Key Office 365 Pro Plus dates

If you are still using Office 2013 from Office 365 you need to be aware of some upcoming key dates.

As I have previous detailed at:

Questions about Office 2016 via Office 365

Q. Am I required to upgrade from Office 2013 on my desktop to Office 2016 if my Office 2013 was installed from Office 365?

Yes, however you have 12 months to complete that transition. That means you must upgrade your Office 365 Office 2013 to Office 2016 by the 22nd of September 2016. After that date any existing Office 365 Office 2013 installation will reverted to “reduced functionality mode”, basically read only.

So the clock started ticking on September 22nd 2016. Now because different Office 365 plans received Office Pro Plus at different times, and because there are different update channels:

Office update branches renamed to channels

Now from what I see in the Microsoft KB article:

KB3199744

and I quote:

“Users who are running the 2013 version of Office 365 ProPlus after February 28, 2017 will have to upgrade to the latest version of Office 365 ProPlus to continue to receive support from Microsoft.”

I would therefore suggest that now is the time to start planning and testing the upgrade to Office 2016 if you are using Office 2013. This applies not only to stand alone desktops but also to installations on terminal servers.

This is all part of the new paradigm of regular updates that we see with most software. If you are on a subscription you need to keep up to date to receive all the benefits. I appreciate that the ‘old’ culture was to stay on the same release for a bazillion years BUT the new world order is constant updates (think mobile apps). That’s why you pay the subscription, to have access to the latest features! So if you haven’t upgraded DON’T leave it until the last minute!

You have been warned.

Using the Office Deployment Toolkit

One of the most common questions I see around Office 365 is how to deploy Office applications to desktop using a single download or from a central network repository. To this you’ll need to use the Office Deployment Toolkit.

The first step is in this process is to download the appropriate version. The 2016 version is available here:

Office 2016 Deployment Tool

If you want to use this tool to deploy software across a local network the suggestion is that you download and install the tool on a suitable machine with enough disk space and that is available and connected to all machines on the network.

Once you have downloaded and installed the tool you should see just two files as shown above. It is also a good idea to share the location of the Office Deployment Toolkit across your network so connected machines can run the setup.exe program remotely to actually install the software.

The next step then is to create a network share into which the downloaded Office desktop software will be located on this machine.

In that directory you will find a file called configuration.xml. If you open this file you will see something like:

This contains information about the version of the Office software that will be downloaded and deployed. What you see here is only a very basic version of what the possible options are for the configuration file. You find the full list of options and parameters for this configuration file here:

Configuration options for the Office Deployment tool

However, I would suggest that an easier way to generate the appropriate configuration file for your environment is to visit:

http://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html

This web based tool allows you to enter in all the parameters you require and then for the configuration file to be built out for you automatically on the right. You can then simply copy and paste, email or download the result.

Take this and use it to overwrite the default configuration file provided.

You then need to go to the command prompt and navigate to the directory into which you downloaded the Office Deployment Toolkit. You then need to run the command:

setup.exe /download configuration.xml

This will then download the specified Office software to the location on your machine as specified in the configuration.xml file.

It is important to note here that you are downloading a full version of the Office desktop software every time, not just updates. You can rerun the command at any point with updated configuration parameters if required.

Once the command has completed, if you view the location where the files have been downloaded you should see something similar to that shown above.

You’ll also notice that I have different versions of Office software available thanks to also selecting to make first release versions of the software available.

With the Office software now downloaded to a shared network location, from a connected workstation you can map to the network location for the Office Deployment toolkit setup files and run the command:

setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

You should then see the Office software installation process commence.

The installation will use the parameters you have previously defined in the configuration.xml file.

The configuration.xml file also controls how updates are handled. Use the element to set attributes. For example:

If you wish to install Office software from Office 365 onto a Remote Desktop Server (RDS or Terminal Server) environment you MUST use the Office Deployment Toolkit to do this. You will also need to specify the following in the configuration.xml file:

Of course, you also need the appropriate version of Office 365. This is E3 or better. Business Premium suites are NOT licensed to have Office software installed in a RDS environment.

