A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the release of the free SkyDrive Pro app for Windows desktops. In there I noted that I didn’t believe it would be long before we saw more app released for different platforms, and happily I was right.
Microsoft has recently released the new SkyDrive Pro app for both Windows 8 and iOS.
To download on Windows 8 simply visit the Windows market place and search for SkyDrive Pro which should appear like:

The iOS version of SkyDrive Pro you’ll find here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skydrive-pro-for-office-365/id655772279?mt=8

You’ll need a valid Office 365 account to use SkyDrive Pro and if you want some information about how use these SkyDrive Pro apps have a look at:
http://office.microsoft.com/client/15/help/preview?AssetId=%20HA104005688&ver=16&app=skydrivepro
I’ll post some more information about these apps when I’ve had a chance to play with them. However if you are looking for information about SkyDrive Pro in general on Office 365 don’t forget my publication:
“Getting Started with SkyDrive Pro for Office 365”
available at my publications page or on most eBook retailers.
Again, you really have to give Microsoft some credit for the speed and consistency with which they are rolling out features for Office 365. That is why I honestly believe it is the best platform for most businesses to use.

In a previous post I outlined how you can allocate more space to SharePoint Online for M and E. The next question people have is can you remove space from a SharePoint site? The short answer is yes, provided the existing SharePoint site hasn’t started using that space already.

The first step in the process to check how much space the SharePoint you wish to remove space from is actually using. To this go to the SharePoint Online administration screen like so:

Click on the SharePoint site in question.

The site collection properties dialog should appear as shown above. In there will be listed Storage Usage as well as Storage Quota.

Thus, the maximum amount of space that can be de-allocated is:

Storage Quota – Storage Usage

In this case that is:

2,000MB – 2MB = 1,998 MB

Press the Close button exit this dialog.

Select the site to de-allocate by placing a check in the selection box to the left of the site. From the Ribbon Menu select the Storage Quota button.

Enter the decreased amount of storage in the Limit storage quota box at the the screen and press the Save button at the bottom.

You’ll see the site updating as indicated by a green spinning circle to the right of the name.

When complete you should find the storage has been decreased the amount you specified in the quota.

Remember, you can only remove the amount of FREE storage from a SharePoint site. If the storage space is in use by SharePoint you need to free the space within SharePoint BEFORE you can de-allocate space.

One of the most common things I find people strike when they start using SharePoint Online on an M or E plan is that they run out of space. The reason for this is that under these plans you have the ability to create additional site collections with independent space allocation, which you don’t get with the Small Business (P) plans.

After getting a new M or E tenant you receive a default SharePoint Online site with the URL:

http://.sharepoint.com

automatically configured.

Problem is that this site is automatically configured with only 1GB of space by default like so:

These days 1GB of space doesn’t go very far and many people become really puzzled when they can’t upload files.

All SharePoint Online plans comes with shared storage of 10GB of space and add 500MB per Office 365 user. For the M and E plans you’ll need to allocated space for everything but the first 1GB manually. To increase your default SharePoint Online site space allocation do the following:

Select the SharePoint site you wish to increase with the check box to the left.

Select the Storage Quota button from the Ribbon Menu.

From the dialog that appears increase the Limit storage quota at the top by entering a greater value of storage and then press the Save button.

You’ll then see a little green circle spinning next to the site you just increased. This means that changes are taking place.

In a short period of time the green circle will disappear and your site will have more space.

You can continue to add space up to the limit that is available for your tenant.

You’ll find that limit listed in the top right under the Ribbon Menu as MB available as shown in the above screen shot.

Yes, you can also decrease the amount of storage a site is allocated under the M and E, however that will be the subject of another post.

I am beginning to see more and more Australian Office 365 tenants being upgraded to Wave 15.

Because many of the Office 365 tenants are provided through Telstra most customers will only receive a notification of an upgrade if they login to the admin console of Office 365. It is my understanding that no direct emails will be sent to administrators and the like.

This could mean that you wake up one morning and find everything has turned a shade of blue. The impact for emails should be minimal but with SharePoint the story is different.

