Mar

Microsoft Office 365, Sharepoint Online and Mail Enabled Lists

Microsoft Sharepoint does so many things that there are 100’s of features used by only a subset of companies, but there are a number of features that are pretty key to the majority of Sharepoint organizations. To me, one of these is:

Mail Enabled Lists

Basically, this allows you to send emails to a list within Sharepoint and have it catalogue the mail and also store any attachments to that mail; I think that’s pretty cool!

This feature wasn’t available in BPOS and I discovered today it won’t be available in the soon to be released Office 365 either. I couldn’t really understand why as, on the face of it, mail enabled lists appear to be quite an easy feature to enable. I asked one of the Microsoft TSP’s today and also did a little Bing based research and have come up with something of an answer.

The official answer from Microsoft Corp. is:

“They are currently disabled due to performance, scalability, policy enforcement, data requirements and legal compliance issues that can affect Enterprise customers”

Looking into it further, I came across a post on Joel Oleson’s MSDN based blog on the subject of Mail Enabled lists which throws some more light onto the subject. He says:

“MS IT has been very cautious about their support for email enabled lists and specifically only supporting it on few isolated environments”

which I found very surprising. Luckily he goes on to answer my question – Why?

“Email enabled lists create contact objects in AD, it takes careful coordination to create these contact objects and ensure the proper write access to a specific OU. Imagine 500,000 lists all with the ability to be email enabled”

BPOS/Office 365 is a multi tenant setup, meaning there could be millions of lists in the cloud based Active Directory, many of which could have 1000’s of updates a day. That is quickly a huge overhead for the servers and infrastructure to cope with, potentially leading to a negative impact on the service Microsoft offer to their customers.

Hopefully in the future, Microsoft will enable this feature…perhaps with a maximum limit per company for number of lists/number of daily updates etc. However there is no word floating around the halls of any such move for the foreseeable future…

What are your thoughts – are mail enabled lists important to you? Would it stop you from moving to the cloud? Let me know in the comments Smile

788 days ago Short URL 12 Comments

BPOS/S+S/Office365/sharepoint/Sharepoint 2010/Technical

mail enabled lists/mail enabled lists bpos/mail enabled lists office 365/sharepoint online mail enabled lists

Nov

Project Server 2010 & Sharepoint Server

Project Server 2010 is the latest version of Microsoft’s Project planning and collaboration solution, and it can be much more confusing.

The previous version, Project Server 2007, was a stand alone product whereas Project Server 2010 has some dependencies on SharePoint 2010. However finding out exactly what these dependencies were and how necessary they all are was quite a lengthy process, one which I will describe here to save you time Smile

The question is:

“Does Project Server 2010 require Sharepoint Server 2010”

The answer is:

“Yes”

As to which version of SharePoint is required, well that’s where it got interesting!

I could see how sitting Project Server on top of SharePoint would be useful so I imagined that SharePoint 2010 Foundation would do the job. It’s pretty powerful and it’s free – seems the perfect fit to drive a Project Server 2010 implementation. However, a look at Technet brought up this:

I found it hard to believe that it would require the ENTERPRISE version, as that isn’t cheap, so I set off to verify this.

Ask Partner:

I spoke to the Microsoft Ask Partner Technical Pre-Sales team and they did the same as me. Said that Foundation would be fine…and then checked Technet!

Still I wasn’t satisfied so I went to the

MSDN

site and there I found this:

A diagram of the Server Architecture for a Project Server 2010 implementation from:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee767687.aspx

To me, the above says that SharePoint Foundation is perfectly acceptable and that SharePoint Enterprise is only required to serve ASPX pages in the Project Web App.

I’d love to get some feedback as to your thoughts on the above

I went back to the Ask Partner team and they agreed with me.

So at this point it seems that SharePoint Foundation is fine and we’re about done.

However, I also put this request out to the TwitterSphere and one of my favourite people at Microsoft came back and told me to look on page 117 of this month’s Product List, so I did…

“Project Server 2010 customers will require SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Standard and Enterprise CALs”

Despite that, they’re still one of my favourites Smile

The Answer

So that’s it really…both Technet and the Product Lists say that if you want to run Project Server 2010 you MUST also licence SharePoint Server 2010 with Standard AND Enterprise CALs.

