.microsoftonline.com/download/
Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=234947&clcid=0x409
Microsoft Outlook 2010 Update	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2597011
Microsoft OneNote 2010 update	http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2523130

Step 2: Prepare the Office installation package

Intune installs applications on clients unattended under System security context. Intune will automatically install MSIs in "silent mode" however EXEs require that the admin is responsible for configuring this. Many setup EXEs will accept a command line argument, however Office setup requires that this be done either as through a config.xml file (or using the Office Customization Tool, which is not covered here).

First, extract the Office setup file:

MicrosoftOffice.exe /extract:<path>

Then, create config.xml in the root directory and add:

</Configuration>

Last, extract the .msp files from the updates and place them in the Updates subdirectory of the expanded Office setup directory. (You could also upload the .msp files to Intune as Non-Microsoft Updates however by putting them directly with the Office installation package you are ensuring they will be installed immediately).

onenote2010-kb2523130-fullfile-x86-glb.exe /quiet /extract:<path>

outlook2010-kb2597011-fullfile-x86-glb.exe /quiet /extract:<path>

(Optional Step 2a: Test your silent installations)

To save yourself some time, it is advisable to test your silent installations for both Lync and Office before uploading them to Intune and waiting for them to download and install on a client. Peek ahead to Step 3 to get the command line arguments, and then just try them locally.

Step 3: Upload the installation packages and updates to Intune

The next step is to upload everything to Intune using the Windows Intune Software Publisher.

Office

In the Intune admin console, go to Software > Managed Software and click Upload. Select the setup.exe file from the expanded Office setup files, and check "Include additional files and subfolders from the same folder." In order to detect the Office 365 edition of Office Pro Plus, add the following detection rules:

File exists:

%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE14\osaui.exe

(This is the Office Subscription Agent. Note that on 64 bit machines Intune will check both C:\Program Files and C:\Program Files (x86))

MSI product code exists:

<Extracted Folder>\ProPlusSub.WW\ProPlusSubWW.msi

Registry key exists:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform

A command-line argument is necessary for Office setup to parse the config.xml file that sets it to silent mode:

/config config.xml

Lync

Once Office is uploaded, start up the Windows Intune Software Publisher to upload Lync. You don't need to extract the Lync setup files since the EXE accepts a command line argument to run in silent mode. For detection rules, you can specify the main executable:

File exists:

%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Lync\communicator.exe

The command-line argument for running in silent mode is:

/Install /Silent

Sign-in Assistant

You can deploy this as Managed Software or as an Update. Both should work. Uploading the Sign-in Assistant MSI is easy because Intune will automatically run it in silent mode and will use metadata from the MSI file to detect whether it is installed.

Step 4: Deploy to computer groups

Now that the installers are all uploaded to Intune, all that needs to be done is to deploy them. It is recommended that the deadlines all match so that all components are installed around the same time.

Note that once everything is installed, users will not be prompted for their Online Services credentials until the next reboot. However, Office will continue to function without online validation for up to thirty days. You may also wish to force computers to restart from the admin console.

Done!

Feel free to comment with your feedback, questions, or additional recommendations.

- Chris Green, Program Manager

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

What are your options for a test environment with SharePoint Online - Grid User Post

JoshT_MSFT — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:17:00 GMT

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Written by Corey Roth, Read the original post here.

I’ve seen this conversation come up a few times. Deploying code to SharePoint Online is not like deploying code to your test and production environments back on-premises. I thought I would give my thoughts on it and that will help you make a better decision. Office 365 is not like Azure in the fact that you can simply spin up another web role for testing. Nor do we have the ability to deploy code to one role and then swap it into production like we can with Azure either. That means we have to get more creative. Sure, you can develop code locally on a local SharePoint 2010 server and deploy it. You can even use Visual Studio 11 to help you publish the solutions to the cloud faster. However, this isn’t necessarily a good “test” environment since SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Online have a lot of differences.

Effectively, the way I see it, we have two options for a test environment.

Create a new site collection
Create a new Office 365 account (tenant)

I know what you are thinking. As a traditional developer building on-premises solutions, neither of these sound ideal. Maybe they are not, but they actually make a lot of sense when we start thinking about it. Let’s look at each option in detail.

