This video is walk through of all the options found in the Office 365 web console for the Small Business and Professionals (P) plan. It also shows show to create a user and the differences between an administrator console and that experienced by an ordinary user.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6irRgjjID7o
Look out for a tour of the E plan console coming soon.
Storage Metrics in SharePoint Online
One of the biggest challenges many people have when they start building out their SharePoint site is exactly where is the space being consumed? It has been tricky to obtain this easily with most instances of SharePoint but now with SharePoint Online via Office 365 there is a simple solution.
First visit the top level site you wish to examine.
Select Site Actions and then Site Settings from the menu that appears.
Select Storage Metrics from under Site Collection Administration.
You should then see an ordered list of the various SharePoint elements arranged by size. You can drill into any of the elements to reveal further detail.
Hopefully that should help identify where the space is being consumed with SharePoint Online.
Connecting to Office 365 Powershell
I did a Google hangout this morning but it didn’t auto broadcast onto YouTube (which it can do). So I recorded the video and uploaded to YouTube anyway. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nsUpPwBgKM
This video will take you through the steps of connecting to Office 365 with Powershell as well as some basic commands you can run.
Any feedback or suggestions for videos please contact me directly (director@ciaops.com)
Skydrive Pro primer
There is a lot of confusion around about exactly what SkyDrive Pro is. Here’s what I’ve been able to deduce.
– Skydrive Pro is part of SharePoint 2013.
– It allows synch’ing of nominated files in SharePoint 2013 to the desktop.
– It is designed as a per user solution, it not designed to bulk sync information from SharePoint 2013 to a network share (a al Dropbox).
– It requires you to have Office 2013 installed to work.
– It is completely different from SkyDrive Live consumer product.
So how does it work? Here’s the experience with the latest Office 365 beta.
Login to the Office 365 beta portal and select SkyDrive from the menu across the top.
Select Sync in the top right of the page.
When you do you might get the above inability to display the page with a URL starting with grvopen://https. This is because there is no local app that can do the sync’ing. I would have thought that this piece of software would simply download automatically if it wasn’t found on the local machine. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear so. To use SkyDrive Pro sync’ing you need to have Office 2013 installed. Thus, the SkyDrive Pro sync’ing desktop app appears to be part of Office 2013.
If you now install Office 2013 and repeat the attempt to sync after the install has completed you will see:
Allow this.
Allow again if prompted.
You should now see the address of the document library in the library to sync as shown above. Press the Sync Now button.
If you are using Office 365, as I am in this case, you may be prompted to login to Office 365.
You should now see any files being sync’ed as shown above.
Once complete, if you press the Show my files button you should see
So any files copied here will be sync’ed with the location in SharePoint and any new files that get loaded into that SharePoint location will be sync’ed locally in this location.
Now, if you go to any document library in SharePoint 2013 you will again see the option to Sync. Selecting that will prompt you, as above, as to what you want to sync. Make the selection and press Sync selected button.
You will now see that new sync’ed location added under favourites. Interestingly it will be given a new name as shown above.
If you look in the system tray you will find a SkyDrive Pro icon. Right mouse clicking will display the above menu. One would expect that if this icon is shown in the system tray sync’ing to SharePoint 2013 will not happen.
If instead of Office 2013 you have Office 2010 Professional Plus installed, when you attempt to sync it will use SharePoint 2010 Workspace. Thus, if you have Office 2010 Professional Plus you won’t get the SkyDrive app.
The main question I have now is, can I download just the SkyDrive Pro app somewhere and use it without Office 2013? One kinda thinks that this is what will happen as most people won’t have SharePoint Workspace and, at least initially not Office 2013 either. With sync’ing of documents from the cloud to the desktop being very important I certainly hope the provide this SkyDrive Pro Desktop app for free as they do with the consumer grade SkyDrive Live local app.
If I find more information I’ll post it, but don’t forget this is still beta software, yet to be released.
Feedback from Office 365 bootcamps
Sydney and Melbourne Office 365 bootcamps are now complete and I would just to thank all who attended and provided feedback on the event. It all helps me improve what is offered. I will also note that I am scheduling another Office 365 bootcamp in Brisbane on Friday the 26th of October and the registration site for that will be available very soon.
In the meantime here is some of the reviews from the Sydney and Melbourne event:
“There was so much valuable information made available, from this one day of training, that it will take me weeks to work through and assimilate it. I now know, that I have but brushed the surface, on what is available in the Microsoft online offering. The course notes alone, is worth the price of admission (many times over).”
“I had the pleasure yesterday of attending Robert Cranes Office365 Bootcamp in Sydney. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to know the ins and outs of what’s down the track. Robert provided a wealth of information and knowledge in probably the best presentation I have ever attended. Having not seen or touched Office 365 prior to the Bootcamp I am now quite confident I have the skills to be able to offer this as an option to my clients and if I do run into a problem I have a great reference in the course notes to solve almost any problem should it arrive. Highly recommended”
“Great heads up on how to look at building business solutions with real world ideas, not just marketing hype.”
