Are you going to Office 365 Nation?

Harry Brelsford has been running SMB reseller events for many years now. He continues this tradition with the Office 365 Nation event in Seattle from October 2 – 4, 2015 and you can get more details and register at:

http://fall2015.smbnation.com/

I have been lucky enough to again be selected to speak at the event this year. If you missed it, I also presented last year and here’s my summary of the whole event:

Review of office 365 Nation 2014

This year I’ll be presenting on a broad range of topics including:

– Office 365 Identity

– Yammer

– Office 365 Security and compliance

– Azure and Office 365 exam cram topics

– Office 365 for MAC

to name but a few. Chances are that I’ll also be doing a few impromptu sessions like I did last year.

But you know what the best thing about this event is? The networking. Catching up with peers and sharing experiences, gaining understanding and building relationships is something you can’t do as effectively in emails, social media or in forums.

I look forward to seeing everyone soon and if you aren’t registered then hop to it as I’m sure places are limited. Tell Harry I sent you.

Revised bootcamp notes publication now available

As I detailed a while back I have now updated my Bootcamp products offering to include:

1. Latest version of my Office 365 bootcamp notes. This OneNote notebook is something I use everyday to capture information about Office 365. It is my reference ‘bible’ covering everything from Exchange to Sharepoint, Delve to Single Sign on as well as troubleshooting, best practices and a range of PowerShell scripts and third party solutions that work with Office 365.

2. Latest version of my Azure bootcamp notes. This OneNote notebook contains my daily brain dump about Azure. It contains links, information, tutorials and more. Again, this is something I use everyday and update constantly.

3. Exam cram notes for the Office 365 70-347 and 70-346 exam. It contains information and links to help you pass the exam. It also has a number of practice exam questions to give you an idea of what might be covered in an exam.

4. Five (5) supporting Office 365 checklists and templates that you can use for your Office 365 implementation. These documents are in various Office formats (Word, Excel, etc).

There are two ways to get access to this material:

1. You can join my Cloud Business Blueprint community via:

http://www.cloudbusinessblueprint.com/members-sign-up/

where you’ll get immediate access to the latest versions plus heaps of other unique on demand training, cheat sheets, re-brandable content, articles AND access to the members forums to converse with other cloud resellers.

2. You can purchase the existing Office 365 bootcamp notes via;

http://www.e-junkie.com/ciaops/product/488325.php

for AU $148. This purchase will also entitle you to a 12 monthly subscription for updates to these products (generally updated monthly).

Also, given that the 74-325 Office for SMB exam has been superseded I have made the OneNote exam cram notes I created for this available for free download with all my other free material at:

http://www.ciaops.com/downloads

If nothing else, those bootcamp notes are going to provide a centralised and searchable way to locate just about anything to do with Office 365 and Azure. This will save you inordinate amounts of time and easily pay for your outlay. You’ll also get free updates for to all of these for 12 months once you purchase. Like I said, I use these notebooks EVERY DAY.

If you want some testimonials about these bootcamps and information provided visit:

http://www.ciaops.com/bootcamp/

Please support this material so I can continue creating more.

OneDrive news from Ignite

I’ve been catching up on the sessions from Ignite and one of the sessions I have been most keen to see is:

A File’s Future with OneDrive for Business – BRK2192

Why? OneDrive for Business sync client is currently, probably unfortunately, the weakest component of Office 365. I see a lot of frustration out there with clients when they hit the limits of this application. These can be overcome and minimized with some tuning but the sync software currently doesn’t really support they way many customers believe they should work with the cloud. Most want (inappropriately in my opinion) to sync everything from the cloud to every desktop. Like it or not, that is how they expect to work and at the moment the OneDrive for Business sync client struggles to support this.

As you can see from the above slide the OneDrive for Business team recognise that the sync client basically hasn’t met client expectations and fixing this is currently their highest priority.

(click image to enlarge)

The good news as shown on the roadmap above is that we can expect to see a next gen sync client in Q3 2015 with the final release before the end of the 2015 year.

(click image to enlarge)

The other exciting news is that before the end of the year the currently maximum limit of 20,000 file being synced will be removed, the maximum file size that can be synced will increase to 10GB and selective syncing of files from within a Document Library will be available.

There are a few other sessions on OneDrive at Ignite that I’ll be working through and reporting back what I find so stay tuned. However, I think the news is very positive now for OneDrive for Business in general. Yes, many of the changes coming have been a long time in materialising but the good news is that they will be with us shortly.

The news from Ignite has been very positive and the improvements Microsoft are being to Office 365, Azure and like are truly amazing. I’ll report on more of these as I work through all the content. Kudos also to Microsoft for making the content from Ignite readily available so quickly to review on demand. I certainly wish I could have attended in person but in some ways having access to the on demand content makes it even easier to stay up to date.

To view the sessions from Ignite visit:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015

New CIAOPS Office 365 bootcamp package coming

I am working on an update to my Office 365 bootcamp notes that I plan to offer. This new product will include:

1. OneNote notebook with all the knowledge I have accumulated over the years about Office 365. It includes links and information about the product. It includes troubleshooting tips and links, it includes links to third party solutions and so much more. Basically, everything I discover about office 365 goes into this notebook every day and I USE it everyday!