There are plenty of options available to you in configuration.xml to manage deployments, updates and removals so be sure to take a look at all the options. However, I recommend you use:

http://officedev.github.io/Office-IT-Pro-Deployment-Scripts/XmlEditor.html

to actually create the configuration.xml file you need.

Using the Office Deployment Toolkit is a quick and easy way to deploy and control Office software from Office 365 from a central network repository. It not only saves you bandwidth but also time.

Answering common questions with Office 365 Part 3

This is the third article in a series of typical customers questions around Office 365. These questions were part of presentation I did with two other resellers at the Australian Microsoft Partner Conference in 2016. You’ll find the first part of the series here:

Answering common questions with Office 365 Part 1

Answering common questions with Office 365 Part 2

The question for this article is:

My team has to manage a lot of documents for a lot of clients and we have trouble working effectively with this information when you also combine it with data from email and other sources. How can Office 365 be used to allow my business to be more effective with the information we are producing?

There are so many ways that this question can be answered with Office 365. Consider the following as simply an overview of what is possible.

The most important thing to appreciate about Office 365 is that all the information you put in there is searchable. The results from any search are ‘security trimmed’. That means you only see results that you have access to view.

For most users Delve provides a single pane of glass across nearly all of your Office 365 services.

How can I find people and information in Office Delve?

I have written articles about the importance of Delve but this one probably sums up things best:

Delve should be the centre of your Office 365 universe

Delve is available across all Office 365 suites and if you haven’t as yet looked at it then start here:

Introducing Office Delve

What is Office Delve?

How does Office Delve know what is relevant to me?

Also importantly, you can get Delve on your mobile devices:

Introducing Office Delve Mobile Apps

as well as you Windows 10 desktop:

Delve on Windows 10 app

Most Office 365 users also get a personal location called OneDrive for Business in which they can store all their documents.

What is OneDrive for Business?

They will get around 1TB of space into which they can store and share their personal files. This means they can move information stored on their local desktop, PC, USB drives, etc into a secure location that only they have access to and that they can share from with others, inside and outside the organisation if they want. It is important to note that OneDrive for Business is not designed as a file server replacement, it is designed for personal use. SharePoint Team Sites and Office 365 Groups are more the locations for information that needs to be shared with a teams of people.

There are many other products that do personal file sharing but here’s an overview of why OneDrive for Business is a superior technology.

Why OneDrive for Business

Given that Office 365 is much more than just emails and file storage I’d recommend you review my article:

Where to put data in Office 365?

to give you a better idea of what all the options are.

Now I mentioned Office 365 Groups as another location in which you can save your information. Office 365 Groups is great if you simply need an email distribution and single place to store common files. For a better idea of what Office 365 Groups are all about have a look at:

Office 365 groups: A quick tour of new user and admin experiences

If you then needs to add tasks to your collaboration you should have a look at Office 365 Planner:

Get started quickly with Microsoft Planner

However, if your needs exceed the functionality of both Office 365 Groups and Planner then it is time to consider SharePoint Team Sites for a fully blown ‘intranet’ style experience.

What is SharePoint

Getting started with SharePoint

Remember, that everything you put into a SharePoint Team Site is searchable, including the text inside documents. Team Sites allow you to create a hierarchical structure much like a file server but add in collaboration features like calendars, wikis, lists, etc.

You can get more functionality by using ‘metadata’ to tag your information to make it easier for your users to filter and sort.

Create managed metadata column

Set up metadata navigation for a list or library

The great thing is that you can customise your metadata to exactly suit your needs.

Another service available to Enterprise Office 365 Plans is a private video portal called Office 365 Video. In here you can place and share videos with your team. This is a great place for training resources as well as recordings from Skype for Business.