“Robert is a very knowledgeable in the Office 365 area and the man we turn to for help when we have issues.”
“Great value as always.”
“So much information.”
“Very comprehensive”
“Very informative”
“The knowledge I gained at the bootcamp will help me make a more informed decision when I make recommendations to my clients Robert has provided a look into how Office 365 can be used, setup and administered. The level of detail, with URLs, Videos, documents is truly amazing. I’m sure it will take many days to work through just some of the support notes/material.”
Look for for upcoming advanced Office 365 bootcamps and new SharePoint training coming soon.
Configuring Power Shell Access in Office 365
To use Powershell commands with Office 365 on a Windows 7 desktop you will need to firstly install the Microsoft Online Services Sign–in assistant. You can download this from:
32 bit version – http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BX00en/500
64 bit version – http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BX00en/501
Once you have downloaded file run it as an administrator.
Click the option to accept the license terms and press the Install button.
Allow the files to be installed.
Click the Finish button when complete.
To check that the assistant has been installed correctly navigate to the services on the machine via Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services.
Ensure that the service Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Assistant is present and started as shown above.
When complete close the services window.
Next, you will need to install the Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows Powershell. You can download this from:
32 bit – http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BD00en-US/565
64 bit – http://g.microsoftonline.com/0bd00en-us/557
Once downloaded, double click on the file to install.
Click Next to commence the installation.
Accept the license agreements and click Next to continue.
Select a location for the installation on your local machine and press Next to continue.
Press the Install button to commence the installation.
The files will now be installed to your local machine.
Press the Finish button to complete the installation process.
You should now see a new desktop icon like shown above – Microsoft Online Services Module for Windows PowerShell.
Double click the icon to launch Powershell.
You should now see a command prompt like shown above. This is different from the normal command prompt and can be denoted by the initials PS at the beginning of each line.
It is a good idea to alter the default execution policy of PowerShell on your system via the command:
Set-executionpolicy –remotesigned
If you don’t do this you may see an error like:
In this case set the section policy as shown above and re-run the powershell command that generated the issue.
At the command prompt type the following lines followed by the ENTER key.
import-module msonline
This will load the Microsoft Online Powershell commandlets into the environment so they can be used. It is normally already loaded when you run this, however it is good practice to ensure that it is loaded in case you ever launch just the standard Powershell environment.
You next need to capture the credential with which you wish to login to the Microsoft Online environment with. To do this enter the following command to assign the credentials to a variable $cred.
$cred=get-credential
This command will pop up the credential request window you see shown above. You need to enter the login to the Office 365 environment from which you wish to run these command. This will generally be an administrator.
Use the following command to connect to the Microsoft Online Service
connect-msolservice –credential $cred
Once these command are complete you are ready to use Powershell with the Office 365 environment you have logged into.
The following command will display a list of all the users configured in the Office 365 environment and the expiry status of their password:
get-msoluser –all | format-table userprincipalname, passwordneverexpires
If you need to work with Exchange Online then you will need to run the following commands to establish a connection with those services directly:
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $Cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
Once you do this you should see a number of modules loading
With the connection to Exchange online now established you can run commands like
Add-mailboxpermissions
Office 365 bootcamps approaching
My Office 365 bootcamps are fast approaching. If you are keen to attend please make sure that you register for you location and date:
Sydney – http://ciaops0912.eventbrite.com.au/ [27 September]
Melbourne – http://ciaops1012.eventbrite.com.au/ [3rd October 2012]
The bootcamp will focus on not only showing you what Office 365 is but also helping you determine how to get the most from it for your business. If you are an IT reseller you will also learn how to position yourself to sell Office 365 to your customers.
The bootcamp includes extensive course notes, meals, and more. You’ll need to bring along a laptop to gain hands on experience with the product.
For full details on the bootcamps visit the above registration sites or contact me directly (director@ciaops.com).
Office 365 data not encrypted at rest
One of the questions that was posed in todays Office 365 Security session hosted by Scorpion Software that I appeared on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDB3vOFpEI&feature=player_embedded
was whether the data in Office 365 was encrypted ‘at rest’. I said that I thought it would be but as it turns out I was wrong. The following document:
Standard Response to Request for Information O365 – Security Privacy v2 – http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=26647
says clearly:
“Office 365 currently does not encrypt data at rest, however, the customer may do so through IRM or RMS.”
in multiple places (one instance is on p26, in the IS-18 Information Security Encryption section).
However, before everyone starts jumping up and down about this, can I ask whether the information on your local server is encrypted at rest? It can be (using Bit Locker and what not) but it isn’t be default I believe. However, I’d like to know the reason why it is not, so let me see what I can find on that score and report back.
CIAOPS 