My Thoughts

I don’t particularly agree with this, as it adds quite a chunk onto the cost of the solution.

Project Server	£3768
Project Pro	£684

Total	£4452

SharePoint Server	£3768
SharePoint Std CAL	£72
SharePoint Ent CAL	£63

Total	£3903

Grand Total	£8355

The above is based on standard Open Licensing and as you can see, the addition of SharePoint Enterprise almost doubles the solution cost.

I understand that having SharePoint Enterprise gives the client a whole raft of other wonderful tools and I’m a huge fan of SharePoint however, it’s a lot of extra money if you’re not going to use any of the extra features. I feel this will prohibit many businesses from being able to implement a full Project Server solution.

Alternatives

I am currently researching an alternative solution which is based on SharePoint Foundation customisations and from what I’ve heard so far, this could be a great alternative for many people.

919 days ago Short URL 15 Comments

EPM/licensing/Microsoft/Project/sharepoint

can I use sharepoint foundation with project server 2010/does project server 2010 require sharepoint/does project server 2010 require sharepoint enterprise/microsoft epm solution/microsoft project server 2010

Jul

Microsoft BPOS: More new features

Microsoft BPOS has, yet again, been something of a star of the Worldwide Partner Conference and a bunch of new features have been confirmed/announced. They are:

Exchange Online:

Voice mail with Unified Messaging

Integrated archiving

Retention policies and legal hold

Transport rules

Multi-mailbox search

Conversation View

MailTips

Enhanced Web-based administration

Role-Based Access Control

Remote PowerShell

Free/busy between cloud and on-premises

Cross-premises management

Native migration tools

Sharepoint Online:

Portal site templates

Extranet access

Anonymous Access

Multi-Lingual UI

Office 2010 integration

Tagging, Rating, Tag Cloud

Activity Feed, Social Networking, Note Board

Improved Wikis & Blogs

Content publishing

Navigation controls

Cross site-collection search

Phonetic search

People search

Visio Services

Excel Services

Sandboxed Solutions

Improved workflows

Improved SharePoint Designer 2010

Access Services

Better controls of FQDNs

Office Communications Online:

P2P A/V across firewall

File transfer across firewall

Presence with pictures

Federation

IM with Windows Live

Platform Updates:

Free/Busy co-existence

Single Sign On

Identity federation

Redesigned admin interface

More administration and access control

There are some really awesome additions here, which will make BPOS hugely more attractive and credible to users in the mid-market segment. Some of the game changes are, in my opinion,:

Exchange Online:

Transport Rules
Legal Hold
Unified Messaging
Remote Powershell

Sharepoint Online:

Extranet & Anonymous Access

Cross Site Collection Search

Visio, Access & Excel Services

Office Communications Online:

Federation.

These new features bring Microsoft’s Online Services so much closer to feature parity with their existing on-premise brethren which is what I, and most people, have been waiting/asking/pleading/clamouring for. The number of times I’ve had a customer opportunity collapse due to BPOS missing a standard and relatively basic feature isn’t funny!

This is a very positive move from Microsoft which will make the world of Online Services a much better place for Microsoft, it’s partners and our customers

Jun

BPOS 2010 aka Wave 14

BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), Microsoft’s Online Services offering has been somewhat successful over the last year or so, but it is about to become a much more robust platform. Over the next few months the “Wave 14” rollout will begin, with an aim to being completed by the end of 2010.

The biggest update is that the products will match the versions that are available to purchase “on-site”. That is, BPOS will offer Exchange 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 with near feature parity; removing one of the biggest hurdles to BPOS adoption…at least in my experience.

However, there are a number of other additions and improvements coming…

Identity and authentication has been an issue for many people, as this whole area is quite clunky & “un-modern”. As Program Manager Dan Kershaw says:

“the password policy isn’t configurable, you can’t use the same credentials used inside the company for single sign-on with BPOS so admins have to maintain separate credentials, there’s no two-factor authentication and no role-based administration”.

The fact that Microsoft recognise these limitations is great as that means they’re also working on fixes. The update will bring:

Password Policy controls
Five admin roles
Federated ID’s w/ 2 factor authentication for single sign-on
New Admin Console
Service connector for managing Pcs & apps.

