Here’s a video walk though I’ve just posted that covers setting up an end users desktop with Office 365.
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
Feature must be activated
Installing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) onto a Windows Server 2008 R2 all went fine but when I attempted to create a Collaboration Portal site collection I was greet by the message:
The Office SharePoint Server Standard Web application features feature must be activated at the web application level before this feature can be activated.
After trying a few things I came across this:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/8b96663a-ed87-4ab4-bd59-33c7245a76d4
which basically confirms the issue and attributes it to the MOSS setup configuring IIS on Windows Server 2008 R2 incorrectly.
The solution? Re-install MOSS, only this time manually configure IIS before running the MOSS installation OR simply re-apply MOSS Service Pack 2.
Once I reapplied the service pack I could create the Collaboration Portal site collection.
SBS Essentials review
Not a bad little review from Paul Thurrott over at the Winsupersite on SBS 2011 Essentials. I have to agree with him that SBS Essentials is effectively incomplete until the release of the Office 365 integration module. There was talk that it would be released at the Microsoft world wide partner conference in July but nothing materialized. Paul says in his article:
“Sadly, it won’t ship until the end of the year”
which I certainly hope is not true but I do have some faith in the fact that Paul probably has better sources than I.
In that case I would have to say the waiting another 3 – 4 months for the Office 365 module for SBS Essentials is really going to throttle its take up in my opinion. The whole premise of this server was the fact that it would interface directly to the cloud and without that it is really a bit of a lame duck at this point. Sure I know that you can do the integration to Office 365 manually but without the dedicated module it kinda makes SBS essentials a car that is missing a wheel doesn’t it?
Office 365 Exchange Online Connected accounts
One of the really nice things that you can do with Office 365 Exchange Online is configure your Exchange Online mailbox to receive from your other external email accounts.
To do this first login into your Office 365 console via https://login.microsoftonline.com. Then select Outlook. You should then see your mail box.
Go to the top right of the window and select Options (which is just under the user name).
From the menu that appears select See All Options. You should then see a screen like:
You should be on the Account option. To the right you’ll see the Connected Accounts button, select this.
Select the New button.
Enter an email address and password, then press the Next button.
After a few moments the account should show as being connected (if additional information is not required).
When you are returned to the Connected Accounts screen you should see your account listed. You’ll also note on the right the option to change the Default Reply Option.
Mail from the connected account will now start appearing in your Office 365 Exchange Online email box (as well as in the original external mailbox).
Email archiving in Office 365 – End User
In my previous post I showed how to enable archiving for an Office 365 Exchange Online user. Now, we’ll have a look at what the end user sees.
With archiving enabled when a user opens their desktop Outlook they will see an addition Archiving folder as shown above in Outlook 2010.
and the same when they login to Office Web Apps.
Users can now drag and drop whatever emails they wish into this archive, however creating an automatic archiving policy is more challenging.
In Outlook 2010 the normal way to manage archiving is to right mouse click on an Outlook folder and select Properties. However, when we now do this with Exchange Online archiving enabled we see a window like shown above. There is now no longer an option to archive locally, all we see is the default policy “Use Parent Folder Policy”.
The next problem is where can I set these policies? Turns out each user has to so this from Outlook Web App (there are other ways buts let’s just follow along with the user example for the time being).
Login as the user to Outlook Web Apps. In the top right corner select Options and then See All Options.
From here select Organise Email and then Retention Policy as shown above.
You can then select the Add button to add a retention policy to this mailbox.
When you do you’ll see a list of standard policies as shown above. All you can do here is select a policy and press the Add link. When you have finished press the Save button.
To change or add policies you’ll need to use Powershell which I’ll cover in a later post.
if you now revisit Outlook 2010 folder Properties, Policy you’ll see there is additional policy you just enabled to select from.
So in summary:
– Once email archiving is enabled a user can manually move items into that folder in Outlook on the desktop or Outlook Web App
– There are no specific archiving policy applied but it can only be enabled from Outlook Web App.
– To create or modify retention policies you are going to need to user Powershell.
What do you get with email archiving enabled? For any plan that includes Exchange Plan 1 the user gets a total of 25GB mailbox shared across the primary inbox and the archiving area. Otherwise the user gets 25GB for their primary mailbox and an “unlimited” archiving area.
- A default quota of 100GB is set on the personal archive. In the unlikely event that the user exceeds this quota a call to Office 365 support will be required. Administrators cannot adjust this quota up or down.
Email archiving in Office 365
One of the major benefits of Office 365 Exchange Online is that (with certain plans) you receive an effectively unlimited email archive. In this post I’ll cover how to set it up on the back end and then in the next post what it looks like from the end user side.
Enabling archiving via the office 365 Admin console.
Login to https://login.microsoftonline.com as an office 365 administrator.
Ensure you are on the Admin page. Then select Manage under the Exchange Online heading.
Select the email box you wish to enable archiving for from the list of mailboxes. Then click Details.
You will notice in the list if any users already have archiving enabled (in this case Lewis Collins).
In the window that appears scroll down to the Mailbox Features and expand.
Click on Archive from the list and then select Enable.
You can set whatever name you wish for the archive. Normally it is recommended to leave the default name.
When complete press the Save button.
You will be returned to the list of mailboxes and you should see that user enabled for archiving.
When the client logs into their mailbox either in Outlook or Outlook Web App they will see a new archive folder.
I’ll cover more on the user end experience of Exchange Online Archiving in the next post.
Failed to create configuration database for MOSS
Working with a test Windows 2008 R2 server with SQL 2008 R2 installed, onto which I was trying to install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). Every time I tried I get the error:
“Failed to created the configuration database”
during the setup and configuration wizard.
However, when I looked in the SQL manager the configuration database was there.
Tried many, many things thinking it was a software compatibility issue with Windows Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2008 R2. Nope, not those those applications BUT I also had Office 2010 installed on the machine (since I was using it as a stand alone demo).
Problem turned out to be Office 2010, which I uninstalled and everything then worked fine.
Today’s lesson = MOSS and Office 2010 don’t work together on same machine.
