The Garage series has done a nice summary around Office desktop applications from Office 365 on Remote Desktops. A lot of this was also contained in an earlier blog post of mine which I recommend you review:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2014/10/office-365-rds-world-changes-again.html

The major point to remember here is that they are talking about Office Pro Plus via Office 365 which is ONLY available via Enterprise plans (Office Pro Plus Stand alone, E3 and E4) per the following site:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj900171.aspx

Office via the Office 365 SMB plans (Business and Business Premium) is NOT Office Pro Plus (because it no longer includes things like Access).

The great things is that the Remote Desktop capability can be used on a variety of platforms (including Remote App from Azure) and is now much easier to install and deploy than it ever was. However, remember it is NOT available if you purchase the new Office 365 SMB plans. As I always say, this is another key reason to only go with Enterprise Office 365 plans. However, another benefit of modern Office 365 plans is that you can mix and match between SMB and Enterprise plans in the same tenant as required.

In the long running story that is Office via Office 365 on a Remote Desktop Server (RDS) things have once again changed from October 1, 2014.

If you have not reviewed my last post on this topic then you will find it here:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2014/09/installing-office-365-pro-plus-on-rds.html

in essence what that blog post said was that from September 1 2014 ANY Office 365 plan that included Office Pro Plus was licensed for RDS no matter where it was obtained for. It also detailed how you could now install directly on RDS from the click to run install using the Office Deployment kit.

However, 1 October 2014 brought new SMB plans and the retirement of M and P plans so things have changed again and here’s the summary to bring you up to date.

1. If you have purchased E (Enterprise plans) that include Office Pro Plus via any means you remain licensed to use these on RDS.

2. If you have an existing M or P plan that include Office Pro Plus you remain licensed to use these on RDS UNTIL either October 1 2015 or whenever you elect to upgrade these plans to the new SMB offerings.

3. If you purchase the new SMB Plans after October 1 2014 or migrate to these plans from any existing plan you are NOT licensed to use these for RDS. This is because the version of Office via the SMB plans is no longer Office Pro Plus (i.e it doesn’t includes things like Access any more for example).

The positive with the new SMB plans however is that you can now mix and match with E SKUs. That means that if you do need RDS capability to can purchase and add onto your existing SMB plan an E SKU that includes Office Pro Plus (say the Enterprise stand alone version of Office Pro Plus).

This may mean you have users that are licensed twice for Office, once with their SMB plans and once via the Enterprise SKU that permits RDS capability.

Now the question is if you have say 10 users but only 5 at any time require RDS capability how many additional E SKUs that allow RDS rights for Office would you need to purchase? The answer is that if all 10 need RDS access at any point in time you would need 10 addition Office Pro Plus E SKUs because each license in Office 365 is assigned to an individual user. Thus, for all users to have the rights for RDS they would each need an E Office Pro Plus license assigned to them.

I had this confirmed by Jeremy Chapman from Microsoft where he told me:

Each user accessing the Office 365 ProPlus install via Shared Computer Activation on the RDS box would need an Office 365 ProPlus license. The users unable to sign in would only get viewing rights with a red info bar stating that Office is not activated.

So in summary:

1. The new Office 365 SMB plans are not licensed for RDS

2. While you remain on an older P or M plan you are licensed for RDS no matter where you purchased that license from.

3. You can now mix and match new SMB plans with E plans so you can add a qualifying E SKU that allows RDS to an existing SMB plan if required, however every user that requires RDS needs a suitable E SKU.

It is therefore very important to understand the restrictions of the new SMB plans when it comes to things like RDS. It is likewise very important to match the clients needs to the right Office 365 plan. As I have always recommended, you should always consider the E plans above and beyond the SMB plans because of their flexibility. I understand that SMB plans have a pricing incentive but given their limitations and lack of features I still firmly believe the E plans represent much better value for any business, especially those with an RDS environment.

A rule of thumb that I would suggest you adopt is that if you need/want to use your own server in conjunction with Office 365 (whether on premise or hosted) then you should only consider E plans.

This to me makes things much clearer around Office 365 and RDS as well providing the flexibility if RDS is required. I am sure there will be folks out there who may not appreciate this but to me things are much clearer on this story than they used to be.