Powershell is definitely the way forward for 21st century system admins and, while it can be used for certain things with the current iteration of BPOS, more is coming soon.

I covered off some of the new features of Sharepoint Online 2010 in this post but now there is more information on what’s coming for Office Communications Online (OCO) over the next year.

Currently OCO gives IM and presence, along with peer to peer video, only within the customer’s domain. One of it’s biggest limitations is the inability to “federate” with on-premise OCS servers…this slightly puzzling block will be removed with Wave 14.

It’s said there will be “full integration” with Exchange & Sharepoint, both on-site and online.

This will lead to:

using the calendars on Exchange/Sharepoint to determine someone’s IM availability
voicemail in Exchange Online
IM functionality in OWA 2010.

One of the biggest questions people have is whether Office Comms Online will have VOIP/Voice capabilities.

"it might be more than a year later," says Ziv Fass, Senior Product Manager in the OCS team "but it won’t be years".

From a reseller AND a customer point of view, the updated versions of Microsoft’s Online Services will be a real benefit to us all.

Jun

Microsoft Webinars with Bechtle

I am running a series of Microsoft webinars through the month of June which I think/hope will be of interest to a lot of people out there

The sessions and dates are:

June 15th	Windows 7 – Overview of Business Benefits	Click to register
June 17th	Overview of Microsoft Desktop Optimisation (MDOP)	Click to register
June 22nd	Office 2010 – Business Benefits and WebApps	Click to register
June 24th	SharePoint – Document Management, Business Connectivity Services and SharePoint Workspace	Click to register

First Event

The first webinar is tomorrow so it’s not much notice (sorry!) but the agenda is:

This session will cover the business benefits of deploying Windows 7, from both an administrator and user perspective covering things such as:

Increasing user productivity
Enhancing security
Flexible working

and more. The session will also cover Windows 7 Enterprise, Software Assurance (SA) benefits & Windows Server 2008 R2.

As well as myself, our Account Manager from Microsoft will be hosting the event too so there will be a chance to ask questions/give feedback directly to MS…which is always nice

You can hit the “Click to Register” links above to email me or you can message me on twitter:

@richfrombechtle

We’ll be sending the registration info out around 16:00ish this afternoon so I’ll need to hear before then.

This is open to pretty much anyone so feel free to register

I don’t often mention Bechtle on my blog as I don’t use it as a sales platform at all, but I feel this is a good exception ot make…I hope you agree!

Apr

Windows Phone 7: Unlocking the Emulator

Windows Phone 7 is going to be with us later this year but it’s still a fair way away. Don’t fret though, there is a way to play with Redmond’s upcoming mobile OS…Unlock the Emulator.

Gizmodo have got a great, easy to follow guide on what you need to download etc to get up & running…find that here. It only took about 15 minutes to get up & running and that includes the download time and re-starting the machine, so it’s not particularly arduous!

I’m now going to take a look through the various screens, sections and folders of the WP7 emulator and see what’s hiding. This post will be resplendent with screenshots of course

Homescreen:

The 1st hub is

“People”:

Clicking the “+” next to “all” allows you to add new people to your contacts:

Social networking is also handled by this hub and the default accounts available to set up are:

Click any of those, enter your address and password and setup begins.

The next hub is

Messaging:

Not a huge amount to show for the Messaging hub really Onto the

Calendar

You get the standard “day” view:

but I’m a big fan of the “Agenda” view:

It makes it nice and easy to see what you’ve got coming up. Also, the homescreen hub shows upcoming appointments:

Up next,

Internet Explorer

Here’s this very blog as viewed in “Desktop” mode on WP7 IE:

Here’s Bechtle’s UK site:

and here’s Gizmodo:

One new addition that I’m very pleased to see is this:

You are now able to open multiple browser windows at the same time, and switch between them:

This is one of my favourite things about mobile browsing on my Android phone and something I definitely wouldn’t want to lose in my next phone, so it’s great to see it in Windows Phone 7.

The extra settings screen in IE:

Pin to Start does what it says on the tin and pins that site to your start screen:

That’s the Microsoft site in the bottom corner there.

“Settings” doesn’t bring anything up at the moment, at least not for me.

