Tag: Office 365

Some perspective on SkyDrive storage

I’m starting to see people get a little agitated about SkyDrive Pro storage so I thought I’d answer some of the most common queries to provide a little balance to what seems to be a bit of unfair ‘Microsoft bashing’ in my opinion.
1. Some seem to think that SkyDrive consumer (i.e. http://live.skydrive.com) is 25GB of storage. If you sign up today it is actually 7GB, just like SkyDrive Pro. Those that current have 25GB where probably grandfathered when SkyDrive consumer was upgraded a number of years ago. However, if you sign up for SkyDrive consumer today you will only receive 7GB for free.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/skydrive/compare
2. Unlike SkyDrive consumer, SkyDrive Pro does not allow you to purchase additional storage. However, you can purchase additional shared storage for all SharePoint Online plans which you never used to be able to. For example, in in the previous version of Office 365 P plans you couldn’t add storage to SharePoint Online but now you can. Again, and improvement Microsoft has enabled after feedback. I will however point out that although you CAN purchase additional storage for all plans now on some plans it still remains unavailable as I detailed in an earlier blog post:
https://blog.ciaops.com/2013/04/additional-sharepoint-space-for-m-and-p.html
However, I am sure it isn’t far away for those plans.
3. When Microsoft upgraded SkyDrive consumer they looked at how much storage existing users were using and found that 99.94% used less than 7GB:

You’ll find information about the reasoning on this blog post:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/04/23/the-next-chapter-for-skydrive-personal-cloud-storage-for-windows-available-anywhere.aspx
It is therefore totally reasonable in my mind that SkyDrive Pro should initially be set at the same free limit (i.e. 7GB), given they are also looking to make then consistent under the same brand.
4. In the previous version of SharePoint Online users had 500MB (yes MB!) of personal storage for only the Enterprise plans. The version of Office 365 increased that to 7GB for EVERY user on EVERY plan. That is and increase of 1,400% in one upgrade!
5. Microsoft is still in the process of upgrading existing users from the previous version of Office 365. This a HUGE under taking across large numbers of users in large numbers of countries. I am sure they are going to offer the ability to upgrade storage capacity for SkyDrive Pro but please allow them to at least get everyone on the same platform!
6. It is hard for me to understand how multiple users in an organization can have > 7GB of personal files unless they are large images or videos. In that case I would be saying that should that information REALLY be saved into SkyDrive Pro? if such users REALLY needed to have everything in the cloud I would be suggesting using SkyDrive consumer for things like large static images and videos and SkyDrive Pro for Office documents. You can run both quite happily together on a desktop and have information syncing to both locations if desired.
7. To me the biggest limitation of SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint Online is the current 250MB maximum file size rather than the 7GB SkyDrive Pro limit. SkyDrive Pro consumer is 2GB per file in comparison, however I expect Microsoft to raise the limit for SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint Online in the very near future.
Again, remember, if needed you can generally add to SharePoint Online shared storage so if you REALLY wanted those large files in SharePoint Online, and users already have 7GB in SkyDrive Pro, simply purchase additional shared storage and secure it with standard SharePoint security so only required users can access.
Conclusion
So in summary, yes having the option for additional SkyDrive Pro storage, beyond 7GB, would be nice but I’m sure it isn’t too far away. However, this is not really a limiting factor when looking at SharePoint Online as there are alternatives and work-arounds.

Linking social network contacts in Office 365

These days people have most of their personal contacts in social media accounts like Linkedin and Facebook. The good thing about many Microsoft products these days is that they provide the ability to link to these. This is also the case for Office 365.

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If you login into your Office 365 portal and select People from the menu across the top.

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In the lower left you’ll find a link Connect to social network. Press this.

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You should now see a list of social networks you can connect to. Elsewhere I have seen Facebook also appear in this list but for some reason I am only seeing Linkedin on my tenant.

Press the Connect link.

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Allow Microsoft Office 365 access to your Linkedin account.

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Then in a manner of minutes all you social network should appear as contact in Office 365.

Cool eh?

SharePoint Online eDiscovery

One of great new features of SharePoint 2013 is eDiscovery. eDiscovery is the process of discovering (locating) electronically stored information that is relevant to litigation, audits and investigations. With SharePoint Online (Plan 2) this comes already configured. For more information about eDiscovery in SharePoint 2013 start here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161516.aspx

However, I’ll at least show you how to get started with SharePoint Online in this post.

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The first steps with eDiscovery in SharePoint Online are to create a seperate eDiscovery site collection. To do that, login to the Office 365 portal as an administrator and select SharePoint from the Admin menu in the top right as shown above.

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You should now see all the site collections you have configured for your tenant.

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In the top left select the New button and then private Site Collection from the menu that appears.