New Site Collection

Now when this may not make sense for your on-premises farm solution. It actually makes quite a bit of sense at the site collection level. Think about it. Our goal is providing a separate environment. Well, pretty much everything you do with SharePoint Online operates within the sandbox of the site collection. This includes solution packages which are published to the site collection’s solution gallery. This makes it an ideal way to test customizations such as web parts, lists, content types, and more. Simply create a new site collection, publish your customizations, test it out. When you are done, you can even delete the site collection and create a new one when you need to test again. Your code will not affect anything in the other site collections.

When will this not work? When your code requires you to make changes at things at the tenant level. For example, if you are testing some new term sets in the Managed Metadata Service or your solution is querying search. If you were making use of the BCS, this might not be a good option either. In essence, it works well for testing things like web parts and the use of the Client Object Model, but not so well for tenant based features. For those features, it’s time to start looking at spinning up another Office 365 account.

New Office 365 account (tenant)

When you need to ensure that everything is absolutely separate in the cloud, the only way to do it is with another Office 365 account. Go to try.office365.com and create a new account with a new prefix. I’d recommend using a prefix that is easy to remember and indicates you are on the test environment. For example, if your main domain is company.sharepoint.com, create something like companytest.sharepoint.com. The benefit of creating a new account is that your service applications such as search, BCS, and the Managed Metadata service are truly separate. You can also rest assure that nothing you do on this account, will affect your production account.

Probably the biggest drawback of this approach is that you have to maintain completely separate user accounts. This can prove to be an inconvenience but it’s not terrible. There may be some risk if you are testing permissions within your application, but you just have to deal with that. Another drawback of this approach is that none of your data from your “production” SharePoint Online site will be present. You’ll have to either manually upload it, deploy it with code, or look at a third party migration tool.

One other benefit of this approach is that you can just use a trial account. Trial accounts are good for 30 days before you have to start paying. This very well may be long enough to get you through your test cycle. If your test cycle runs longer than that you can always just purchase a few licenses. Keep in mind that Enterprise plans have a one-year term though.

Summary

These are the options I have came up with for testing customizations in the “cloud”. I tend to go with just creating a new site collection, but I am sure I will find a change that warrants creating a completely separate account. Have you come up with any other techniques for testing with SharePoint Online? Post them here in the comments.

Follow me on twitter: @coreyroth

Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity in Office 365 - Update

Patricia Eddy - MSFT — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:06:00 GMT

In order to mitigate issues with some mobile device implementations of redirection that were causing connectivity failures, Microsoft has deployed an interim solution that should eliminate the need for manual server reconfiguration of the affected devices when your Office 365 server location changes. Users who had previously been experiencing issues connecting to Exchange Online (Office 365) with their mobile devices should be able to connect successfully now.

For more information about the problem and the solution, check out this article on the EHLO blog that explains how mobile devices connect to Exchange Online (Office 365) service and how the connectivity may have been impacted if the device does not support certain Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol requirements.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/02/07/cross-site-redirection-exchange-activesync-clients-in-office-365.aspx

Storage Update for SharePoint Online Enterprise Plans

JoshT_MSFT — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:20:00 GMT

“Business is business and business must grow.” – Once-ler from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.

Your feedback was clear: “We need more online storage and it needs to be cheaper.”

So we adjusted the SharePoint Online service accordingly—both in per tenant storage quota limits and the cost of additional storage. Now, you can be less constrained as you plan your content management strategy and determine how and where you share files and manage projects.

Tenant storage quota limit increase—Now up to 25 terabytes (TB)

Individual customers (tenants) can now consume up to 25TB of data and content, compared to the previous per tenant limit of 5TB. As a result, storage limits are no longer such a barrier. Go ahead and create new documents, share them, version them, move them from DRAFT to FINAL, review and approve them, populate lists, publish forms, generate new sites, upload marketing assets, create company-wide Document Centers, design your company intranet, and more.

Additional storage costs decrease—A 92 percent price reduction

Along with the recent price reductions across Office 365, the SharePoint Online additional storage add-on has decreased by 92 percent effective immediately. The reduction translates to a drop from U.S. $2.50 per GB/month, to $0.20 per GB/month. Yes, you read that right—20 cents each month. So if you need more storage than you originally received by default, go ahead. You won’t break the bank.

How much storage do you need?

There is a simple equation to help determine how much SharePoint Online content and data storage space your company gets by default when you purchase of Office 365. Please note that “seats” refers to individual user licenses.

