Author: directorcia

Office Web Apps and iOS 5, still no go for editing

A little while back I wrote an article about using an iPad with Office 365 in which I lamented at how the iPad works fine as a reading device with Office Web Apps but struggles when it comes to editing.

 

My hope with the updated release by Apple of iOS 5 that things would get better, unfortunately they haven’t.

 

photo_46275E8C

 

Here is what happens when I attempt to edit a Word document using Office Web Apps on an iPad 2 running iOS 5, the document cannot be opened for editing.

 

photo2_46275E8C

 

We get a similar result when attempting the same thing with Excel Web Apps.

 

Damm! Is all I can say. I know that Office Web Apps work well in most other browsers on most other platforms, yet here, no go. It is a real pity as an iPad is such a sweet device and would work well for remote users.

 

So as it stands an iPad works really well as a SharePoint reading device and for working with SharePoint data. Where it falls down is when you actually want to edit Microsoft Office documents (whether in the browser or offline). Hopefully, both Apple and Microsoft can work a little closer together to make this functionality complete but whether that will happen is anyone’s guess.

Office 365 plans-SharePoint

The next in a series of blog posts on the differences between the plan offerings in Office 365.

 

Product

1 – Lync

2 – SharePoint

3 – Exchange

4 – Enterprise Suites

5 – Small Business Suite

6 – Office Web Apps

7 – Office 2010 Professional Plus

8 – Kiosk Suites

 

Things are not so straight forward now with SharePoint and the different plans because you can purchase SharePoint Online as an individual SKU (Plan 1 or Plan 2, shown below).

 

 

SharePoint Online(Plan 1)

SharePoint Online (Plan 2)

Team sites

Yes

Yes

Simple public facing web site

1

1

Ribbon Site designer tool

Yes

Yes

SharePoint Designer 2010

Yes, for Intranet sites

Yes, for Intranet sites

Custom workflows

Yes

Yes

Sandbox solutions

Yes

Yes

My Site

Yes

Yes

Enterprise features (Forms Services, Excel Services, Visio Services)

No

Yes

Access Services

No

Yes

Business Connectivity Services

No

No

Site collections

Up to 300

Up to 300

Search (across site collections)

Yes

Yes

Extranet users

50 free

50 free

Storage

10GB + 500MB per USL

10GB + 500MB per USL

Buy additional storage

Yes

Yes

Administration

Yes, Tenant level

Yes Tenant Level

 

or as part of a suite as shown below.

 

 

For Small Businesses SharePoint Online in P1

For Kiosk Workers SharePoint Online in K1/K2

For Information Workers SharePoint Online Plan 1 in E1/E2

For Information Workers SharePoint Online Plan 2 in E3/E4

Team Sites

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Simple Public-Facing Website

1 Basic Public-facing site included

No

1 Basic Public-facing site included

1 Basic Public-facing site included

Site Designer

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

SharePoint Designer 2010

Yes, for Intranet sites

Yes, for Intranet sites

Yes, for Intranet sites

Yes, for Intranet sites

Custom Workflows

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Sandbox Solutions (PTC)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

My Site

No

No

Yes

Yes

Enterprise Features (Forms Services, Excel Services, Visio Services)

No

No

No

Yes

Access Services

Yes

No

No

Yes

Business Connectivity Services (BCS)

No

No

No

No

Site Collections

Single Site Collection

N/A

Up to 300

Up to 300

Office Web Apps

View & Edit

View only for K1

View and Edit for K2

View only for E1

View and Edit for E2

View & Edit

Search (across Site Collections)

N/A

Yes

Yes

Yes

Basic External Document Sharing

Yes

N/A

Yes, add-on

Yes, add-on

Storage

10GB + 500MB per USL

10GB + 0MB per USL

10GB + 500MB per USL

10GB + 500MB per USL

Buy additional storage

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Max Org Users

Up to 50

TBD

TBD

TBD

Admin

Single Site Collection

No

Yes Tenant level

Yes Tenant level

Support

Community*

24×7 phone support for Admin

24×7 phone support for Admin

24×7 phone support for Admin

 

There are come inconsistencies to note here with SharePoint plans:

 

– The Small Business and Professional suite includes most of the features SharePoint Plan P1 but also includes the single enterprise feature of Access Services.

