Here’s two more good Office 365 video testimonials
Office 365 workshop early bird expires soon
My upcoming Building an Office 365 Practice workshop early bird discount expires very soon. So if you are interested in the 25% discount I’d urge you to waste no time. Here are the details:
Date: Wed 18th of April
Location: North Ryde RSL Club, 33 Magdala Rd North Ryde NSW 2113 + Streaming
Cost = $399 in person $199 streaming
Early bird discount (25%) valid with 18 March 2012 = EARLYBIRD
Registration URL = http://ciaops0412.eventbrite.com/
About
If you want to learn about the opportunities around “Cloud” computing, especially with Office 365 then this workshop is for you.
You will learn not only about the Microsoft Office 365 product indepth but also how to re-engineer your business for the “Cloud”. You’ll learn business strategies that will help drive you more business and have opportunities knocking on your door. This workshop will provide a balance between technical and business information. It is aimed at IT resellers those who are either considering offering “Cloud” computing or those who have just commenced the process.
The workshop includes all meals (morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea), parking, Internet access, course notes and more. All attendees will also have access to a recording of the day for later use. The workshop will be given by Microsoft Office 365 MVP Robert Crane who is the Principal of the CIAOPS.
At the end of this workshop you should have the confidence to know the Office 365 product indepth but also a range of business strategies that can be implemented immediately to not only benefit a “Cloud” practice but any business.
Some testimonials from previous events:
“The knowledge I gained at the bootcamp will help me make a more informed decision when I make recommendations to my clients. I recommend this bootcamp to anyone who wants a balanced and fair approach as to the pro’s and con’s of the cloud and the issues it raises for the IT professional.”
“After having spent a day on a Telstra Office365 a couple of months ago I felt it was OK information as it was on this new platform but what Robert has delivered today is REALISTIC and real world experience telling nothing but the truth. There is a big opportunity for all SMB IT providers even with the cloud, Office365 should be seen as an additional service to make money from.”
“This workshop was absolutely brilliant It was real hands on from a reseller perspective rather than a sales perspective I highly recommend Robert Crane for any workshops / bootcamps after having done several other training sessions.”
Office 365 email archiving
Here are two ways to have Office 365 emails archived on a system external to Office 365. One is Journaling the second is using a BCC rule. I’ll quickly cover both here.
Journaling
1. Login into https://portal.microsoftonline.com as an Office 365 Administrator
Select the Manage hyperlink from under the Exchange Online section in the middle of the page.
2. Select Mail Control then Journaling from the Exchange settings
3. Click New to create a new journaling rule.
4. Pull down the first option list and select [Apply to messages]. Pull down the second option list and select All messages. Set an email address where the journaled messages will be sent. This email address should not be an Office 365 email mailbox. Finally, give the rule a name and click the Save button.
5. Click Yes to apply rule to all future messages.
6. Note the warning about NDRs. Click Close to complete.
7. Now any messages sent or received will be forwarded to the email box you specified during the configuration.
BCC Rule
1. Login into https://portal.microsoftonline.com as an Office 365 Administrator.
2. You will need to create a dedicated journaling mailbox. Do this in the normal way you create a mailbox in Office 365. You may need to assign an Exchange license to this mailbox. I would also assume that you could also create and use a shared mailbox for this purpose via PowerShell but have not tested that. The advantage of using a shared mailbox is that it would not consume an Office 365 license.
3. From the Home screen of the Office 365 administration login select the Manage hyperlink from under the Exchange Online section in the middle of the page.
4. Select Mail Control then Rules from the Exchange settings.
5. Select New to create a new rule.
6. In the first pull down list select [Apply to all messages].
7. In the second pull down list select Bcc this message to. A list of current mailboxes will appear. Select the journaling mailbox you created during the first step. Ensure that the mailbox appears in the lower part of the screen next to Add –>. Then click OK to save.
8. You will be returned to the New Rule window. Click OK to save. Then click Yes to apply this rule to all future messages.
9. You will then be returned to the Rules window where you should see the new rule that was just created and a summary of its actions on the right.
10. Now all messages to any email address will be sent to the journaling mailbox you have created. The next step is to configure a remote archiving product to copy and then delete these emails from the journaling mailbox.
There are many third party tools that can be configured to do this, in this example we will use Astaro email archiving. Information about this can be found at: http://www.astaro.com/products/astaro-mail-archiving.
After you have configured an account (a 30 day trial is available with Astaro) log onto the administration console and configure message retrieval.
In this case the archive has been configured to pull mail from the journaling mailbox configured on Office 365 via IMAP. Information on determining the IMAP server settings can be found at
Once you have entered all the information select the option to Test Settings. Once that is correct click Apply.
You will notice here that configuring the Astaro Mailbox message source that messages there will be deleted after they have been successfully imported. That will ensure the Office 365 journaling mailbox will not grow in size. That maybe why a shared mailbox could work, even given its limits.
11. In the Astaro configuration you may also need to alter the Auditor mode to allow the viewing of all emails if required. You can configure additional users to access this archive but in this case all that is required is a single admin account that can view all the archived emails.