Total available tenant storage quota

10GB + (500MB * E1-E4 seats) + purchased additional storage

Note: Kiosk workers (K1 & K2) and external users do not contribute to the total available tenant storage quota.

In addition to overall combined company storage, every user that gets a My Site (E1-E4) will also get 500MB of personal storage. My Sites are a central location to store and manage documents, favorite links, and personal blog and wiki pages.

Two example scenarios:

1	Contoso Inc. purchases a total of 2,300 seats: 1,000 Office 365 E1, 500 Office 365 E2, 500 Office 365 E3, 300 Office 365 K2, and plans to invite 35 vendors as external users for various event activities. Contoso will not need more storage beyond its default allocation.
Total available tenant storage quota = 10GB + (2,000 * 500MB) = 1010GBs <~ 1TB> Individuals who get My Site storage (500MB each) = 2,000

2	Fabrikam purchases a total of 45,000 seats: 30,000 Office 365 E1, 10,000 Office 365 E3, 5,000 Office 365 K1, and plans to invite 250 clients as external users to share drafts and final deliverables. The company will require an additional 100GB.
Total available tenant storage quota = 10GB + (40,000 * 500MB) + 100GB = 20,110GBs <~ 20TBs> Individuals who get My Site storage (500MB each) = 40,000

You can go here to read more about SharePoint Online boundaries. And please review the SharePoint Online service description for more information on user rights across the various license types.

Thanks,
SharePoint Online Team

Audience:

Office 365 for enterprises

Having connectivity issues? Has your password changed or expired?

Patricia Eddy - MSFT — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:37:00 GMT

If the password you use to access Office 365 changes for any reason, you must also update the password setting on your mobile devices (for example, mobile phones or tablets) and any desktop e-mail programs (for example, Apple Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, or Windows Live Mail). Updating your password settings in multiple places may seem like extra work, but this requirement helps keep your information secure.

Put another way, whenever your password changes “in the cloud”, any devices that were set up using your “old” password will immediately stop being able to send or receive e-mail, or synchronize any information with your Office 365 account.

Examples of when your password could change.

If you password expires. The default password expiration policy for Office 365 is 90 days. This may be different for your account if it has been changed by the person who manages your e-mail account.
If your password is reset by the person that manages your account. The person that manages your account may reset your password for a variety of reasons.
If you change your password yourself. If you change your password yourself (for example, if you change it voluntarily using Office 365 portal).

The good news is that there are some simple steps you can take to help maintain connectivity/synchronization on your mobile device and desktop email programs.

Step 1: Regularly change your Office 365 password to prevent it from expiring without you being aware of it.

Step 2: Always update the password setting on your mobile phone and on your desktop e-mail programs every time your Office 365 password changes.

Check out all the details in this linked Wiki article.

How To Edit Your SharePoint WSP's - Grid User Post

JoshT_MSFT — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:27:00 GMT

Written By: Jethro Seghers, Office 365 Grid

Today I wanted to migrate a SharePoint 2010 Blog to SharePoint Online. I created a template based upon my Blog with content and downloaded the WSP.

On the SharePoint Online version I uploaded the WSP via Site Settings > Solutions. I activated my wsp solution and tried to create a new blog based on my wsp (old blog site template). Error: what!? I got alot of features I needed to activate. In the end I got 1 final feature that needed to be activated. 3bc0c1e1-b7d5-4e82-afd7-9f7e59b60c0a

One problem: all my features were activated. Google: no answer

So there was only 1 solution: I needed to change my wsp and delete that feature reference.

BUT HOW?

I based my solution on the blogpost of SharePointRoot.

Step 1: Make a copy of your WSP file.

Step 2: Change your wsp extension to cab. E.g. Blog.wsp to Blog.cab

Step 3: Use an unzipper to extract the files of your .cab file.

Step 4: I need to change the following files which I find using a very easy Windows Search

ONET.XML
ElementsContentType.xml

Step 5: Save your changed files.

Step 6: Now we need to make our wsp again. We know that a wsp is in fact a cab archive file. So let's try to do the same as in step 3 but backwards. Not alot of archivers can create a cab file.

The one I used it is izarc*. Start by opening the izarc application.

Click NEW and choose a name for your CAB. In this Case MyBlog_New.cab

You will enter the ADD FILES screen. Select the files you want to add and click OPTIONS. We will need to define that we want the subdirectories also.