The next hub is one of the most exciting:

XBOX Live & Games:

Don’t ask me why the New York Times is classed as a game but click on it and you get:

You can see the easy “Try” & “Buy” options there, a huge improvement over app interaction in previous Windows Mobile editions.

I can’t get the Emulator to connect to Windows Live, so I can’t explore the Xbox integration any further. I have asked Twitter if it can be done though!

Our next stop is:

Pictures:

The extra settings button gives you:

Again you can see sharing as an integral part of the OS. Currently its only option is text messages but I assume that, once set up, your other social media accounts (Twitter, Flickr, Facebook etc) will appear there too.

This next hub is the one I am most excited about…Microsoft mobile devices, welcome:

Zune:

I’ve been using the Zune desktop software for a few months now and I love it. It’s cool, clean, sexy, swish, awesome and fully featured…to be able to continue that experience on my mobile device will be fantastic!

It’s not just the look and UI (User Interface) of Zune that I’m a fan of, there are 2 main things and the first is:

Marketplace

Clicking the link above takes you to the Marketplace, where you can see:

So a huge range of media available to purchase directly from your mobile…awesome

The arrow at the top right of the homescreen gives you access to the other features of the OS:

The “Convert” option is a nice addition, I use the new conversion features of the Windows 7 calculator a lot so I’m definitely a fan of this:

All the Office Mobile Apps are there but there’s also a “Microsoft Office” option, allowing access to all the programs at once:

Excel:

A new feature that shows the direction MS are taking with Office integration can be found in the “personalize” section in Excel:

This is a clear tie in with Sharepoint and one that will be welcomed by many mobile users and fits in well with the Office 2010/Wave 14 message of Increased Productivity.

Word:

Word has got an easy to use commenting feature:

and there’s the option to send files directly from Word:

Sharepoint:

This gives you quick and easy access to your corporate Sharepoint sites from your Windows Phone 7 device.

The settings for the Sharepoint Client are:

Built in support for UAG (Unified Access Gateway) isn’t something I was expecting to see, but perhaps isn’t surprising.

OneNote:

OneNote currently gives this error message:

This is the first time I’ve seen Skydrive integrated into any other Microsoft products, and I think it’s a great idea. The 25GB of free storage sitting in Windows Live is under-utilised by almost everyone I know which is a shame, as SkyDrive is a brilliant, and generous, offering.

OneNote has lost none of it’s rich media inclusion in the mobile version, with the ability to add pictures & audio recordings right on the device.

Powerpoint:

Oddly, Powerpoint isn’t listed in the Office App but it is still there! However there are no .pptx’s built into the emulator so there’s nothing for it to open:

All in all, Office on Windows Phone 7 certainly looks a lot sleeker and easier to navigate than on Windows Mobile 6.1.

Other apps in the OS include:

Maps

That is a very well rendered image of the London Eye in the Windows Phone 7 Maps app.

The above shows that it’s very clear and well designed application, easy on the eyes and easy to see where you’re going.

Camera:

One camera setting I really like is the top one:

Being able to wake the phone up with the camera button will allow you to grab those snaps that little bit quicker…which can be the difference between a great picture and a picture of nothing!

Settings:

The settings menu shows that Microsoft MyPhone, the online backup service Microsoft released last year, is now integrated into the Operating System rather than being a separate add-on.

Myphone Features:

Themes:

If you’re not a fan of the dark default theme, you can brighten it up as so:

System Info:

This gives a screen familiar to PC users across the world:

ands also:

The “Shortcuts” menu also gives you access to the file structure:

I think it would be a good idea to keep these in the final version of the OS; it makes it more consistent with the desktop Windows experience and is also usual to many users. However, Jason Chen of Gizmodo said something similar and Long Zheng said he was a “moron” who deserved to “be sacked” so I’ll stay away from that hornet’s nest

Conclusion:

There are still bits of the OS that aren’t present in the emulator as well as a few areas that are a bit glitchy, but that is to be expected with something that isn’t even a beta but simply an expanded emulator!

However there are plenty of things in here that make it clear this is Microsoft’s greatest Mobile Operating System ever. Gone are the confusing menu layers and different styles of previous Windows Mobile editions and in are smooth, sleek lines of the new Metro User Interface. I’m an Android user now and am pretty pleased with it but Windows Phone 7 has a real chance of winning me back…however, it’s going to be all about the apps at the end of the day. My HTC Hero is an e-book reader, a barcode scanner, a food tracker, a translator and more…if Windows Phone 7 can’t be all those things, and more, then it’ll have to be “thanks but no thanks Redmond”.

