Office 365 certified

Back in January 2014 I sat the two new Office 365 exams:

70-346 – Managing office 365 Identities and Requirements

and when I logged into my Microsoft Certified Professional portal today I was stoked to find:

Interestingly, passing these two exams gives you another qualification:

Not quite sure why it is considered ‘legacy’ (may be it is being changed?) but now I’m also a Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate!

These two exams are the more enterprise focused Office 365 exams. There is still the:

74-325 – Administering Office 365 for Small Business

Which I have also passed a while back.

My advice having now done the three exams is that it is very worthwhile to start with the 74-325 first to get a flavour of what these Office 365 exams are like. The 70-346 and 70-347 are certainly much tougher and more focused on the the enterprise features of Office 365 so you’ll have to work hard to pass them.

The challenge with all these Office 365 exams is that they cover such a wide range of topics. To pass you are going to have to know SharePoint as well as Exchange. You are going to have to know how to do things with PowerShell and via the administration portal. Finally, you are also going to have to know how to interface Office 365 to on premise servers and desktops. That is a lot to know for ANYONE!

If you need a hand with the 74-325 exam I have an exam cram guide for sale on my publications page that helped me (that’s why I created it).

Even though I now have these exams under my belt there is still a HUGE amount of stuff I am still learning about Office 365 and I honestly discover something new just about every day I use it. That’s what makes it such a great product for me as it appeals to my inner geek.

Review – Nokia Wireless Charging Plate

Full disclosure – the review unit was supplied by Mobilezap. You can find this device and others at the Mobilezap category page.
One of the really cool things that Nokia phones come with these days is wireless charging. That means you just place the phone on the charging stand when you are not using it to keep the battery full.
I have been dying to try this out and was recently given the chance to try the Nokia Wireless Charing plate.
In my testing I found the charging plate to work very well. It does take a little familiarization to ensure you get the phone lined up correctly but a little light on the base tells you when the phone is charging. Now obviously it will take a little longer to charge wirelessly than if you plugged in the USB cable but the convenience factor totally makes up for that.
The good things that I also found were firstly, it charges through the cover I have on my Nokia and secondly it seems to also charge the Nexus 5 phone I have! The downsides are that if it needs to have a long charge the phone can get quite warm, but I have seen with other charging methods as well (especially via the car charger).
All in all this is an extremely handy device that you can simply set on your desktop somewhere and then simply place you phone on to ensure it remains full charge. No more plugging and unplugging of USB cables, so for that it is certainly value for money. Because it is so convenient you’ll probably keep your phone charged longer which overcomes the downside of taking longer to charge. Just watch the heating up during long charges.
I’d certainly recommend this to other Nokia phones users (and perhaps those using a Nexus 5). Thanks again to Mobilezap for the opportunity to evaluate.

Getting Started With Lync Online 2013–update

The ePub and MOBI (Kindle) formats of my latest book “Getting Started With Lync Online 2013” are now available from the CIAOPS publishing site or booksellers like Amazon. This also along side the existing PDF versions as well.

Don’t forget that I have also made the previous version of this book, based on Office 365 Wave 14 available for free download.

I am now working on the second edition of the Getting Started With PowerShell for Office 365 book which I expect to be out in the next few weeks.

Wave 14 Lync Online eBook free to download

As my new Lync Online book has been published I am open sourcing the superseded Wave 14 version, which is still of value in many respects, however it will now be free to download in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats.
You will find this book on either:
http://www.ciaops.com/downloads/

or
http://www.ciaops.com/publications/

It pays to be enthusiastic!

Since I put my name down to be kept up to date with OneDrive developments I received notification today that it has launched and is rolling out as we speak!

You can read the blog post here:
OneDrive now available worldwide

But I also found out that gave me a 20GB storage bonus for 12 months just for being ‘enthusiastic’!
I can’t wait for my existing SkyDrive apps to start updating to OneDrive. My question is when is OneDrive for business going to hit my Office 365. I’ll just have to stay ‘enthusiastic’ and find out!

SharePoint Workflows–first steps

This is the next in my series about SharePoint Workflows. Make sure you read my previous post before proceeding:

What are SharePoint Workflows?

I am going to use a test SharePoint site on my Office 365, as shown above, to demonstrate you how to use SharePoint Designer to connect up and start creating Workflows.

The articles after that will focus on how actually create a workflow.

You will firstly need to install and run the free SharePoint Designer 2013.

When you have done that select Open Site from the button on the left.

You’ll now need to enter the URL of the SharePoint site you wish to connect to as shown above and press the Open button.

If you see the above warning message about the server version being more recent firstly make sure you are using the right version of SharePoint Designer for the SharePoint you are accessing. Then make sure that all the patches and updates have been applied to SharePoint Designer on the desktop. See this knowledge base article for more information:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2767858

Failing that try using the Click to run version of SharePoint Designer that is provided with Office 365.

When you have opened you site you should see something like that shown above which displays the structure of your SharePoint site.

The third item on the menu on the left should be Workflows. Select this and the display will change to that shown above. Typically you will find no Workflows.

As I mentioned before, Workflows are normally attached to a SharePoint element, such as a Document Library. To view this option select the Lists and Libraries from the menu on the left (normally the item just above Workflows).

Now on the right you should see a complete list of every List or Library on your site. In this case select Documents under Document Libraries on the right.

You should now see a lot more detail about that particular Document Library on the right hand side.

If you scroll down the window on the right hand side you should find an area that says Workflows as shown above.

Pressing the Create button in the top right of this area will allow to create a Workflow attached to this SharePoint item (in this case a Document Library called Documents).

In the next post I’ll show you how to create a very basic workflow and what options are available. From there we’ll look at creating something a bit more involved as mentioned in my first post.

Using the Lync Online Web Scheduler

Many people don’t realize that you can create, manage and attend Lync Online meetings directly from a web browser. I created therefore created this short video to run over the basics.