Users will see a banner appear at the top of their SharePoint sites prompting that the interface should be upgraded to SharePoint 2013.

You need to beware of the fact that:

1. Eventually all Office 365 tenants will have to upgrade to the SharePoint 2013 interface. So you can’t stay on the old look and feel indefinitely.

2. When you do it will mean a completely different look and feel.

3. Some custom SharePoint items may ‘break’.

4. You need to upgrade all your site collections.

5. The upgrade process time will depend on how large your existing SharePoint sites are.

6. Once you upgrade the interface to SharePoint 2013 you can’t roll back to SharePoint 2010 look and feel.

So if you have (or support) an Australian Office 365 Wave 14 tenant and you want to know when it is schedule to be upgraded make sure you login to the administration portal on a regular basis. Also, don’t forget that some of the biggest changes you and end users will see is with SharePoint, so the advice here is to be proactive and be ready.

SharePoint Designer is a free tool from Microsoft that allows you to make modifications to SharePoint sites. It can allow you to make changes down to the code and HTML level. That is great if you know what you are doing, however if you don’t you can cause irrevocable damage to SharePoint.

In most cases, this means you want to keep users away from using SharePoint Designer, however Office 365 by default provides the option to download SharePoint Designer right from the console as you can see:

 

It is located in the Software section of all users Office 365 portal under the tools & add-ins.

As an administrator it is possible to disable this. Here is the procedure.

Login to the Office 365 portal as an administrator.

From the menu on the left hand side select service settings.

From the menu across the top select user software.

At the top of the page you’ll find the option to Manage user software through Office 365. In this section you can uncheck SharePoint Designer and then press the save button. You’ll also notice that you have the option to prevent users from also downloading Office and Lync (if it is part of their plan).

The next time a user accesses their console and goes to Software and tools & add-ins they will see a message:

The administrator has disabled SharePoint Designer 2013 installations. Contact your administrator for information about how to install SharePoint Designer 2013.

Unfortunately, this is not the only way that a user can download SharePoint Designer. They can of course download it directly from the Microsoft download site here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=35491

So what can you do if users download SharePoint Designer themselves and attempt to modify SharePoint? Luckily, SharePoint has the ability to disable operation within individual SharePoint site collections. Unfortunately, if you have multiple site collections (M or E plans generally) then you’ll need to make the following changes on each site collection.

Login to the site collection you wish to change as an administrator.

In the top right of the window press the ‘cog’ icon to reveal the above menu. From this select Site Settings.

In the bottom left, under Site Collection Administration, select SharePoint Designer Settings.

Unselect all the options listed. By doing so you will remove the ability for ALL users (administrators included) to use SharePoint Designer on this site collection.

You will note that by default only Site Owners and Designers can edit sites using SharePoint Designer. Most users are only Site members, so they “shouldn’t” be able to using SharePoint Designer on a site. However, if you want to 100% sure that NO ONE can use it then uncheck all the options here.

Press the OK button to save and changes made. You will be returned to the Site Settings page.

The following Microsoft Support Article provides more information as well:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2592376

One of the things that I’m waiting on for clients here is the availability of Project Online. In the meantime I have been been playing with the inbuilt Tasks in SharePoint 2013, and I gotta say they are HUGE improvement. Here’s some reasons why.

If you go into a Tasks area of SharePoint Online you’ll see something like that shown above by default. If we now add some tasks by clicking the new task hyperlink we’ll see:

Once we add the basic information we press Save.

You should now see a single task listed. But if you now select the ellipse (the three dots to the right of the task name) you get a flyout, as shown above, that gives more information about the task (like how many days till it is due).

Along the bottom you’ll also find a menu, which if you select Create Subtask, will:

switch you into data sheet mode allowing to enter tasks like you would in a spreadsheet.

as you complete the first additional task SharePoint will prompt you that it is automatically adding this task to the timeline above. You’ll need to do any others manually after the task has been created.

Let’s say the we continue on and create a third task and then switch back to the All Tasks view like shown above. In doing so we find that Task 3 has been created as a subtask of Task 1. We want Task 3 to be at the same level as Task 1 (i.e. not a subtask).

