Licensing Sharepoint in Education

Microsoft licensing can often be a confusing subject and it is perhaps in the education arena where most confusion can occur, with it’s mix of staff, students, parents, connected yet separate academic bodies etc. I today saw a great post on Educational Sharepoint licensing that helps clear up some confusion and show the extras that Microsoft can offer.

The most basic schools licensing covers staff and students while at school, but you can also purchase separate “Student” CALs which cover them for access from non-school owned (I.e their own) PC’s and so access from home. Where students are covered in this way, the Sharepoint Server access is extended to the student’s parents/guardians without any extra licences being needed.

So a customer can prove that they are entitled to this right, they can download the “Parent/Guardian CAL grant letter” to keep in their records here.

Parent-Guardian CAL Letter.

This applies to licences purchased via Open Academic, Select Academic, Schools Agreement and Campus Agreement.

Another great benefit is the “External Connector Grant“. If an educational establishment has:

1. A product for which an External Connector licence is available (Exchange, Windows Svr, Sharepoint etc) and
2. Covered all faculty/staff with CALs and
3. Covered all Student s with “Student Option” CALs too

then access rights will also be granted to:

• Prospective Students
• Alumni
• Student/Staff at collaborating Academic and Government bodies

at no extra cost!

Again, a grant letter can be downloaded to prove entitlement to this benefit here:

External Connector Grant Letter

This benefit is available via Schools Agreements and Campus Agreements.

These are two excellent extra benefits that MS licensing provides that will certainly help make it easier and cheaper for schools to have a truly collaborative environment. However I do think MS need to do a better job at publicising things like this or, at least making sure all their Partners are fully aware of them but that said-it’s good to see that the benefits of MS volume licensing just keep coming

The source post on the MSDN Schools blog is here.

Sharepoint & Outlook Oddity Number 2

After finally getting around to setting up Alerts in Sharepoint for our users, I’ve come across a new issue where users can’t open the alerts in Outlook.

This is Sharepoint 2007 sending alerts to Outlook 2007 and yet they alerts can’t be opened at all, which struck me as quite odd. However it only took a quick Bing search to uncover the issue…it all comes down to Exchange.

Even though Sharepoint & Outlook are on 2007, if the alerts are being sent via an Exchange 2003 server this problem will occur “because Exchange 2003 cannot convert the MIME-type properties to MAPI-type properties correctly if the names of the properties begin with X-.”

Although Outlook needs to be running in Cached mode for this to occur I believe…

There is a hotfix that needs to be applied to the Exchange 2003 server (with SP2) and that is available here.

Big thanks to Joel Oleson for his blog post which gave me the answer here.

Microsoft Licensing: Subscription Enrollment for Schools

Microsoft have today launched a new licensing program specifically for education-Subscription Enrollment for Schools AKA SESP (for those wondering, the “P” stands for “Pilot”). This is response to comments made by Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) on Microsoft’s current licensing offerings; specifically the need to licence ALL machines even if the licences won’t be used on them all.

SESP Overview:

You can use SESP to licence a singel school, multiple schools or an entire school system and it includes all the usual benefits:

• Assessment of software needs once per year
• One annual payment for all software at academic prices
• Access to the most current version of licensed software
• Ability to downgrade to an earlier version of software
• Broad product selection available in all languages
• Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh platform
• Options for student licensing at home
• Automatic media fulfilment

The entry requirements are consistent with the current Schools Agreement program so:

50 Unit minimum entry point

Level A = 50 Units

LEvel B = 2500 PCs

SESP Benefits:

The 2 big new benefits here are:

• User & Device based pricing
• No Institution wide commitment required.

User/Device Pricing: This allows schools to choose the licensing model that is most beneficial to their set-up. The ability to licence by device can show a significant saving, for example:

If there are 50 machines in an IT suite that are used by 150 different people (different classes etc) then you can, under SESP, purchase just 50 Device CALS while previously the only option would have been 150 user CALs.