**** Updated 1 October 2014 Please see:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2014/10/office-365-rds-world-changes-again.html

****

Until 1 September 2014 the only way you were licenced to run Office from Office 365 on an RDS server was if you purchased it via Open licensing. Also, the only way that you could actually install it was making an additional purchase of Office Volume License Media and a Volume License key.

I detailed all of that in a previous blog post:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2014/04/installing-office-365-pro-plus-on-rds.html

Post 1 September 2014 it is a brand new world.

Firstly, you no longer need to purchase additional Volume License media and keys to do the install on an RDS machine. You can use the Office Deployment toolkit.The way that you do that is well covered by fellow MVP Boon Tee here:

http://blog.powerbiz.net.au/office-365/installing-office365-proplus-on-a-rds-server-terminal-server-using-shared-computer-activation/

The lingering question was whether you still needed to purchase Office 365 via Open licensing to have this RDS facility.

In order to investigate this I returned to the links in my original blog post:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2013/03/remote-desktop-services-in-office-365.html

The primary source of truth is always the Office 365 Service Descriptions. if we now examine the Enterprise Value description at:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj900171.aspx 

we see:

So a couple of things to note here:

1. RDS is not permitted for Small Business premium

2. RDS IS permitted for M, E3 and E4

3. There are no caveats or foot notes as there used to be

If you click the Desktop Viirtualization link you see the above. again no mention of only being available via Open or not.

So it now seemed as though M, E3 and E4 from anywhere were now licensed for RDS. However, I wanted to be sure this was the case because a lot of people have purchased via Syndication (read T-Suite and the Microsoft portal), so I finally went to the source for the answer – Jeremy Chapman from Microsoft and here’s what he said:

Q. What you are saying is yes to for RDS via any method (expect for Business Premium)

A. Yes. Shared Computer Activation was actually built for this scenario primarily. It is also intended to solve for/replace the temporary exception in the PUR permitting volume license customers to use Office Professional Plus 2013 . The latter is actually the document update I’m referring to, as PUR applies to VL customers only. The rest of the base is allowed to use Office 365 ProPlus in on premises RDS as of September 1.

So there you have it, if you have an Office 365 M, E3 or E4 SKU, no matter where you bought it from, you can use it on an RDS server and now directly via Office 365 without needing VL media and keys. Jeremy also tole me additional information on this will become available in October.

I’m sure if I have missed something someone at Microsoft will tell me and I’m happy to update this information so please let me know if I have made a mistake here.

However, that all said, can I say here WELL DONE Microsoft for the change in RDS requirements with Office 365. These recent changes are significant for the SMB market and really show to me that Microsoft is listening and improving the Office 365 product in line with what people are asking for. It may not happen fast enough for some, but kudos on Microsoft for making it happen.

So there you have it. Office (M, E3 and E4) from Office 365 on RDS now equals YES YOU CAN.

If you want anyone to be able to see your calendar by simply browsing to a web page and you are using Office 365 Exchange Online for your emails then simply follow this process.

Login to the Microsoft Online portal with your account details. Select Calendar from the menu options that appear across the top of the page. This will display your calendar as shown above.

Under the option My Calendars on the left, right mouse click on the calendar you wish to share (in this case Calendar).

From the menu that is displayed select permissions..

An options pane will appear from the right as shown above. The option should show Public Calendar Not shared currently.

From the pull down options select a calendar sharing option to suit your needs. In this case the selection is Full details.

Now select Save in top left of this pane to update your preferences and return to your calendar view.

If you then again right mouse click on the calendar you wish to share as before and again select permissions to reveal the pane, you will find two new hyperlinks as shown above.

The View Calendar link provides you a URL link you can send to an external contact they can enter in their browser.

When they do they will see a copy of your calendar (depending on the permissions you provided previously of course) as shown above. In my experience it may 10 – 15 minutes for a calendar to be accessible publicly via this URL as it obviously need to be ‘published’ securely in Office 365.

At this stage there does not appear to be a way to allow anonymous users to actually make changes to the calendar which may be handy in some circumstance. I am pretty confident that we’ll see that down the track very soon.