Meet Office 365 video

Manage your Office 365 video portal

You can also embed these videos directly into your SharePoint Team Site quickly and easily.

Another member of the Microsoft Cloud family is CRM. This allows you to manage contacts, sales, etc. but will soon also allow you to manage your financials thanks to the recently announced Dynamics 365.

Dynamics 365

Turning business process into business advantage for organizations everywhere

The big advantage these additional Microsoft Cloud products provide is the fact that access is governed by the same login users have for Office 365. This provides greater integration and management that few other services can match.

Another location that your team can collaborate together is in Yammer. Yammer provides an enterprise social network to share information publically which has so many benefits to the business. I’ve outlined many of these here:

The Business of Yammer

Don’t forget also that many Office 365 suites provide your users with the latest Office desktop software on their PC’s, Macs and mobile devices. They get at least 5 installation on each platform to ensure that everyone has the same version of the software. As an Office 365 subscriber you receive continuing free upgrades to this software automatically so you don’t need to worry whether everyone has the ‘latest’. They will.

Finally, Office 365 is also going to provide you the ability to automate your business process and information via a number of different tools such as:

Microsoft Flow

Microsoft Powerapps

SharePoint Workflows

In summary, Office 365 gives a lot of ways to manage and work more effectively with your information. It also provides you with the opportunity to improve the way you work today, become more effective and save time. It really is a single platform dedicated to better information management, accessed via a single login that is always constantly evolving and improving. In short, Office 365 is more than email and file storage, it is a full suite of productivity services to help your business better manage your information.

Watch out for the answers to more common questions with Office 365 coming soon.

More admin control over software deployment in Office 365

Microsoft has added more control for administrators over what options are available to user via the Office 365 Portal.

Using the ‘classic’ Office 365 admin center interface you navigate open Service Settings from the menu on the left and then select User software from that list that appears below.

On the right you should then see all the options shown above.

Via the ‘new’ Office 365 Admin center select Settings (the COG) and then Services & add-ins from the menu that appears.

This should take you to the above page.

Scroll down through the list until you see Software download settings and select this (the items are arrange alphabetically).

This will open a new blade with the same settings as those in the ‘classic’ portal.

You’ll see that you can select which Office PC software users can install from the web portal.

You can also select which Office Mac software users can install from the web portal.

I would expect to see more options start appearing for administrators via the web portal, so make sure you check back regularly.

If administrators want to push out Office from Office 365 they will need to use the:

Office 2016 Deployment toolkit

method.

Office update branches renamed to channels

Some changes in the naming of Office click to run updates (typically delivered from Office 365):

Based on customer feedback, we’ve changed how we refer to our update branches. The name changes are as follows:

Current Branch is now called Current Channel.
Current Branch for Business is now called Deferred Channel.
First Release for Current Branch is now called First Release for Current Channel.
First Release for Current Branch for Business is now called First Release for Deferred Channel.

Only the names are changing. The servicing model for each of these channels remains the same. We’re in the process of updating our content, so you’ll continue to see the previous naming during this transition.

and some references:

Version numbers of update branches for Office 365 clients

Office 365 client update branch releases

Questions about Office 2016 via Office 365

Microsoft Findtime

Microsoft has just released a new product for Office 365 that allows you to more easily schedule meetings with both people inside and outside your organisation.

Take a look at these two videos for more information.

Basically, it is a add-in for Outlook on your desktop and your Outlook Online.

When you select the meeting poll button you’ll get a new pane in your Outlook on the desktop like that shown above where you can select a few options for a meeting to send to every one.

You can then post those option into the email and send it off, in this case, to someone outside the organisation. If they were inside the organisation you would see their availability.

The recipient receives the email invite with a link to a page as shown above allowing them to vote on a suitable times.

You get the same style of interface from Outlook Online as you can see above when requesting an appointment.

You receive notification of those preferences as shown above.

Once the times are clear for everyone the meeting is automatically finalised.

