I’ve just uploaded a quick video that give you a brief overview of Office Web Apps running on SharePoint 2010.
Brief introduction to Microsoft Office Web Apps – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XA7bqdTxGo
The video demonstrates how a Word document can be viewed and edited in a browser as well as opened in the full version of Word. Short and simply but at least you get the idea.
I’ll have a few more videos about Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 stuff coming soon, so stay tuned.
Office 2010 sales and marketing training
Most importantly, I believe, is the fact that most people need to get up to speed with SharePoint 2010 and OneNote 2010 (which will now be available in EVERY version of Office 2010). So visit the following sites and skill up:
Selling Office 2010 – https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/LMS_ActDetails.aspx?UserMode=0&ActivityId=574221
Introduction to Office 2010 Customer Immersion Experience (CIE) – https://training.partner.microsoft.com/learning/app/management/registrationex/LMS_Registration.aspx?UserMode=0&Mode=0&ActivityID=565564
Shared OneNote notebooks
http://us20.trymicrosoftoffice.com/default.aspx?culture=en-US
Basically, OneNote is a digital notebook that allows you to save just about any form of digital information. You can use it to save text, images, web sites, files and more.
You can even print to OneNote from any application and send information directly from Internet Explorer and Outlook. Best of all, any information in OneNote is not only backed up but it is also indexed, which means you can search through all your notes quickly and easily.
Now this isn’t a blog post on the benefits of OneNote it is about how you can connect OneNote to SharePoint to provide shared notebook access. This enables a single notebook to be shared between multiple people. If you have a SharePoint site that is hosted on the Internet you can share this information between people just about anywhere.
So how do you go about doing that? First you’ll need to have a SharePoint site with a document library people can get access to. I normally like to create a separate OneNote document library to keep all the OneNote files together but there is no need to do that. You’ll also need to have OneNote installed on every machine that you wish to access the notebooks with.
Once you have all that in place and have launch OneNote complete the following to create a new notebook.
Select File | New | Notebook from the menu.
Give the new notebook a name and select a OneNote template.
To allow a shared notebook select the Multiple people will share the notebook option and then On a server.
In the path field enter the URL of your SharePoint document library.
If SharePoint is hosted on the Internet you will need to logon to the site.
The new notebook should appear. Now all any other user needs to do to connect and share the notebook is launch OneNote on their local machine and open the notebook from the URL you used to create the notebook.
Next time you open OneNote you will see some text at the top of the notebook indicating that you need to login to get the latest updates to the file. Simply click on this link and enter your login details. Any changes will then be automatically sync’ed.
If you don’t have a hosted SharePoint site you can still achieve the same result using Office Live. Information about how to configure that can be found in a free document I created a while back which can be found at – http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/onenote-and-office-live.
The good thing about sync’ing OneNote is that not only do you retain a local copy but there is always an offsite backup. So you can keep using OneNote on the road and when you connect back to the Internet all changes in all notebooks are synchronized. It makes it a very easy process for any team collaboration.
So there you are. If you haven’t looked at OneNote I’d recommend you do and if you can link it to SharePoint to provided shared notebook access I’m confident that it’ll prove a winner with most teams.
You know times are changing
As part of Office 2010 software that will be pre-loaded by the PC manufacturers on their PCs, we’re introducing Microsoft Office Starter 2010. Office Starter 2010 is a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Office 2010, available exclusively on new PCs. Office Starter 2010 will provide new PC owners with immediate exposure to the Office 2010 experience on new PCs right out of the box.
Office Starter 2010 will include Office Word Starter 2010 and Office Excel Starter 2010, with the basic functionality for creating, viewing and editing documents. Office Starter 2010 will replace Microsoft Works, offering a consistent Office user experience, such as the Ribbon, with a simple path to upgrade to a fully-featured version of Office 2010 directly from within the product.
Microsoft will soon be offering the product in beta and is asking people interested in the product to complete a quick survey as a way to nominate for the program. If you are interested then you’ll find the nomination process at:
http://survey.confirmit.com/wix5/p1059269618.aspx?type=1
This is further evidence of how much Office 2010 will be a game changer not only for Microsoft but for all those people that make living selling Microsoft Office. With the product available free on the web as well as free for download, how many existing are likely to upgrade to these products? Most, I reckon. Alternatively, how many people are going to upgrade to a paid edition? Not many, at least initially I believe. As I have said before, not only is the technology changing but also the economics. People who made their living from selling Microsoft Office are going to have to re-think their strategy as free versions of Office cannibalize existing sales. If they were smart they’d realize that there is going to be a huge potential market implementing and training customers on all versions of Office 2010 but luckily most won’t see this and will unsuccessfully continue to try and sell Office.
Why do I say luckily? Because it means more business for me as they focus on the wrong area. Sorry, as Donald Trump says – ‘It’s not personal, it’s business’.
I’ve got Office Web Apps
In an earlier post I mentioned how Microsoft had released its Office Web Apps for limited preview. And in another post I also mentioned how you need to be constantly improving you information sources as simply relying on technical experience no longer cuts it these days. Why do I mention these two posts? Well, I was browsing through my regular information sources when I came across a way to get onto the Office Web Apps preview program. Now this information didn’t come from Microsoft but I can tell you that I managed to get onto the program as you can see from the screen shot below.
Here’s Excel running in a browser window.
What I can say after some initial fiddling with Office Web Apps is that it only has very limited functionality but that is to be expected in a technical preview, but what I have seen so far is impressive. It is really just like Excel. Doing all the basics is the same, adding cells, creating formulas, customizing text, etc. As you can also see from the above screen shot, you also have a couple of options to download the files you create to your local machine, otherwise it remains in Skydrive. Nice.
From this screen shot you can see that under the Office Live Apps preview I have the ability to create (and use) Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote all on the web.