OPTIONS:

Now we have a cab file with subdirectories.

Step 7: Rename my .cab file to a .wsp file.

Step 8: Upload my wsp file as a solution in SharePoint Online

Step 9: Create a site based upon my new wsp (template)

Step 10: VICTORY

*This third party tool is unaffiliated with Microsoft. You will need to investigate whether this tool will meet your particular needs. Microsoft is not responsible for third party services.

**You can automate this process with PowerShell. Find Grid User Rene Modery's post with a custom script here.

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Jethro Seghers. Read the original post here. Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Help Us Make Our Products Better: Looking for Small Businesses that sell Goods or Services

JoshT_MSFT — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:07:00 GMT

Written by Pete Ricci, Senior Business Planner - Office

We’re looking for Office 365 Small Business customers interested in participating in an online session aimed at helping improve our products.

We’re looking for customers from all walks of life and all industries whose small business does one of the following two things:

Services: You track your time and then invoice customers. Examples include: Trades like plumbing or general contracting, accounting services, landscaping, household cleaning, legal, and consulting.

Goods: You sell a product to customers. Examples include: jewelers, packaged food, clothing, furniture, art, music.

If you are interested in participating, or have any questions, send us an email. Please include your name, email address, telephone number, city & country as well as a short description of your business and your website (if you have one) to accfdbk@microsoft.com.

How Lync Online helps stop telephone tennis - Grid User Post

JoshT_MSFT — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:11:00 GMT

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Loryan Strant Read the original post here. Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Written by Loryan Strant

Do you ever get tired of leaving messages for people? When you hear someone say “I’ll just see if they’re around” or “I’m not sure if they’re in the office today” do you wish they got with the times and used Lync like you?

I generally add most of my customer contacts to my Lync contact list so that we can communicate in real time and get to an outcome faster. Plus sometimes it’s good just to say hi. My latest post on BoxFreeIT talks about phone tag (I refer to it as telephone tennis).

I’m certainly not breaking any ground in raising this – as that has been part of the whole Communicator/Lync marketing pitch since day one. But now with Lync Online as part of Office 365 being as cheap as it is – I have to ask the question how can organisations NOT be taking up Lync Online?

How to kill off phone tag forever with Office 365

Knowing when someone is at their desk can cut down phone tag and waiting games.

Written by Loryan Strant

How many times have you called for someone to have the person answering the phone report that they’re not sure if the person is in or at their desk? When someone is not available you have effectively three choices:

Leave a message and wait for a return call
Send an email and wait for a response
Try to call back later and hope to catch them

The problem is that this behaviour hasn’t changed for the past few decades. The only difference is now calls are cheaper and we have email.

Corporate instant messaging is not new, and with Lync Online making it so much more accessible and cost effective as part of Office 365, why aren’t more organisations using it?

For many small businesses the concept of corporate instant messaging is strange. In many conversations I have with prospective customers their response is usually, “I don’t see how we’d use it”. Many think that Lync could just be used for audio or video conferencing, or perhaps hosting virtual meetings.

What they don’t realise is that Lync provides them with the ability to better support their customers and increase collaboration between staff. How does it do this?

Imagine that you call to speak to your supplier, but instead of the receptionist saying something like, “They’re in but not at their desk. I’m not sure where they are. Can I take a message?” the response is actually, “They’re in the office but haven’t been at their desk for five minutes. Let me send their desk neighbour a message”. Or how about, “They’re on a call but let me send an instant message to see when they’ll be off”.

If both organisations are using Lync Online then there’s no need for a phone call at all, as you can send an instant message to the person and upgrade it to a voice/video call straight away, along with application and information sharing.

Because of Lync and the fact that I federate with almost everyone I know who uses it I find I am able to conduct far more conversations throughout the day and get things done because I’m not waiting on return calls or emails. For only $3.20 per user per month it’s hardly worth even having to think about.

Some useful tips for people new to Lync:

Find out who of your contacts have Lync so you can add them to your contact list
Tag contacts for status alert changes (that way Lync tells you when they’re back at their desk or out of a meeting)
Pin people you speak to regularly to the frequent contacts to make it easier to find them
Make note of presence orbs in Outlook and SharePoint – you can use these to communicate directly with the person, and it has the added benefit of setting the subject of the communication to be whatever the original source was (eg. subject of email).