A new calendar appointment item is automatically added to everyone inside your organisation with the meeting details as shown above.

While those outside the business receive a normal calendar appointment, as shown above, in an email they can accept and add to their calendar.

You can now also login to a web dashboard to see and manage your appointment requests as you see above.

I’ve only started to play around with Findtime but I gotta say it is really cool and is going to be a big benefit to many people. Best part? It’s free for Office 365 subscribers, so go to

http://findtime.microsoft.com

and get started today!

Accessing Infopath 2013 with Office 365

InfoPath is a Microsoft Office desktop application that you can use to create intelligent forms. These forms can then be published to SharePoint Online.

The InfoPath application is part of the Office Pro Plus subscription in Office 365. This means it is typically available for those with the E3 suite. The problem is that Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be continuing to develop InfoPath and thus it will remain at the current 2013 version. However, the Office desktop software has now progressed to 2016. Thus, if you download and install Office 2016 from Office 365 as part of your subscription you no longer get InfoPath 2013 installed. You can however still download InfoPath 2013 as stand alone product if you have an Office Pro Plus subscription. Here’s the process you need to follow to do this.

First, login to your Office 365 web portal.

Select the COG in the top right hand corner of the window. This will reveal a menu as shown above. From this menu select Office 365 settings.

In the middle of the page select the hyperlink Install and manage software under the Software heading.

From the menu on the left select Tools and add ins.

In the middle of the page that appears now you should see a hyperlink to download and install under the InfoPath heading.

That will then take you the following Microsoft download page:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48734

Where you can download the InfoPath 2013 software and install on your desktop. When you run the software you will be required to activate it using your Office 365 credentials. Note, unless you have a valid Office Pro Plus license from Office 365 you will not be able to activate and use InfoPath.

Once you have downloaded, installed and activated InfoPath 2013 you can start using to customise SharePoint, which I’ll cover in upcoming blog posts.

Questions about Office 2016 via Office 365

Here are some common questions that I see out there about Office 2016 via Office 365.

Q. Am I required to upgrade from Office 2013 on my desktop to Office 2016 if my Office 2013 was installed from Office 365?

Q. Will existing Office 2013 installations from Office 365 automatically be upgraded without user interaction?

No. Users will not have their version of Office 2013 on the desktop automatically upgraded to Office 2016 without their input. Typically, they will need to upgrade from the portal or via an administration installation using the Office 2016 Deployment toolkit.

However, according to the Office 2016 Q and A:

If your admin does not manage your installations and updates an automatic upgrade will occur for Office 2013 users. When your automatic upgrade is ready for you to install, you’ll receive a notification that appears on the menu bar in one of your Office applications (for example, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote). When this notification appears follow the steps to update to the current version of Office.

If your Office 365 for business admin manages your Office installations your admin will need to manage your updates to Office 2016.

This is along the lines of the Windows 10 upgrade process. Notification will be received that an Office update is available but users will need to follow the steps in the notification to upgrade.

Q. Can you downgrade from Office 2016 to Office 2013 with Office 365?

No. Only Volume Licensing of Office directly has downgrade rights. Office 365 purchased via Open does not provide downgrade rights for Office.

Q. Can I obtain Office 2016 from Office 365 from DVD media or downloading an ISO?

No. Office 2016 from Office is deployed using ‘Click-to-run’ technology that delivers software directly from the Internet. An administrator can use the Office 2016 Deployment toolkit to create deployment repositories on a network if required.

Q. Can I install Office 2016 from Office 365 in a Remote Desktop environment (i.e. on a Terminal Server)?

Yes, provided you have Office from Office 365 under an E (Enterprise) SKU. If you do then you use the Office 2016 Deployment toolkit to do that. For more information about Office in an RDS environment see my previous post:

Installing Office 365 pro Plus on an RDS server – updated

Q. When can I get access to Office 2016 software from Office 365?

The ability to install the latest software is being rolled out across Office 365 tenants in a staged manner. If you wish to ensure have access to the latest Office 365 abilities ensure you have Office 365 First Release enabled. You will then find Office 2016 preview available to first release tenants.