No problems, simply select the task by selecting the left most column for that task, the ribbon menu will then appear. In the middle of the ribbon is the Outdent button. Selecting this will move Task 3 to the same level as Task 1. Brilliant!

You’ll also notice that when there is task that is past its due date and not complete it automatically turns red as shown above for the Preparation task.

You’ll also notice that I have placed all the tasks on the time line at the top of the page, which you can do from the Ribbon Menu.

If I now click on the overdue task (Preparation) on the timeline at the top you’ll see a flyout appear as shown. Again, note that the days due is red since it is overdue. You will also notice that the Ribbon Menu is displayed.

At the left of the Ribbon Menu you will find a number of formatting buttons (Bold, Italic, UnderLine, Fill, Font colour etc). You can use these to change the way the item on the time line appears like so:

So here I have customized every task on the timeline expect the last one so you can see the difference.

You’ll notice that because Task 1 (in purple) over laps Task 2 (in green) the time line has two rows. If you select Task 1 (in purple) the Ribbon Menu appears and

selecting the button Display as Callout that tasks moves to an item outside the timeline as shown above.

I can once again edit the formatting of this task to increase the font size and so on as before.

Even better that than, I can now drag and drop that task anywhere on the screen if things are becoming cluttered. To demonstrate, in the above screen shot I have dragged the task to the lower right. When I do that the page automatically formats to make room. How cool is that?

So if you have lots and lots of tasks you can have some on the timeline and some as callouts which you can then position all over the page so you can easily see them all.

The takeaway here is that if you haven’t looked at what the new Tasks area can do in SharePoint 2013 I would. For most people this is going to work really, really well for project management. I am still, however, hanging out for Project Online because if this is what the generic tasks can do, just image what Project Online could do! I can’t wait.

One of great new features of SharePoint 2013 is eDiscovery. eDiscovery is the process of discovering (locating) electronically stored information that is relevant to litigation, audits and investigations. With SharePoint Online (Plan 2) this comes already configured. For more information about eDiscovery in SharePoint 2013 start here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161516.aspx

However, I’ll at least show you how to get started with SharePoint Online in this post.

The first steps with eDiscovery in SharePoint Online are to create a seperate eDiscovery site collection. To do that, login to the Office 365 portal as an administrator and select SharePoint from the Admin menu in the top right as shown above.

You should now see all the site collections you have configured for your tenant.

In the top left select the New button and then private Site Collection from the menu that appears.

Give the site a meaningful name (here eDiscovery) and URL (here eDiscover). and then select the Enterprise tab in the Template Selection area. In there you should find an option eDiscovery Center, select this.

Complete the remaining information for the site and press the OK button to create the site.

After a few minutes the site will be created and you can browse to it. When you do you should see something like the above. To get started press the Create new case button on the right.

You’ll now be prompted to create a new site. Thus, for each ‘eDiscovery case’ there will be a unique subsite below the eDiscovery home site.

Give the new case site a name and URL as shown above. The only site template option you have is eDiscovery.

Scroll down for more options.

Complete the remaining options and press the Create button.

You should now see the new case site as shown above.

The next step is to configure the eDiscovery Sets for this case (i.e. where to look for information).

Press the new item hyperlink underneath the eDiscovery Sets at the top of the screen.

In the eDiscovery Set you need to give it a name and then select the Add & Manage Sources hyperlink next to Sources.

Here you can select both Exchange mailboxes and SharePoint sites to search through.

Add the desired locations and press the OK button to save.

Once you have defined the sources to search through you need to create a query for these locations, and you can have multiple queries if you want. To create a new query select the new item hyperlink just under the Queries heading on the case home page.

You can give the query a name and then enter in the terms you wish to search for as shown above. if you press the Search button on the right hand side you will see the results below, again as shown above.

So, that’s the basics of eDiscovery with SharePoint Online. Pretty powerful but yet easy to set up and configure. It is my firm belief that we’ll see more and more eDiscovery requests as we move into the future so having that built-in ability is fantastic benefit of SharePoint 2013 and a great opportunity to understand how to make it really perform.