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Give the site a meaningful name (here eDiscovery) and URL (here eDiscover). and then select the Enterprise tab in the Template Selection area. In there you should find an option eDiscovery Center, select this.

Complete the remaining information for the site and press the OK button to create the site.

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After a few minutes the site will be created and you can browse to it. When you do you should see something like the above. To get started press the Create new case button on the right.

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You’ll now be prompted to create a new site. Thus, for each ‘eDiscovery case’ there will be a unique subsite below the eDiscovery home site.

Give the new case site a name and URL as shown above. The only site template option you have is eDiscovery.

Scroll down for more options.

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Complete the remaining options and press the Create button.

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You should now see the new case site as shown above.

The next step is to configure the eDiscovery Sets for this case (i.e. where to look for information).

Press the new item hyperlink underneath the eDiscovery Sets at the top of the screen.

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In the eDiscovery Set you need to give it a name and then select the Add & Manage Sources hyperlink next to Sources.

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Here you can select both Exchange mailboxes and SharePoint sites to search through.

Add the desired locations and press the OK button to save.

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Once you have defined the sources to search through you need to create a query for these locations, and you can have multiple queries if you want. To create a new query select the new item hyperlink just under the Queries heading on the case home page.

You can give the query a name and then enter in the terms you wish to search for as shown above. if you press the Search button on the right hand side you will see the results below, again as shown above.

So, that’s the basics of eDiscovery with SharePoint Online. Pretty powerful but yet easy to set up and configure. It is my firm belief that we’ll see more and more eDiscovery requests as we move into the future so having that built-in ability is fantastic benefit of SharePoint 2013 and a great opportunity to understand how to make it really perform.

SkyDrive Pro client now available for free

In an not unexpected move Microsoft has just release the SkyDrive Pro client as a free download. You can find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39050
Previously, as I have detailed in this blog, the only way that you could obtain the client app was by installing Office 2013 Pro Plus.
This is GREAT news as it makes SharePoint SkyDrive so much easier and available for all users! The SkyDrive Pro client app although now free is still only available for current Windows PC’s but I would expect you’ll see versions for other platforms available very, very soon. So stay tuned to this blog for updates!
Thank you Microsoft.

Office 365 email data at rest now encrypted

A while back I wrote a blog post about how I’d found that Office 365 data at rest was not encrypted. However, according to this newly released document:
Security in Office 365 White paper – http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=26552
It says:
Encrypted Data
Customer data in Office 365 exists in two states: at rest on storage media and in transit from datacenter over a network to a customer device. All email content is encrypted on disk using BitLocker 256-bit AES Encryption. Protection covers all disks on mailbox servers and includes mailbox database files, mailbox transaction log files, search content index files, transport database files, transport transaction log files, and page file OS system disk tracing/message tracking logs.
So it now appears that Microsoft has implemented an additional level of security on client’s data, which is great news! Now if they could only do the same for SharePoint, but I am sure it is coming soon.

Outlook Web App browser offline settings

One of the things you can now do with the version of Outlook via a browser (Outlook Web App) is actually take it offline in a browser. All the details can be found here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/support/using-outlook-web-app-offline-HA102828007.aspx

However to enable all you basically need to do is open your Outlook Web Access

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In top right of the window select the cog icon.

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From the menu that appears select Offline Settings.

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Then simply select Turn on offline access.

What else do I need to know (from article)?

Offline access may not make all of your email and calendar information available offline. Some of the available features and limitations are:

  • The last few days of messages. Supported folders include Inbox, Drafts, and any folders viewed within the last few days, up to 20 folders. If you’ve viewed more than 20 folders in the last few days, the most recent 18 plus Inbox and Drafts will be available.
  • In each folder that’s available offline, you will see three days of content, or 150 items, whichever is larger.
  • Attachments aren’t available when offline.
  • The previous month and future year of your calendar.
  • A limited set of upcoming calendar reminders. If you’re offline for a long period of time, calendar reminders will stop working until you go online and Outlook Web App can download current information.
  • Only your primary Calendar will be available offline.
  • All the items in your Contacts folder, plus any people that you email often and any that you’ve emailed recently.
  • Offline access doesn’t include archived folders, Team folders, tasks, or Favorites.
  • You can’t search for or sort items in your mailbox when offline, and the built-in filters won’t work when you’re offline.

You have to enable offline access on each computer that you want to be able to use Outlook Web App on when not connected to a network.

Offline access for Outlook Web App is designed for portable computers such as laptops and notebooks. It can’t be enabled in browsers on smaller devices, such as tablets and smartphones.

Your web browser determines where on your computer the offline information is stored and how much space it can use. If your offline information won’t fit in the space that’s been set aside, you may be prompted to increase it. If the space can’t be increased, less of your information will be available when you’re offline.