Ingram Cloud Elevate Bootcamp 4

I’m doing another session around SharePoint in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney in mid-April for Ingram and encourage you to come along. You can register here:

http://www.adfirm.com.au/email/im-edm/1603IM-Cloud-Elevate-Bootcamp-Registration.html

Details

Introduction to Sharepoint Online and Managed Services.

Creating your own repeatable IP is key to maximising profit for every MSP. SharePoint Online within the Office 365 tool box is the perfect platform to start building that. It also serves as great way to introduce your clients to world of possibilities you can help them achieve around automating many of their day to day tasks.

Be it a simple holiday calendar, receipt tracker or even just taking advantage of implementing many of the prebuilt apps, building a templated set of tools you can apply to all your clients allows for high margin implementation and support – plus leading the way to even more the further you get into your client’s business.

Maximize your profits with ConnectWise® CloudConsole™ by reducing time spent managing Office 365 user accounts and time savings from automating the billing process, saving you time counting users and updating agreements. Increase control by proactively monitoring Office 365 services so anytime there is a disruption or outage, you can be alerted to inform your clients.

Join us for the Cloud Elevate Bootcamp to understand how you can enable your customers to automate their business processes using Office 365 SharePoint with Robert Crane, Microsoft MVP. Plus , Jeff Tessier from Connectwise to understand how it can help you automate your Office 365 business.

Topics include:

Session 1:

Introduction to SharePoint Online & OneDrive for Business: Learn how to create and sell a SharePoint Online Intranet, create a site, deploying the site using a template and creating a sales/marketing process around that. This session will help you put in place the building blocks for introducing your clients to Office 365 SharePoint with basic document libraries and workflows and prebuilt apps.

Session 2:

Introduction to Connectwise Cloud Console: ConnectWise® CloudConsole™ is a management, monitoring, and billing tool for Microsoft® Office 365™, built to save you time and reduce the complexity of supporting your clients’ Office 365 licenses.

I hope to see you there.

Improvements in Office 365 Video

I’m a big fan of the productivity benefits that video can provide a business as evidenced by both my YouTube channel and my online training academy. I’m also a huge fan of Office 365 video and am excited by the new updates Microsoft have just announced here:

What’s new – Office 365 video

There are plenty of improvements and a big one for me is the improved upload experience. However, I’ll also point out the improved way with which an Office 365 video can be embedded into a Team Site.

You’ll now see a dedicated Office 365 Video button when you edit a page as shown above.

This will then allow you to select from what has been uploaded to Office 365 video quickly and easily.

Office 365 Video March 1

I also really like the improved statics you can now obtain on each video to help not only determine how popular it is but also how long people actually spend watching the content. That feedback really helps improve the quality of the video.

It really is amazing the depth of tools that Office 365 brings to any business. I think more people need to look at Office 365 Video and the benefits it can provide around on-boarding, training, etc. These improvements from Microsoft are even more reason to start using Office 365 in your business.

Where to put data in Office 365?

Office 365 has lots of choice when it comes to storing corporate information and that confuses many people. The first place to start to avoid confusion is to understand exactly where information can be placed inside Office 365 and whether that information is available to all users or just an individual by default.

Hopefully the above diagram makes things a little bit easier to understand and here’s a breakdown of what it’s all about

The large box that contains everything is Office 365.

The first box in the top left is Exchange Online. This can contain a user’s personal mailbox (which is private), shared mailboxes (which are public) and public folders (which are public). Into the Exchange box you normally store emails shared between the three smaller boxes within.

The second box on the top row in the middle is SharePoint. This contains OneDrive for Business (which is private), Team Sites (which is public) and Video (which is public). Into the SharePoint box you normally store files shared between the three smaller boxes within.

The box in the top right of the first row is Yammer into which goes conversations (or discussions) that are public.

The box on the left in the bottom row is Office 365 Groups which are composed of a public shared mailbox and a public shared OneDrive for Business. Thus, any information that goes into the Office 365 Groups box will be public. Into the Groups box you normally store files and emails that should to be stored together because they relate to a single topic.

The box on the right in the bottom row is Office 365 Planner which is comprised of public Groups and public Tasks. Thus, any information that goes into Planner will be public. Into Planner you normally store files, emails and tasks that need to be stored together (i.e projects) because they relate to a single topic.

As you can see by the colour scheme, green is shared information amongst the business while red is private information unique to an individual user.

Of course you don’t need to use every storage location in Office 365 that is available to you immediately and your usage locations may also change over time. Best practice is to start with information in Exchange, then expand into Office 365 Groups, then Planner, then SharePoint and finally Yammer. The important thing to remember is that Office 365 gives you lots of choice of where to save your information, it is up to you to work out what makes the most sense for your business.

Hopefully, that makes a little easier to understand when it comes to determining where to put different types of information. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or contacting me directly (director@ciaops.com).