– The Small Business and Professional suite is limited to a total of 2 site collections, one public and one intranet.

– The Small Business and Professional suite does not allow you to purchase additional storage beyond what is provided initially (10GB) plus the amount per user (500GB).

– The Small Business and Professional suite includes the ability to read and write using Office Web Apps.

– In Australia 24×7 phone support is provided with the Small Business and Professional suite via Telstra, elsewhere it is only community support.

– Intranet SharePoint sites use https (secure) while public facing web sites only use http. However the Small Business and Professional plan only allows http for all web sites (see link for details).

– Intranet SharePoint domains are of the form https://.sharepoint.com.

– External SharePoint support vanity domains i.e. http://www.domain.com.

 

Another point to consider is that Business Connectivity services has been announced for an update to Office 365 coming in November. I am unsure whether at this stage it will be available in the P plan.

CIAOPS SharePoint Brisbane bootcamp

Just announced another full day SharePoint bootcamp in Brisbane on Thursday the 10th of November 2011. For details and registration please visit:

 

http://www.ciaops.com/bootcampbne/

 

Don’t forget that this a full day hands on course that not only includes all meals and documentation but also a 12 month subscription to my SharePoint Guide (www.wssops.com) and an external hard disk full of SharePoint machine images you can use for your learning well after the course is over.

Office 365 plans–Lync

I’m going to do a series of blog posts on the differences between the plan offerings in Office 365. I’ll update all the previous posts as I complete future articles. The first one will be on the differences in the Lync Plans

 

Product

1 – Lync

2 – SharePoint

3 – Exchange

4 – Enterprise Suites

5 – Small Business Suite

6 – Office Web Apps

7 – Office 2010 Professional Plus

8 – Kiosk Suites

 

Feature

Lync Online
(Plan 1)

Lync Online
(Plan 2)

Instant messaging (IM) and presence

Yes

Yes

Lync-to-Lync audio/video calling (1-to-1)

Yes

Yes

Lync federation (IM/presence/audio/video)

Yes

Yes

Click-to-communicate in Office

Yes

Yes

Authenticated attendee in Lync meetings*

Yes

Yes

Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®

Yes

Yes

Online Meetings

No

Yes (up to 250 attendees)

Initiate ad-hoc and scheduled online meetings

No

Yes

Initiate multiparty (3 or more users) Lync audio/video sessions

No

Yes

Initiate interactive data sharing (screen/application/whiteboard)

No

Yes

Interop with third-party dial-in audio conferencing services

No

Yes

Rights to Lync Server CALs

Lync Standard CAL

Lync Enterprise CAL

Price (A$/user/month)

A$3.20/user/month

A$10.20/user/month

 

* Enterprise Suite E1 includes Lync Plan 2

* Enterprise Suite E2 includes Lync Plan 2

* Enterprise Suite E3 includes Lync Plan 2

* Enterprise Suite E4 includes Lync Plan 2

* Small Business Suite includes Lync Plan 2

Some local press

I’ve been making some more appearances on the Net and in trade magazines.

 

Firstly, some of my opinions from this blog have appeared in the October edition of Computer Reseller News (CRN) Australia. The article is not available online but you can download the PDF here:

 

http://www.ciaops.com/storage/docs/crn_oct_11.pdf

 

In there I talk about the support issues around the Office 365 P product here in Australia.

 

The next article you’ll find at:

 

http://boxfreeit.com.au/Productivity/how-to-edit-sharepoint-online-files-on-the-ipad.html

 

and details the challenges that you’ll face if you want to edit Office documents from SharePoint with an iPad. Here is the first part of the story:

 

One of the most surprising challenges with Office 365’s SharePoint Online is to get it working effectively on an iPad. The solutions are by no means easy or straightforward.