2. OneNote notebook with all the knowledge I have accumulated over the years about Azure. Like the Office 365 notebook, this one contains links, tips information and more about everything Azure. Everything I discover about Azure goes into this notebook and I am using it more and more EVERY day.

3. OneNote notebook with notes designed to help you pass the Office 365 70-346 certification exam.

4 OneNote notebook with notes designed to help you pass the Office 365 70-347 certification exam.

I plan to update all of these notebooks on a regular basis and make them available as an annual subscription. Before, when you bought the bootcamp notes you only got them as a point in time publication. With the product changing so rapidly much of the information becomes obsolete and out of date so quickly.

Also, because all the notebooks continue to grow over time I need to spend some dedicated time updating and improving them. However, if I am just doing that for myself then it always seems to take a lower priority. Having them as an subscription model will give me the impetus to ensure they are as up to date and relevant as possible.

There are two ways to get access to this material:

1. You can join my Cloud Business Blueprint community via:

http://www.cloudbusinessblueprint.com/members-sign-up/

2. You can purchase the existing Office 365 bootcamp notes via;

http://www.e-junkie.com/ciaops/product/488325.php

for AU $148. This purchase will entitle you to a 12 monthly subscription to my new bootcamp notes product when it becomes available soon.

As a sweetner for option 2 (as everything offered is already part of option 1 anyway), I will also throw in, for a limited time, my:

Getting Started With Azure (valued at AU $120)

and

Getting Started with SharePoint Online Tutorial Team Site Standard Edition (valued at AU $90).

So that’s an extra AU $210 of value if you sign up today for the ‘pre-release’.

Note, this ‘pre-release’ of my new bootcamp notes product will only be available for a very limited time. As soon as I have put the finishing touches on it and launched it, then there’ll be no more sweeteners.

So many people come to me asking where they can find information about Office 365 (and now more so Azure). With this offer you can have access to the information I use in an easy to access format that you can upload to the cloud and sync and access on every device (how I do it).

As a final point, if you enjoy and obtain benefit from all the free stuff I do like this blog, my YouTube channel, my free downloads, my open sourced SharePoint Guide then I’d REALLY appreciate your support. Doing so will allow me to focus more on providing you a great solution and all the up to date information you need in one location for Office 365 and Azure.

Need to know podcast–Episode 82

I’m joined by Darryl McAllister, a MSP business owner from Sydney, to discuss the value of certifications and how to provide a better career path for employees. We also look at the changes in technology and business as well as discussing some opportunities with the latest cloud applications.

You can listen to the episode at:

http://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-82-darryl-mcallister/

or subscribe to this and all episodes in iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/ciaops-need-to-know-podcasts/id406891445?mt=2

The podcast is also available on Stitcher at:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ciaops/need-to-know-podcast?refid=stpr

Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send me any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show. I’m also on the hunt for some co-presenters so if you are interested on being a regular part of the show please contact me.

Resources

darrylm@netcare.sydney

http://www.netcare-itsupport.sydney

https://twitter.com/darrylmca

Sidekick – http://www.skylitesystems.com/Pages/SideKick365.aspx

http://www.skylitesystems.com

Attached Apps – http://www.attachedapps.com/

Adobe Business Catalysts – http://businesscatalyst.com/

Skype for Business client roll out – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/04/skype-for-business-client-goes-live-in.html

Office Online and Dropbox web integration now available –http://blogs.office.com/2015/04/09/office-online-and-dropbox-web-integration-now-available/

Delve apps for iOS and Android – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/04/delve-apps-released.html

Office 365 video app – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/04/office-365-video-for-iphone-now.html

SharePoint Team Site default increase – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/04/default-sharepoint-online-team-site.html

The Dark Web – https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/04/the-dark-web.html

Anzacs in France – http://www.anzacsinfrance.com/

Free SharePoint email course now at http://bit.ly/gs-spo

Creating a Single Sign on portal using Azure

A little while ago I did a presentation at the MVP Community Camp in Sydney on Creating a Single Sign on Portal using Azure. That presentation was recorded and I have made it available on YouTube for anyone to view.

You can find the presentation deck here for download as well (it is a couple of MB in size so give it a few moments to download).

Getting Started with Azure–updated

I have just completed an update of my Getting Started with Azure course. It now contains:

– 15 video tutorials

– A 80+ page manual that includes material not covered in the videos

– A number of free Azure publications

– Links to other material, documentation and training

You can download the table of contents to see the topics covered. The current video tutorials include:

01 – Introduction to Microsoft Azure

02 – Create a new Virtual Machine

03 – Create a load balanced web site

04 – Availability Sets

05 – Azure Web Sites

06 – Azure server backup

07 – Configuring an Azure Point to Site VPN

08 – Introduction to Azure SQL

09 – Connecting to Azure using PowerShell

10 – Creating a custom Virtual Machine image

11 – Attach a new disk to a Virtual machine

12 – Set up Azure single sign on portal

13 – Azure pricing tutorial

14- Enabling Office 365 branding

15- Configuring user self-service password resets

If you are looking at getting up to speed with Azure this course will save you a huge amount of time and is thus a great investment. Also, as the product gets updated you’ll continue to receive all updates for free for the life of the product. This makes it even greater value.

You can purchase this product, along with my other publications, from:

http://www.ciaops.com/publications

By supporting this product, you’ll be supporting me to create more focused content like this.

if you have any suggestions for what content you’d like to see inside this course please also let me (director@ciaops.com) know.