To find out when your tenant will receive Office 2016 from Office 365 review:

How do I update Office to Office 2016 using Office 365 for Business?

The table before from the Office 2016 wiki details when the upgrades are available depending on your version of Office 2016

Office 365 plans or versions	Upgrade timeline	Default Update branch	More Information about how to upgrade
Office 365 Business plans (Small Business Premium, Business, Business Premium)	Available now for new installations. Automatic upgrades will occur in Q4 of 2016.	Current Branch	See How do I update Office to Office 2016 using Office 365 for business?
Office 365 ProPlus SKU(Enterprise, Midsize, Education)	Planned for the first quarter of 2016.	Current Branch for Business*	Where can I find information about updating Office 365 ProPlus to the Office 2016 version? ProPlus can be configured to use Current Branch if desired. See the Configure the update branch to be used by Office 365 ProPlus* section from here.
First Release	Available now.	First Release for Current Branch for Business	More information about First Release for Office
Office 365 Home, Personal, or University.			How do I get my Office 365 upgrade to Office 2016? Note this does not apply to business products.

For more information about the different update branches or how to deploy a specific branch see Overview of update branches for Office 365 ProPlus.

Thus, if you are on an Enterprise SKU of Office 365 you will not typically see Office 2016 being rolled out until early 2016 according to the above table because these SKUs are automatically on the Current Branch for Business update regime. You can however, shift Enterprise licenses to the Current branch update regime so that they will receive an update to Office 2016 before the end of the year. If you want it earlier than that you will need to be on first release.

To configure the update branch for an Office 365 ProPlus installation, you can use the latest version of the Office Deployment Tool or the latest version of the Group Policy Administrative Templates files (ADMX/ADML) for Office 2016.

Q. How will Office 2016 fro Office 365 updates be handled going forward?

Office 2016 from Office 365 will move to a similar update methodology approach that Windows 10 has adopted. This means that updates (security and features) will be pushed out on a regular basis via a number of different update ‘branch’ offerings. Different SKUs will be on different ‘branches’ as detailed in the above table. To better understand how Office 2016 updates are going to function review:

Overview of update branches for Office 365 ProPlus

and this video from Microsoft:

Q. What other information is available about Office 2016 from Office 365?

Prepare to update Office 2016 Pro Plus to the Office 2016 version

Q. Can I have both Office 2013 and Office 2016 from Office 365 on the same machine?

No.

Q. Are any Office 2013 applications removed during the installation of Office 2016 that are not upgraded?

Yes. If you have InfoPath from Office 2013 ProPlus installed it will be removed during the upgrade. It will however still be available for download from the software section of the Office 365 portal.

SharePoint Designer 2013 will also be removed during the Office 2016 upgrade process. It again can be installed from the software page in the office 365 portal.

Versions of Visio Pro 2013 and Project Pro 2013 will also be removed from the computer during an upgrade. You won’t be able to reinstall them after the Office 2016 installation. You will need to install the 2016 versions of Visio Pro for Office 365 and Project Pro for Office 365 on a computer with the Office 2016 version of Office. This removal only happens when you manually update to Office 2016. It is recommended that you wait for the automatic update to update all office applications on the desktop, including Visio and Project.

See – “We need to remove some older apps” error for more information about existing apps being removed during the Office 2016 upgrade.

Q. Do users have be local administrators to install Office 2016 from Office 365?

Yes. Per:

Deploy Click to Run for Office 365 products

Users must be local administrators on their computers to install Click-to-Run for Office 365 products.

If users in your organization are not local administrators on their computers, you can use one of the following methods to install Click-to-Run for Office 365 products for users:

Have an administrator log on to the user’s computer and install Click-to-Run for Office 365 products.
Use a software distribution product, such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.
Use Group Policy computer startup scripts.