The workaround below uses third-party applications on the iPad as middlemen to download files stored in SharePoint Online to the iPad for editing and then save them back up to SharePoint.

The most important app you’ll need to get documents to and from SharePoint is DropBox. A free account lets you synchronise up to 2GB of files between the cloud and your desktop. Once in the cloud you can access those files from your iPad.

Next you’ll need an iPad app that can read Office documents in DropBox and edit them. There are a few; I chose Office2 Plus. There is both an iPad and an iPhone app starting from around $6. The free versions let you view Office documents but not edit them, which is the same situation if you log in through your browser and use the native Office Web Apps in SharePoint Online. So to edit documents you’ll need to shell out for the full version.

Finally, you are going to need an app that can access your SharePoint Online site. Again, there are a few of these but the one chosen here is called SharePlus. The Pro version is $14.99 which lets you make changes rather than just read files.

Now we have all the apps in place on our iPad (DropBox, Office2 Plus and SharePlus).

 

For the rest of the article visit – http://www.boxfreeit.com.au/Productivity/how-to-edit-sharepoint-online-files-on-the-ipad.html

Office 365 and Windows InTune seminar


I am happy to announce that I’ll be presenting an end user focused ‘Getting started with Office
365/Windows InTune’ course on Thursday the 17th of November at North Ryde in Sydney. You can find details on the full day course can be found at:

http://www.ciaops.com/office-365-seminar/

This is opportunity for you to learn about these latest ‘cloud’ technologies and how they can integrate in your business. If you have been considering moving to ‘cloud’ technologies this course will give you valuable hands on information about how these technologies work. if you are already using Office 365 and Windows InTune you’ll benefit from learning how to make these applications work better and more productively as well as learning advance features and time saving tips and tricks.

The cost for this full day is only $ 299 ex GST and includes all meals and course material. If you are interested in learning about the benefits ‘cloud’ technologies can provide you or you want to get more from Office 365 and Windows InTune then you should sign up for this course. Places are limited so don’t delay.

SharePoint 2010 Certification Exams

Once you have a bit of SharePoint experience under your belt you’d really like to consolidate that and let people know via certification. The best options are the following 2 certifications available from Microsoft:

 

70-667 – TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

 

70-668 – PRO: SharePoint Server 2010, Administrator

 

However, if you come from the world of SMB and SharePoint Foundation things are going to be a little more tricky than simply sitting these exams. This is because both of these exams focus not just on SharePoint Foundation but also SharePoint Server. This means you are going to need to know about not only SharePoint Server configurations but also things like Network Load Balancing, Virtualization, and so on.

 

70-667 is perhaps a more basic exam with a number of questions presented in sequence. You can generally return to any of the questions at anytime and review your answers. 70-668 is little different in that it gives you scenarios that you need to read, then you are expected to answer a few questions based on the scenario. Once you have answered these questions you can’t return and review them. Thus, you only have a limited time to read, digest and answer what is presented in each case.

 

If you are coming from an SMB background and SharePoint on SBS you are going to need to learn about SharePoint server. The best suggestion (apart from my Guide and installing it on a VM) is to have a look at these publications:

 

Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration By Todd Klindt, Shane Young, Steve Caravajal – http://astore.amazon.com/c00ef-20/detail/0470533331

 

and

   
Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 Administrator’s Companion By Bill English, Brian Alderman, Mark Ferraz – http://astore.amazon.com/c00ef-20/detail/B0043M52KY

 

Not that I have read it but there is also the following book specifically focused on the 70-667 exam:

 

MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-667): Configuring Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Training Kits) – http://www.amazon.com/MCTS-Self-Paced-Training-Exam-70-667/dp/0735638853/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317964888&sr=1-3

 

At the end of the day both the 70-667 and 70-668 are focused on SharePoint Server but if you know your SharePoint Foundation stuff and are prepared to learn a little about SharePoint Server then you should be able to pass the exam and add these certifications to your roster.