Office 365 trial issues

Someone sent me this information about issues when you install a trial version of Office 365 E3 SKU which includes Office Professional Plus (which is also a trial version during this period).

Seems to be that when the trial period expires the Office Professional Plus that came with the Office 365 trial SKU goes into “reduced functionality mode” because it doesn’t activate (being a trial license after all). You can use the osaui.exe tool if this happens to re-license the product (one the license is valid):

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word-help/reactivate-subscription-license-1-using-osaui-exe-ha102053194.aspx

My general advice to people is that now Office 365 is available on a month by month basis that it really isn’t worth going on a trial, simply buy it. In short do your evaluation of Office 365 before you sign up as converting from a trial version to anything but that trial version can be a little painful sometimes.

A tale of two outages

Let me tell you something you already know and is bleedingly obvious anyway – Computers fails, IT systems go down. With this in mind I’d like to compare two recent examples.

Example 1.

Office 365 recent had an outage of a few hours (technically it was DNS not the Office 365 service but unavailable is as good as down). During that time let’s have a look at the impact. I certainly couldn’t receive any emails, I also couldn’t send any emails but I could still compose them and have them queued in my mailbox. I couldn’t have gotten to my SharePoint data and Lync would have also been offline.

So it was certainly preventing me from potentially doing some work but I could still access my calendar, contacts and previous emails.

Example 2.

The server on which this blog runs blew a power supply. So again system down but this time no access to any information on that box. Tools down time.

Wanna known the difference? In example 2 with my blog server, I had to pack up the machine. I had to drive it to repair shop. I had to wait until the power supply was changed. I had to drive the machine back. I had to connect it all back up and make sure it was working. I lost over 3 hours from start to finish getting the server back online.

In example 1, I kept an eye on Twitter to see when the system was back online for others and until then I went on with OTHER WORK.

So in which scenario was I more productive? For me personally it was example 1 as I could get on with other things because I knew someone (a.k.a. Microsoft) was working on the problem. I could still use some of my systems that had local copies (i.e Outlook) and could have with SharePoint if I had chosen to use SharePoint Workspace.

With example 2, nothing was going to get fixed until I fixed it.

Moral of the story? Computer systems go down, whether they are in the cloud or whether they are machines at the end of your fingers. It therefore follows that no matter where the computer are you use, you need to have some plans for when they fail (just like you need a plan to backup them up).

So Office 365 was unavailable. In this case I was more productive than when my own site server failed. I also content that would be a similar experience for most businesses.

Computers fail, deal with it. Develop a contingency plan to stay productive. What would I have done if the electricity failed? With Office 365 I would have worked off my laptop battery and wireless Internet connection until the battery ran out and then I would have relocated elsewhere to where the power was working. If I had all on site equipment I’d have no choice but to wait in the dark until the power came on.

It would be nice to see people actually discussing solutions to contingency problems rather than playing chicken little and blaming the sky falling on the evils of cloud computing. Come and see me when you are ready to have a BUSINESS conversation rather than a hysterical rant.

Computers fail, deal with it. A smart business would.

Optimizing Windows SharePoint v3 Search book

I’ve decided to re-release my “Windows SharePoint Master Class:Optimizing Search” e-book given that SharePoint Foundation 2010 is now available. Here’s the description:

This book is designed for those that want to take Windows SharePoint Services v 3.0 Search beyond the default. Did you know that Windows SharePoint Services v3.0 could index the contents of Adobe Acrobat documents and TIFF files? It normally can’t do either of these by default but the information inside this book will show you how to that and more. You’ll learn how to configure Search Server Express 2008 (free from Microsoft) to index information beyond SharePoint sites including Exchange Public folders, web sites and network shares. Implemented correctly Search Server Express can provide you the power of an internal search engine allowing you to make better and faster use of your digital information. If you want to make the most of Windows SharePoint Services then this book is for you.

I’ve made the price only $2.99 now so if you want a copy visit:

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/windows-sharepoint-master-classoptimizing-search/16967915

I plan to release an updated version focusing on SharePoint Foundation 2010 real soon.

Office Pro Plus via Office 365

As you may be aware it is now possible to obtain a subscription license of Office Professional Plus with Office 365. You’ll need the Enterprise E3 license or better to be eligible to download a copy and install it locally. If you are eligible here are some things that may not know about the Office 365 Professional Plus license:

1. Microsoft Office Professional Plus for Office 365 is licensed on a “per-user” basis. Users must assign each Microsoft Office license to a single named user before using the software.

2. Each user that is assigned a license may then install and use one copy of Microsoft Office per device, on up to five devices.

3. Office Professional Plus for Office 365 may not be deployed on a server (read terminal server) or desktop and accessed remotely from another desktop. Customers may only use Office Professional Plus for Office 365 locally. Remote Use Rights are not available under Office Professional Plus for Office 365 licenses.