Loryan Strant is a Microsoft Office 365 MVP (Most Valuable Professional). Follow him on Twitter@TheCloudMouth.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

OLSB to Office 365 Migration Tool Update and Tips on Creating Your Office 365 Public Site

JoshT_MSFT — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises
Office Live Small Business

Originally Posted on the Office Live Small Business Blog here.

Last week we mentioned our excitement in the release of a new free tool* by ValorConseil that will help users backup their Office Live Small Business sites and transition them to Office 365. Today ValorConseil announced that they updated their migration tool. Be sure to download this free tool to help you with your transition to Office 365.

According to ValorConseil, the version 2 of the migration tool released today can transfer everything from the WEB site to Office 365, including Pages, Images and Documents. The remaining tasks left to OLSB site administrators are:

Reconstructing site navigation (site hierarchy)
Minor fixes like selecting logo and few other issues
The tool creates a complete site backup on user's PC.

Be sure to download this free tool to help you with your transition to Office 365.

We also ran across a great blog post about Office 365 public-facing website best practices. Raymond Mitchell from iwkid.com walks users through Office 365 website creation while providing tips and tricks that will help anyone jumping into Office 365.

Get the updated Migration tool from ValorConseil.
Read about Office 365 public-facing website tips and tricks. (Blog may be down. Please see post below)

Regards,

- The Office Live Small Business Team

*This third party service is unaffiliated with Microsoft. You will need to investigate whether this service will meet your particular needs. Microsoft is not responsible for third party services

Office 365 public-facing Website - in practice

Written by Raymond Mitchell

For those of you that aren’t familiar, Office 365 plans come with the ability to create a public-facing website. I actually presented on the topic last year at SPSChicago but hadn’t had a chance to really dig in and create a production site until recently.

The opportunity finally presented itself when we were looking to re-launch the website for the Minnesota SharePoint Developers User Group. We had a pretty simple set of requirements and so I thought this would be a great solution. With the help of a few design-minded friends (Thank you Kristin and Kristina!!!) we were able to put together (in my totally biased opinion) a very nice little site:

Along the way I learned a few tricks and also have a few suggestions for v-next just in case @Office365 is listening

Tips

By default your navigation includes a link called “Member Login” which allows administrators to login and mange the site. For a user group site this is highly misleading/confusing so it needed to be removed. Once it is gone you may have trouble getting back into the page management – my workaround was to simply navigate to the forms listing page behind the scenes: /Pages/Forms/AllItems.aspx
You’ll probably want to start by configuring the site’s colors, style, and theme and then tweak from there. You’ll almost certainly want to configure custom styles (Style Sheet) and tweak your navigation (Hierarchy) – both options can be found on the Design tab on the ribbon:
Take it slow – there isn’t a way to roll-back to a previous version of a page so you’ll want to be careful when you’re making changes. You can always choose to cancel your changes when you leave the page but once you’ve saved you cannot go back.
Choose your page layouts wisely. Once selected you cannot change the number or placement of zones:

It’d be great if...

Navigation
- There doesn’t appear to be a way to link to external pages in the navigation. Pretty common scenario that needs to be supported
Images
- The editor won’t allow you to resize an image without maintaining aspect ratio. This is great for most scenarios but there are a few cases where it makes sense to have the option
Tables
- The table editor is BARE BONES – this needs to be updated to support simple things like setting column widths, cell background colors, etc
Additional page headers
- If you want to include JavaScript or configure a favicon you’re stuck looking for clever script monkey workarounds
List support
- While public facing sites aren’t really really built on SharePoint they do live within SharePoint so it would be great to be able to leverage lists. For example – not having the ability to create user group surveys, registration forms, or events lists that are presentable on the site seems like a big gap.
Extensibility
- At this point I have not been able to find any information on creating additional “gadgets” for use in 365 Public Sites. Lots of opportunities come to mind here but we’ll just have to wait and see if the ability becomes available.

Conclusion

It is absolutely possible to create a web presence using an Office 365’s public-facing website but it is important to know that you aren’t working with a normal HTML site nor are you working with SharePoint. For now we can do what we can with the tools they’ve given us and keep our fingers crossed for more functionality / options in the future.

More information about public-facing Office 365 sites can be found here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-online-small-business-help/step-3-customize-the-public-facing-website-HA102029499.aspx

Install the Lync Attendee BEFORE a conference call - Grid User Post

JoshT_MSFT — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 18:56:00 GMT

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Loryan Strant Read the original post here.

Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Written By: Loryan Strant

As a regular user of Lync Online I often host meetings for prospective customers and with external organisations that don’t have Lync working for them (trust me – I’m working on it).

When scheduling an online meeting Lync is great in that it inserts the conference details into the message body – making it simple for guests to join. The problem is that many people when joining a meeting with opt for the web client (aka Lync Web Access). While it’s light and easy – the web client doesn’t allow voice or video. This can make a presentation or demonstration fall flat on its face.

It has been my experience that even if you tell someone to go back into the conference, download & install the Lync Attendee client when prompted – sometimes there may still be issues connecting in with the client. This makes going back to using the web client more difficult as the browser will automatically try to fire up Lync Attendee.

This can cause a significant delay when trying to kick off a conference, and leaves the remote parties frustrated. The fix? Ask the conference guests to install the Lync Attendee client BEFORE they try to join.

Just past the following text into your meeting invites:

——————————————————————-
Please download the Lync Attendee from here beforehand:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=15755
——————————————————————-

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Video: Troubleshooting Outlook Offline Address Book Issues in Office 365

Rob Latino — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Applies to: Users and administrators of Office 365 for enterprises and Office 365 for professionals and small businesses.

In this video, we show you how to troubleshoot Offline Address Book issues in Office 365. This video is intended for administrators of Office 365 for enterprises and Office 365 for professionals and small businesses but may also be helpful for all users of Office 365.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Additional Information

The following related Microsoft articles are available:

Tell Us What You Think

We would love to hear from you! Please add a comment below to let us know what you think about this video and to tell us what other topics you’d like us to cover in future videos.

ADFS Auto Certificate Rollover - Grid User Post

JoshT_MSFT — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:47:00 GMT

Written by: PlanetJorge - MVP

I was recently contacted by a customer who was experiencing an outage that had ‘something to do with ADFS’. The root problem turned out to be an interesting one related to the token signing and decryption certificates automatically rolling over. Basically, after the rollover period, newly issued tokens are now signed by the newly created token signing certificate however the federation trust with Office 365 has not been updated to reflect the certificate changes. This causes the newly issued tokens to be invalidated due to what Office 365 perceives as an invalid signing certificate.

So how can you get information on the certificates and the auto-renew properties? I am glad you asked:

First Open PowerShell on your ADFS server and add the ADFS PowerShell Snap-In:
- Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.adfs.powershell
In order to get the properties of your ADFS run the command:
- Get-ADFSProperties
Look for the value ‘AutoCertRollover’ to see if your certificates are set to automatically update (which by default they are). If the value is set to true then Auto Rollover is enabled. You can also get additional values that re important to know:
- CertificateDuration: 365 <--- Validity period of the auto-generated Certificate
- CertificateGenerationThreshold: 20 <--- Days before expiration of current primary a new certificate will be generated
- CertficatePromotionThreshold: 5 <--- Days the newly generated certificate will exist before it promoted from secondary to primary
If you want to modify any of these settings you can do so using the ‘Set-ADFSProperties’ attribute like this:
- Set-ADFSProperties –CertificateDuration 730

So how do you resolve this problem and make sure it doesn’t happen again? The key is to actively change the certificate and update the Federation Properties for your domain in Office365 before the certificate. To do this:

Log in to the ADFS Server
Open the Microsoft Online Services PowerShell Module
Type Connect-MSOLService

Enter your global admin credentials

Enter Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.ADFS.Powershell
Enter Update-ADFSCertificate –CertificateType: Token-Signing –Urgent: $True
Enter Update-ADFSCertificate –CertificateType: Token-Decryption –Urgent: $True
Enter Update-MSOLFederatedDomain –DomainName arlingtonva.us
Type Get-MSOLFederationPropery –DomainName arlingtonva.us

Then verify the new certificate Expiration/Thumbprint is represented in the federation properties for Office365

Additionally, there are some very good articles detailing how to troubleshoot token signing certificate problems:

Expiring AD FS 2.0 Token Signing Certificates
- http://blog.auth360.net/2012/01/08/expiring-ad-fs-2-0-token-signing-certificates/
Troubleshooting Certificates management problems with AD FS 2.0
- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/adfs2-troubleshooting-certificate-management-problems(v=WS.10).aspx
AD FS 2.0: How to enable and immediately use AutoCertificateRollover
- http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/ad-fs-2-0-how-to-enable-and-immediately-use-autocertificaterollover.aspx

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Jorge Diaz. Read the original post here.

Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Video: Remove Corrupted Outlook Calendar Items Using MFCMAPI in Office 365

Rob Latino — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:23:00 GMT

Applies to: Users and administrators of Office 365 for enterprises and Office 365 for professionals and small businesses.

In this video, we show you how to remove corrupted Outlook calendar items in Office 365. We will do this using the Microsoft Foundation Class Messaging Application Interface tool, also known as MFCMAPI for short. You should only use MFCMAPI to modify mailboxes when all other troubleshooting scenarios have failed. This video is intended for highly skilled technical professionals and administrators of Office 365 for enterprises. Please seek assistance from your company's Office 365 administrator if necessary.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Additional Information

The following related Microsoft articles are available:

Tell Us What You Think

We would love to hear from you! Please add a comment below to let us know what you think about this video and to tell us what other topics you’d like us to cover in future videos.

Video: Troubleshooting Issues with Free/Busy Information in Office Outlook Clients for Office 365

Rob Latino — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Applies to: Users and administrators of Office 365 for enterprises and Office 365 for professionals and small businesses.

In this video, we show you how to troubleshoot issues that prevent you from viewing free/busy information using Microsoft Office Outlook in Office 365. This video is intended for all users and administrators of Office 365 for enterprises and Office 365 for professionals and small businesses but some portions of this video may require additional assistance from your company's Office 365 administrator.

(Please visit the site to view this video)

Additional Information

The following related Microsoft articles are available:

Tell Us What You Think

We would love to hear from you! Please add a comment below to let us know what you think about this video and to tell us what other topics you’d like us to cover in future videos.

Office 365

Configuring Your Android Device to Work with Office 365 - Lync and Learn Session

Breadcrumbs in SharePoint Online - Grid User Post

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

Exchange Online: Resource Mailbox settings - Grid User Post

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

Delivering Professional Quality Webcasts using Lync Online – Lync and Learn Session

Microsoft Lync for Mac 2011 Update: April 2012

Lync Online Resources

Tell us What You Think About Office 365 in our Customer Survey

Audience: Office 365 for enterprises Office Live Small Business

Deploying Office 365 client applications with Windows Intune

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

What are your options for a test environment with SharePoint Online - Grid User Post

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity in Office 365 - Update

Storage Update for SharePoint Online Enterprise Plans

“Business is business and business must grow.” – Once-ler from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.

Tenant storage quota limit increase—Now up to 25 terabytes (TB)

Additional storage costs decrease—A 92 percent price reduction

How much storage do you need?

Audience: Office 365 for enterprises

Having connectivity issues? Has your password changed or expired?

How To Edit Your SharePoint WSP's - Grid User Post

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

Help Us Make Our Products Better: Looking for Small Businesses that sell Goods or Services

How Lync Online helps stop telephone tennis - Grid User Post

How to kill off phone tag forever with Office 365

Knowing when someone is at their desk can cut down phone tag and waiting games.

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

OLSB to Office 365 Migration Tool Update and Tips on Creating Your Office 365 Public Site

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises Office Live Small Business

Office 365 public-facing Website - in practice

Tips

It’d be great if...

Conclusion

Install the Lync Attendee BEFORE a conference call - Grid User Post

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Loryan Strant Read the original post here. Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

Video: Troubleshooting Outlook Offline Address Book Issues in Office 365

ADFS Auto Certificate Rollover - Grid User Post

Written by: PlanetJorge - MVP

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Jorge Diaz. Read the original post here. Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

Video: Remove Corrupted Outlook Calendar Items Using MFCMAPI in Office 365

Video: Troubleshooting Issues with Free/Busy Information in Office Outlook Clients for Office 365

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Audience:

Office 365 for enterprises
Office Live Small Business

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Audience:

Office 365 for enterprises

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises
Office Live Small Business

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Loryan Strant Read the original post here.

Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises

The Grid User Post blog series exposes some of the best content from The Grid to the entire Office 365 community. Our latest post is from Jorge Diaz. Read the original post here.

Are you interested in contributing to The Grid? Click here to apply.

Audience:

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
Office 365 for enterprises