Azure AD Connect is NOT supported on SBS

Been getting a few questions about integrating existing SBS servers with Office 365. The bad news is:

Azure AD Connect cannot be installed on Small Business Server or Windows Server Essentials. The server must be using Windows Server standard or better.

per:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/active-directory-aadconnect-prerequisites/

Azure AD Connect is supported on a Domain Controller (DC) just not on SBS (it won’t actually install in my experience). This means that you’ll need to factor in a separate members server to install Azure AD Connect so you can synchronise the users to Office 365.

Make sure you consult that link for all the other requirements for Azure AD Connect as well!

Open vs Closed

One of the biggest battles that I continue to wage with myself is around altering my mindset. Previously, I will readily admit that I had a very closed mindset when it came to opportunities. Everything was more of a burden than an opportunity. This is partly genetic, partly environmental and partly life choices. Unfortunately, for many years I cultivated a closed mindset and this has certainly lead to missed opportunities that I rue in hindsight.

Even after becoming aware of this mental limitation I still struggle with looking at things with a truly open mindset, however I continue to work hard on that limitation. The biggest differentiator now is that I am fully aware of my ‘default’ mindset option and have disciplined myself to be more circumspect when it arises. This means stepping back and questioning my view of the situation and asking whether I am judging it fairly on its merits or simply reverting back to character without appropriate and pragmatic consideration.

With this new discipline of trying to move towards an open mindset I have become far more aware of how many people I come across that are like I was all that time ago. I can now see more clearly that the peers I was closely involved also had a very rigid closed mindset, which I believed reinforced my own. No doubt mine also reinforced others and continued the cycle of closed aspects.

Now however, I am amazed at the number of people I come across, especially in the IT game, that have a totally closed mind set and, like I used to be, are totally unaware of it. A great example are the new Cloud PBX and PSTN connectivity features that are coming to Skype for Business in Office 365. When I speak about these abilities and potential all I seem to hear is how they are not worth investigating until they are completely available.

This attitude is clearly one of a closed mind. One that fears change as well as the challenge that may be involved in learning something new. An open mindset would see the huge opportunity that it could provide and want to be at forefront of the change. It is truly amazing at how polarised these attitudes are when you can observe them from a distance.

Now I fully appreciate that not everything turns out as planned and there will always be set backs and challenges, yet to an open mindset these are always opportunities to learn and grow. They are simply steps on the path to success. Being of an open mindset doesn’t mean you ignore reality but it does means that you don’t let some minor excuse prevent you exploring the opportunities available.

As I said, I still struggle with truly having an open mindset as my default state. However, I am certainly now more aware of when my mind is closing down an opportunity simply by reflex. The more I look, the more opportunities I see and that has been a conscious journey that I have undertaken over the years. I therefore encourage you to stop and consider what your default mindset is configured for. If it isn’t already on the open side of the ledger maybe it’s time to consider what opportunity lies in a place where everything is not a burden!

Remember, your mindset is something that you alone cultivate and control. It influences everything you do. My advice? Work hard to open yourself up rather than living a life of being scared of what change may bring. That won’t be easy, but then, nothing that is worthwhile ever is now is it?

The first step in changing your mindset maybe to look at the people you spend the most time with. What is their mindset? Is their default influencing you? I know it was for me, that’s why I stepped outside my comfort zone and changed those I most associated with. I’ll guarantee, cultivating an open mindset will change your life for the better. Give it a try. What have you got to lose?

How to fix the inability to sync Team Sites with Next Gen sync client

The unfortunate thing is not that Microsoft recently update Team Sites to 1TB of storage but it hasn’t as yet brought the ability to sync Team Sites to the Next Gen sync client.

You can find all the details on the Next Gen Sync client here:

Meet the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client

Getting Started wit the OneDrive for Business Generation Sync Client in Windows

Deploying the OneDrive for Business Next Generation Sync Client in an enterprise environment

This inability to sync Team Sites is causing a lot of frustration in the field and the inability to sync Team Sites has recently been announced in the roadmap map, but for many it can’t come soon enough.

If you want to do something more than simply shake with rage about this and other issues you are experiencing with the sync client I suggest you visit the OneDrive User Voice:

https://onedrive.uservoice.com/

and vote up the items you want given priority. Also don’t be shy about leaving a comment as to the impact this is having for your business.

If you want the new sync client to support Team Sites then throw as much of your votes here:

https://onedrive.uservoice.com/forums/262982-onedrive/suggestions/10026033-new-sync-client-must-support-team-sites

Once you voted, pass the link onto others and get them to vote.

This is the most effective method of effecting change with the Next Gen sync client because just being frustrated doesn’t. You need to take action to effect change.

So if you want to fix the Next Gen Sync client, take action and encourage others to do the same. Vote,comment and then share this post.