4. Although remote access and use generally is not permitted under Office Professional Plus for Office 365 license terms, customers may still permit such access for purposes of providing support services.

5. Office Professional Plus for Office 365 is licensed on a per-user/subscription basis through Microsoft Volume Licensing.

6. Downgrade rights are not available with Office Professional Plus for Office 365 licenses.

7. User has right to any new upgrades that become available for Office Professional Plus under this license.

All this is documented at :

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/D/4/3D42BDC2-6725-4B29-B75A-A5B04179958B/Licensing_Microsoft_Office_Professional_Plus_for_Office_365.docx

The most interesting one amongst these is the inability to access Office 365 Professional Plus remotely on a desktop. This seems to imply (point 3) that you can’t have it running on your business workstation and then remote into that workstation and use Office. I suppose that Microsoft will say that allowing you to install the Office software on 5 devices (point 2) over comes that need. However, what does ‘purposes of providing support services’ (point 4) mean in this context?

It is interesting what you find when you read the licensing documentation eh? As with most licensing documentation, it seems to raise more questions than it answers.

Opportunity

A good business person is always on the look up for opportunities and lately I’ve notice one I believe that I’ll share with you.

I’ve seen a few studies recently that say a large amount of small businesses still don’t have a web site. This article cites study that says a staggering 46% of small businesses don’t have a web site. Impossible I used to think.

However, travelling the roads I can’t help noticing how many vehicles are adorned with email addresses that are provided by Internet Service Provider (ISP) or generic email provider (i.e. joe643@isp.com.au or marys_dog_salon@gmail.com). Amazing, that in this day and age that businesses haven’t registered a domain and used that to point to their ISP or generic email account. Chances are if they haven’t even done that then they probably don’t have a web site.

You would have to think that if you offered them a package to set up their own domain, with email and simple web site, they’d be interested. If they could also use it to say display a calendar, develop, take orders, connect to a smart phone, etc they’d be even more interested.

Typically these businesses would be small and initially have no call for a server. That means that a cloud based solution like Office 365 would be very appealing, simply because it would give them access to enterprise applications for a small monthly fee. Even just providing an external facing web site via SharePoint Online would be highly appealing I would think because it is simply enough that they could make some changes themselves. Importantly, that would allow them to feel in control.

Even more importantly they could start out quite cheaply with an Office 365 Professional and Small Business plan (P Plan) that would give them what they needed for less than $10 a month (even though I think the Enterprise plans are better). That should be well within their budget.

So, I think that creating a ‘start up’ package around Office 365 that includes, domain registration, Office 365 setup and training for a fixed price would be very appealing would it not? All you would then need to do is email the people you see out on the road who don’t yet appear to have their own business domain. The easiest way to remember their email address is probably to use your smart phone to take a picture of their email address. I’d also be confidently say that you’d be well placed when this business grows to pick up additional work, not to mention the referrals on offer if you did a good job.

The moral here probably is to have a look around and challenge your beliefs, because in many cases they are probably not correct, especially when it comes to the average business and technology.

Configuring Office 365 end user desktop

Here’s a video walk though I’ve just posted that covers setting up an end users desktop with Office 365.

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http://www.youtube.com/v/mq99xwvjPqo?hl=en&hd=1“;” alt=””>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq99xwvjPqo

Basically you need to login to the Office 365 portal as the end user, download and install the appropriate software. Once that is complete you run a configuration utility from the portal that configures everything for the end user. The only thing that is requires some manual configuration but as the video shows, this is pretty straight forward.

Using an iPad with Office 365

Here’s the first part of an article I’ve just done for BoxFreeIT.

One of Microsoft’s major selling points for its cloud productivity suite Office 365 is that you can work on your data anywhere you have internet access. But how well does Office 365 work on one of the biggest mobile devices – the Apple iPad?

The thing to remember with Microsoft Office 365 is that it will run better on Microsoft technologies, such as a PC running Internet Explorer. However, Microsoft claims the platform is compatible with technologies from other providers.

Office 365 is composed of three major components; Exchange for email, SharePoint for file management and collaboration, and Lync for communication. Let’s take a look at each one of these components separately and how they function with an iPad.

Probably the easiest component of Office 365 to configure for an iPad is Exchange Online. Provided you don’t have a cheaper “kiosk” licence you will be able to connect your Office 365 emails to your iPad in a matter of minutes. You simply need to go into the iPad’s mail settings and add an Exchange email account using your Office 365 credentials.

Once configured you can send and receive emails with all the standard functionality Exchange emails enjoy on an iPad. It is also possible to work with your emails via a browser and Outlook Web App. However, this is where things start to become less fully featured.

Because an iPad uses Safari as a browser rather than Microsoft Internet Explorer the environment isn’t as “feature rich”, as Microsoft would say. You can certainly log into your Office 365 portal and work with your emails but the experience is far more basic.

You can read the full article at:

http://boxfreeit.com.au/Productivity/using-office-365-on-the-ipad.html