So I think

Nov

Microsoft BPOS: Sharepoint Online 2010

Sharepoint 2010 is due for release around April time 2010 and the Online version will become available through BPOS around September time I do believe.

When the 2010 version of Sharepoint (and Exchange & OCS) hit online, they will be SO much more fully features than the current 2007 versions; they will in fact be almost the same! This will be especially notable with Sharepoint as their is a large disparity at the moment:

Read Comparison of Sharepoint Server & Sharepoint Online

Sharepoint Online 2010 will include all the Business Intelligence (BI) aspects such as:

Excel Services
Forms Server
Dashboards
Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

and more As a BPOS Partner this is great news…the BI features are becoming more interesting to more people and not having these features can be quite a big barrier to Sharepoint Online adoption. That’ll all change next year which is great news

Licensing

Wave 14 will bring some changes to the BPOS licensing too…there will be Standard and Enterprise USLS…just as there are for the on-premise CALs.

However, the split of features between the 2 will be decidedly different. The Enterprise CAL will include:

FAST Enterprise Search

There are also rumblings that it will include some part of, or ways of linking to, Microsoft’s Data Warehousing technology “Project Madison”. This would certainly fit with the BI capabilities inside Sharepoint…

I’ll be doing a post dedicated to Madison soon so keep your eyes peeled for that

This is all great news, for partners, customers and Redmond as, come H2 of 2010, Sharepoint Online will be a formidable challenger in the world of S+S/SAAS BI and should be pretty great. I, for one, am excited

Props to W Cornwill for the Britney pic!

Oct

Microsoft Semblio

Microsoft Semblio is a new iteration of their development platform which utilises .NET and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and is specifically targeted towards the educational market.

Semblio can be used to create information rich, graphically engaging, immersive learning materials using a wide range of multimedia, all aimed at enhancing the learning experience for students (and indeed, the teaching experience for teachers!). As it is based on the .NET Framework:

“it works across software, services, and learning management systems.”

However, it isn’t just for developers. The Semblio assembly tool, which will ship with Office 2010, will:

“allow multiple content types to be combined into a single, rich, multimedia presentation, all in a single, familiar, and easy-to-use Microsoft Office-like application”

This has got something of a Web 2.0 “mashup” stle about it and will certainly be familiar and more engaging for students than more traditional methods. This next screenshot shows the kind of interactivity that can be expected:

Using the slider to increase/decrease the temperature and seeing the effects on the water…

Benefits:

This can either mean that schools will have the ability to create exciting learning materials in-house as well as making it easier for partners to create such materials too. You can:

Increase the value of your content by enabling educators to customize materials to their specific requirements.
Engage today’s students and foster exploratory learning with packaging and arrangement of dynamic, interactive, and rich instructional material.
Improve efficiency during content creation by enabling nontechnical subject matter experts to participate in the content creation process
Reduce the cost of going digital by creating your content once, then delivering it to all customers regardless of platform.

To me this looks like a great new addition to the Office suite of products and also a great addition to schools, for students and teachers alike. Having been on visits to various schools this year, it’s clear that they’re much more advanced that back in my day (!) and can sometimes rival corporations when it comes to technology adoption.

VLE’s (Virtual Learning Environments) such as Moodle, and products such as Sharepoint have made big changes to learning over the past few years; and I can see Semblio really making a mark. These interactive lesson modules delivered in Moodle accessed via Sharepoint would give a great experience for students at home/learning remotely.

I’d be interested to hear what people involved with Education think about this…be it students, teachers, IT managers, suppliers, coders etc

Get Started:

Download the Semblio SDK.

Download Visual Studio 2008

Get familiar Service pack 1 of .NET 3.5 platform

Get familiar with WPF

If you want to get more in-depth, grab the programmer’s guide here.

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:

A product for which an External Connector licence is available (Exchange, Windows Svr, Sharepoint etc) and
Covered all faculty/staff with CALs and
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.

1415 days ago Short URL Comments

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