Now that I’m in the program I’ll be interested to see how it pans out and what features start to work their through. I’ll also be interested to compare what the Office Web Apps version has compared to the desktop version of Office 2010, which I’m also running. Now all I need is a beta copy of SharePoint 2010 to play with and I’ll be in heaven. Anyone know how to get onto that beta?
Game changer
For those who aren’t aware, the next version of Microsoft Office (Office 2010) will come with a free web version. It will be known as Office Web Apps and will integrate with Microsoft Skydrive for file storage (Yeah!) as this blog post details. Here’s a video demo of Office Web Apps that is well worth a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAvBfuaVluI
If you are someone who makes a living selling PC’s then the most common application you sell with every PC is probably a version of Microsoft Office. If you’re a smart cookie then you’ll also make money from installing the software as well as continually patching it. I hate to tell you that the majority of all this is going away when Office Web Apps goes live. Why? Simply because most users are not only stingy with their money (especially at the moment) but they also generally use less than 20% of Microsoft Office functionality. This means that a free online version of their favourite Microsoft Office apps is going to be very appealing. In short, why would they buy a version of Microsoft Office with their workstation when they can get for free online?
I think that if Microsoft provided a ‘paid for’ version of Office Web Apps that included more functionality people would pay but as I have said for quite a while now this is the way it is going – to the ‘cloud’. I agree that everyone isn’t going to go ‘virtual’ overnight but the trend is very evident and more importantly the business and economic reasons are also very powerful. As the economy recovers and businesses get back on their feet they are going to look at upgrading their technology. I reckon that many are going to start asking serious questions about whether they should be utilizing more applications from the ‘cloud’.
To a large extent by Microsoft moving applications like Office to the ‘cloud’ provides a significant amount of legitimacy in the minds users for this style of technology, making it a self fulfilling prophecy in some ways. Failing to ignore these trends is going to have ramifications down the line no matter what sort of business you are. The great things about Microsoft apps moving to the ‘cloud’ is that they still provide the ability to host the same applications on site if desired (unlike Google). It also allows the implementation of hybrid approach as well (i.e. some offsite and some onsite).
Office Web Apps has now gone into limited beta testing and is expected to open up to more soon. Personally, I can’t wait to get my teeth into it because I can see the huge potential it offers around the thing that has always been the most profitable part of technology – assisting users with their implementation. If you are a reseller who doesn’t believe in the potential of ‘cloud’ apps like Office Web Apps I say GREAT because sooner or later customers are going to come looking for someone to help them implement a ‘cloud strategy’ and I’m ready willing and able.
OneNote news
A while back I was converted to the HUGE benefits of OneNote. Linked with SharePoint it is an absolutely awesome product. I recently published a document that shows you how to create a free shared OneNote notebook using Office Live Small Business. Now comes news of the soon to be released OneNote 2010 available with the new Office 2010. I’ve just been reading David Rasmussen’s blog and wanted to highlight these additions:
With OneNote 2010 we’ve added:
Sync to Cloud (Windows Live): Your notebooks sync and are available anywhere from any machine. Of course this is in addition to all the existing ways you can sync notebooks (file shares, SharePoint, USB drives etc.)
OneNote Web App: You can access and edit your entire notebook from a browser. Even on a machine that doesn’t have OneNote installed.
OneNote Mobile: A more complete OneNote version for Windows Mobile phones. Syncs whole notebooks. Syncs directly to the cloud. No need to tether your device. Richer editing support.
Note: The above are not yet available in the Tech Preview unfortunately. We’re still finishing some integration work for sync to Windows Live.
There are heaps of great improvements and I recommend that you take a look at this post from David to get the full run down.
I have also learnt that OneNote is going to available in EVERY version of Office 2010! This is absolutely BLOODY BRILLIANT in my opinion. My understanding of the upcoming versions of Office 2010 are:
Office Home and Student edition includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.
Office Home and Business edition replaces the previous Office Small Business edition. It includes all the programs from the Home and Student edition and adds Outlook.
Office Standard is the entry-level enterprise edition; it includes the programs from the Home and Business edition and adds Publisher.
Office Professional continues to be the high-end package for consumers and small businesses. It includes the programs in Standard edition and adds the Access database management program.
Office Professional Plus is the high-end enterprise offering, adding SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove Workspace) and InfoPath.
Much simpler than what we had before I reckon.
So with OneNote 2010 you are going to get the ability to sync with the cloud as well as viewing through a web browser. That alone is worth the upgrade to me but when you throw in everything else OneNote is now offering I reckon it is going to be THE product that drives adoption of Office 2010. If you haven’t looked at OneNote I’d suggest you get up to speed now because it is going to HUGE.
OneNote and Office Live
I’ve just uploaded a new document that takes you through the process of setting up a shared OneNote notebook that is available from anywhere you have Internet access using Microsoft Office Live Small Business.
Once you have created the OneNote notebook on Microsoft Office Live Small Business you can work with it offline until you are ready to connect back online. When you do so it will automatically synchronize all changes. You can therefore use this feature to share the notebook between different locations, different machines or even different people. Best of all using Microsoft Office Live Small Business it is totally free.
To view and download the document go to: http://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/onenote-and-office-live
If you haven’t seen the benefits that a digital notebook like OneNote can offer then I recommend you take a look at www.onenote.com. While you are there download a 60 day free trial so you can start using it right away. If you love it as much as I do then I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you find out how cheap it is to actually buy.
To those people that helped proof read the document and make suggestions before it went out I thank you and hope you can make yourself available for other documents I have in the works. It always help to have at least another set of eyes across a document because it always improves it.
So feel free to download the document, forward it to others and give me any feedback via director@ciaops.com.
CIAOPS 