Activating Office 365 via Open

Now that Office 365 is available via Open licensing here in Australia I thought I’d do blog that takes you through the process. Thanks to Nigel from AMT for the screen shots. Remember, to obtain Open licensing you generally need to be a reseller who purchases from a software distributor. If you are an end user, you will need to speak with your IT company about obtaining Office 365 under Open licensing. See here for more details about Open licensing.

1. Via your favourite distributor purchase Office 365 under Open Licensing.

2. Once purchased you will receive an email with the details of the Open license.

3. Access the Licensing Service Center at:

https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/servicecenter

and add the Open License you received for Office 365 using the License and Activation number you received in the email.

4. Once you have activated the license you may need to wait 24 hours before you can obtain the license keys, however a more typical wait is only 1 hour.

5. Log back into the Licensing Service Center. Select the Download and Keys option from the menu and locate the new Office 365 license. Record the license key that is shown.

6. Browse to:

https://portal.microsoftonline.com/commerce/productkeystart.aspx

where you will see:

Check the I understand option and press the Start button.

7. Enter the license key you obtained from the Licensing Service Center

and press the next button.

8. Verify the license details are correct.

Ensure that the displayed Office 365 plan matches the license you have purchased via Open Licensing.

If correct, press the done adding product keys button.

9. Now select start step 2 button.

10. Enter the Office 365 tenant details

Complete the form as you would for any normal Office 365 account sign up.

In the Country or region selection there now should be an option for Australia.

11. Select your tenant name and admin password

When you select your tenant name, remember that this will surface with plans including SharePoint Online. For example, the URL of your default private Team Site with SharePoint Online is:

http://tenant-name.sharepoint.com

and CANNOT be altered, so choose wisely.

12. Start using Office 365.

You can now use the admin account you just created to login to the Office 365 portal and start adding users and configuring services.

Press the start using Office 365 button to complete the sign up steps.

13. Once you have logged into the Office 365 Administration Portal check that the subscription details match what you expect.

You will find your license details under the license option from the menu on the left hand side of the Office 365 Administration Portal.

You can then click on the subscription name to get more details as shown in the previous screen shot.

14. Add the partner of record information for the new tenant.

Select the add hyperlink under the partner information heading in the bottom right of the screen.

Add the Microsoft partner ID you want associated with this account. If you are a Microsoft reseller doing this on behalf of a customer inserting your own ID will associate this customer with you Microsoft Partner account. Remember, you don’t receive any Partner of Record fees when you sell via Open because the reseller bills the customer directly for the Open licensing. However, if you are a reseller you should still associate your Partner ID with this account so Microsoft has a record.

There you are, all done. Pretty straight forward really.

I want my Windows Phone 8.1 update

Check out all the cool new features.

I can’t wait for my update.

OneDrive for Business

There is still a lot of confusion around OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. However, here is a nice video that explains much of the differences and capabilities.

It is perhaps a little long and gets a bit bogged down in some of the details but still very worthwhile if you want to better understand the differences in the OneDrive product.

Microsoft have also announced the availability of the stand alone OneDrive for Business plan:

OneDrive for Business now available as a stand alone service

It seems squarely aimed at competing with DropBox. Here is a comparison of the features available for OneDrive:

OneDrive Plans

And don’t forget that the OneDrive app is available on a number of different platforms, allowing you quick access (and in some cases local syncing ability) to your OneDrive files. You can download the clients apps from:

Download OneDrive

There is still a lot of confusion out there when it comes to OneDrive and OneDrive for Business but once you appreciate they are two completely different services then you can better appreciate the roles they can play. I’m sure I’ll be post a lot more about OneDrive and even updating my SkyDrivePro book to OneDrive but with things still changing so rapidly it doesn’t make sense just yet. Best to sit back and watch all the latest developments as they happen.

Managing promoted sites in Office 365

When a standard users clicks on Sites within the Office 365 portal they will see something like the above. Across the top are a number of ‘Promoted Sites’ that provide quick access to different URLs (typically SharePoint Online sites).

An administrator can control these ‘Promoted Sites’ via a number of different methods. The first is to access the Office 365 portal as themselves and select the Sites option from the toolbar across the top.

The difference when they do this from an ordinary user is that administrators will have the link Manage the promoted sites below as noted above.

Selecting that link will place the bar into edit mode as shown above. All you need to do to edit an existing entry or add a new ‘Promoted Site’ is select the appropriate tile.

Doing so will pop up a dialog box like shown above where you can makes changes including setting the Title, Description, URL (which can be any valid URL including one outside Office 365 if desired) and even the background image. You can also remove the link if you don’t want it to appear.

Once you have finished editing you can select the click here to stop editing option to save and update the changes for all users.

The other way that you can manage these promoted sites is via the SharePoint Admin center. To access this select the Admin option from the options across the top of the page and then select SharePoint.

In the SharePoint Admin center select user profiles form the menu that appears on the left.

Then select Manage Promoted Sites from under the My Site Settings in the middle of the page.

You’ll now see a list of the ‘Promoted Sites’ as shown above. Press the edit icon (the small icon with the pen, just under the check box at the left) to make changes.

You can now again make any changes you require to the entry. However, using this method you will see that you have an additional option available to you, that being Target Audiences. This allows you to show certain promoted site only to a certain set of SharePoint users determined by the audience feature. To learn more about this feature have a look at the following article:

Manage audiences

You can of course add and remove ‘Promoted Sites’ using the option on the menu bar at the top.

So there you go, two easy ways to manage the ‘Promoted Sites’ that users see when they select Sites in Office 365.

Disable New Site option in SharePoint Online

When your users press the Sites button in Office 365 they will be taken to a list of SharePoint sites they can access. However, as you can see from the above they also, by default, have the option to create a New Site.

You may not want all users to have this option since it can result in many, many unwanted and unused SharePoint site in your environment. To remove this option, login as a global administrator to the Office 365 Administration Portal.

Select Admin then SharePoint from the menu that appears.

From the bottom of the list on the left select Settings.

Scroll down the left hand side until you find the heading Start a Site. Then select Hide the Link on the right. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select OK to apply the changes.

Now when users view that same initial page they will no longer see the option New Site.

Great Azure intro demo

I’ve been lucky enough to have MVP Troy Hunt on a CIAOPS podcast (http://ciaops.podbean.com/2012/02/28/episode-24-troy-hunt/) as well as present on a Desktop to Cloud webinar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxu5qYCtv1s).

Troy has now done an excellent introduction/overview video on Windows Azure. This is really great if you are wanting to know what Azure actually does and for resellers it also goes into how you can make money with the platform.

The video is about 90 minutes but well worth setting aside the time to watch as it will answer many questions you may have.

Great work Troy. If you haven’t already, head over to Troy’s blog (http://www.troyhunt.com/) and follow all the amazing stuff he blogs about and the information he provides.