No Institution wide commitment required: Under a Schools Agreement, the customer must licence ALL eligible machines even if the software will be used on just a sub-set of those. For example,

You need Office on 150 of your 400 machines-you are required to buy 400 licences.

However with SESP, you can buy just the licences you need, so in the above example-150. This again will make Microsoft licensing more cost effective and easier to manage for schools and their administrators.

Licensing Options:

SESP brings with it a few new ways that schools can licence their Microsoft software:

Of course the big addition is the Non-Institution wide offering, allowing you to licence just specific Users or Devices, such as “The Science Dept.”, “Year 11″ etc.

FAQ’s:

What is a Qualified Desktop PC? 

Qualified Desktop PC means any personal desktop computer, portable computer, workstation, or similar device that the institution uses for educational purposes that meets the minimum requirements for running any of the enterprise products.

What is an eligible user?

1. Eligible users include all full- or part-time students enrolled at the institution.
 

 

 

2. Eligible users include the full time equivalent (FTE) faculty and staff members categorized as ―employed more than 200 hours per annum.

 

 

 

Can I have a subscription for servers only?

Yes, if your order meets the server 300-unit minimum requirement.

 

The full Microsoft SESP page can be found here.

One thing to note is that SESP can only be sold via EdLARs (Educational Large Account Resellers).

Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics And Logging: MOSDAL

Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics And Logging AKA MOSDAL is a support toolkit that “performs network diagnostics and collects system configuration, network configuration, and logging information for service-based products.”

If that’s all you need to know then you can download it here.

However, if you’d like a little more info-here you go

Functionality:

• MOSDAL can be used to run network diagnostics against a particular data center where data resides.
• MOSDAL can be used to collect system, network, and service-enabled application configuration information, logs, registry keys, file versions, and other related data.

Network Diagnostics:

• Configuration information that is captured includes the computer’s IP address, the subnet mask, the default gateway, the DNS servers, ARP tables, the Host file, static routes, and other similar information.
• Network diagnostics data includes output of pings, pathpings, nslookups, port queries, and HTTP server responses for cloud servers in a particular data center.

Data Collection:

The data collection component of MOSDAL collects data about the user’s system configuration, the network configuration, and the following applications:

• Microsoft .NET Framework
• Microsoft Online Service (Sign In) Client
• Microsoft Live Meeting 2007
• Microsoft Live Meeting Conferencing Add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
• Windows Internet Explorer 7
• Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
• Microsoft Online Directory Synchronization tool
• Microsoft Online Migration Tool

For more information including Verbose Logging and Use Instructions-head over to the MS KB article here.

Also thanks to Microsoft’s Peter De Haas for this…

Microsoft BPOS New Features: July 2009

Microsoft Online/BPOS has been getting new features and improvement each month since launch, and July is no different! This month sees:

Increase in the size of Sharepoint Uploads: The max. file size you can upload to Sharepoint Online has increased from 50MB to 250MB. This is a great improvment as it’s been causing me problems recently-(it seems all the files I need to use are 60MB +) and affecting my evangelism of the product…I can’t see me needing to go over this new limit though.

Live Meeting Attendee Increase: You can now have 250 meeting attendees, this is increased from 15 previously. This will be available to new customer from July 13th and existing customers from August 13th.

Worldwide User Provisioning: Administrators can now assign licences to worldwide users-this new feature will be of great interest to BPOS users with international locations. Previously you could only deploy BPOS to users in countries where BPOS was available to purchase, but not anymore…this gives much more freedom to bigger corporates.

Also, BPOS is available in India now and the trial sign up process has been significantly streamlined-with user actions being reduced by 75%! It also integrates with Live ID better, so I guess you won’t have to enter all your details again now.

The MS Online blog post is here.

Windows 7 Upgrade Coupon Limit

As you have probably seen, new PC’s are now shipping with Vista AND an Upgrade Coupon to give users a copy of Windows 7 too. This is a great offer, however it’s been discovered that the offer has a maximum limit of 25 machines.