12. You should now be able to search the archive as email flows. With the Astaro product the option to Perform auditor search may need to be checked as shown below to see all the emails. This option was only available if the auditor settings were enabled as shown in the previous step.
Hopefully that has helped you understand two different configurations for externally archiving emails from Office 365.
Office 365 workshop – register now
Registrations are now open for the CIAOPS Building an Office 365 Practice workshop on the 18th of April. You can register for in person and streaming options at:
http://ciaops0412.eventbrite.com/
You can also use the code EARLYBIRD for a 25% discount on both options prior to the 18th of March.
Information on the event:
About
If you want to learn about the opportunities around “Cloud” computing, especially with Office 365 then this workshop is for you.
You will learn not only about the Microsoft Office 365 product indepth but also how to re-engineer your business for the “Cloud”. You’ll learn business strategies that will help drive you more business and have opportunities knocking on your door. This workshop will provide a balance between technical and business information. It is aimed at IT resellers those who are either considering offering “Cloud” computing or those who have just commenced the process.
The workshop includes all meals (morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea), parking, Internet access, course notes and more. The workshop will be given by Microsoft Office 365 MVP Robert Crane who is the Principal of the CIAOPS.
At the end of this workshop you should have the confidence to know the Office 365 product indepth but also a range of business strategies that can be implemented immediately to not only benefit a “Cloud” practice but any business.
Hope you can attend.
I can’t wait
One of the biggest drawbacks with SharePoint Online with Office 365 was that you couldn’t view PDF’s in a browser. You had to download them to you local machine and then open them. This was a real pain but understandable given the desire for maximum security (PDF’s can launch javascript automatically which can do nasty things to your machine).
Finally, Microsoft has announced that it will be allowing PDF’s to be opened in a browser! From http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=1004
PDFs
Office 365 users wanted a better, more connected and governed experience when it came to working with PDF files within SharePoint Online document libraries. Thanks to your direct comments and active voices in the Community forums, PDF files will now open directly into Adobe Reader without requiring that it be downloaded first. The PDF remains connected and stored in your SharePoint Online document library as you view and edit the file. You can even check it out like other Office documents.
After the SharePoint Online environment has been updated, users must have the latest Adobe Reader version (10.1.2) installed:http://get.adobe.com/reader/
Now I can’t wait for the update.
Lync in Office 365 can now record
One of the few things that Lync for Office 365 didn’t have when compared to the old Live Meeting available under BPOS was the ability to record. The reason used to be set out in this KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2433212
which has changed to an article on troubleshooting Lync recordings, which means by basic power of deduction that Lync now supported meeting recordings! Double YEAH.
When you now connect to a Lync meeting you’ll find the option to Start Recording as well as Manage recordings as shown above.
If you go into the Recording manager you’ll see any previous Lync meetings as well as any that have been converted to .WMV. This is much easier that with Live meeting which required an add on program.
This makes it really easy to do a product demonstration across the web live and then record it and throw it up to YouTube for later broadcast. Do once, run many, very enticing I reckon for small to medium businesses (SMBs).
Lync is one of the gems of Office 365 for most SMBs because most have never had such technology available to them so cheaply. Apart from web casting think of all the email you can save by using Lync?
If you login to the admin console in Office 365 for Lync you’ll see a whole swag of new options allowing administrators to control exactly what each user can and can’t do in Lync.
This again demonstrates to me the power and flexibility Office 365 provides. It demonstrates how quickly the product is being updated and improved and with a minimum of fuss. And guess what? When it is updated it works! This is not always the case when an on premises upgrade is done.
My advice? If you haven’t gotten into Lync then your should. if you haven’t looked at the power Office 365 can bring to your business for a few dollars a month then I’ll bet your competition is.
Configuring Outlook options in Office 365
You can get you emails through many mechanisms in Office 365, from Outlook on the desktop all the way through an IPad. Generally the Exchange autodiscover record you configure in your DNS makes all this happen seamlessly. However what happens for those times when you REALLY need to know a physical server address or setting? There is an easy way to find out, here’s how.
1. Login to http://mail.office365.com with your user details.
2. In the top right pull down the Help option to display the following menu:
3. Select About from the list.
4. You’ll be greeted with a screen of helpful information including stuff like:
5. Configure application, device etc as required.
Before you contact Office 365 support
Wanted to do some admin on Office 365 and tried to go into the Lync administration and was confronted with the following screen:
Oh no. ‘Warning Will Robinson, Warning’. I then started to rush to log a support call. Hang on, let me check something.
I then went to the Service Health screen and saw:
specifically
if I click on the red X I see the following message:
Microsoft is investigating possible issues with Administrative functions. A few tenant admins are experiencing issues with degraded functionality or inability to manage Lync.
Hey that’s my issue. So they do know about the issue.
Moral of this story? Check the Service Health console BEFORE you go running off to log a Support Issue as they may already working on the problem.
CIAOPS 