This isn’t anywhere near as bad as some people will no doubt try and make out. The upgrade coupon offer is aimed primarily at small businesses, for whom 25 PC’s is a pretty decent number. Larger companies will be more likely to purchase their Vista/Windows 7 via Volume Licensing (Open, Select etc) and so have access to Software Assurance…and one of the many benefits it gives is Upgrade protection.

All in all, it’s a good deal for all involved I think

Windows 7 Pricing Revealed

Windows 7 news is coming pretty thick and fast at the moment and now we’ve got word on the official pricing structure for the latest OS-and it’s pretty good

Windows 7 Home Premium = £149.99

Windows 7 Professional = £219.99

Windows 7 Ultimate – £229.99

The Home edition represents a £20/12% reduction in price when compared to Vista, while the others are the same…

The biggest change is that there won’t be an upgrade version available in Europe. “WHAT-NO UPGRADES??!!” I hear you cry…don’t worry-the Full version will be the same cost as the equivalent upgrade sku’s available in other countries.

The reason behind this is…THE EU (duhn duhn duhn). As a result of their “investigations”, MS have had to create a Windows 7 “E” edition that doesn’t contain IE8. This has pushed back the schedule for the European release,m eaning there won’t be a specific upgrade version ready in time. MS had to choose between delaying the European release of Windows 7 or not having an upgrade version…I think they chose right!

Microsoft Online Single Sign On Oddity

I’ve been working with MS Online (BPOS) for quite some months but it’s only now, with more and more customers looking into it for their environments that we’re seeing the odd little questions etc we didn’t anticipate.

This is one that came up today and, while it might be obvious to some of you, it probably won’t to others

BPOS provides users with a Single Sign On (SSO) client that logs them into the online services when they log into Windows, thus removing the need for repeated entering of credentials. If you right click the SSO icon in the System tray-it will launch you right into the app…unless it’s Outlook Web Access. When you try and run OWA, it requires you to enter your username and password each time; the reasoning behind it is a lack of pass-through authorization for increased security.

The upshot is…if you use Exchange Online but don’t have Outlook-you can’t use the Single Sign On to access your email. Maybe not the most common request but I’ve already have it once so you  never know

MS Myphone: Windows IT Pro article

Jeff James over at Windows IT Pro has recently posted a review of MS Myphone with input from your’s truly

The article covers the good and the bad points of Microsoft’s mobile phone backup service and it seems we both agree on the one addition that should be made…

Go check the article here:

Windows IT Pro MyPhone Article

Windows 7 Downgrade Rights

The ability to downgrade Windows 7 to a previous version has been a hot topic these last few days and can be quite confusing, so I thought I’d put a post together to help make it clear what the rules will be

Windows 7 Pro & Windows 7 Ultimate OEM licences will be able to downgrade to Vista for an unlimited amount of time.

Windows 7 Pro & Windows 7 Ultimate OEM licences will be able to downgrade to XP Pro for 18 months only or until a Service Pack is released, whichever is first.

Q: What is an OEM licence?

A: OEM stands for “Original Equipment Manufacturer” and these are licences that come pre-installed on PCs when you buy them from PC World, Dixon’s etc.

Q: What about OEM licences of Windows 7 Home or Starter?
A: The OEM EULAs of these version do not permit downgrade rights.

Q: What if I purchase Windows 7 through Volume Licensing?
A: The versions of Windows 7 available through Volume Licensing (Open, Open Value, Schools, Select, EA ) will contine to have full downgrade rights to any previous version without time restrictions.

There are lots of people saying lots of things about this but I don’t really see it as being too much of an issue. In a nutshell, Microsoft are saying that after June 2011 the majority of home users won’t be able to downgrade a new PC to an OS that is 9 years old.

When you really think about it-who will want to? In 2 years-will there really be any reason for people to be using XP? I don’t think so. The applications that won’t work on Windows 7 will have been replaced with new, Windows 7 compatible versions and all will be good