Office 365

Are you considering moving your business to Office 365?  Well the www.office365.com website does a good job of explaining at a high level what you get for your dollar – but for some of us that isn’t enough information.

What if you want to get down to the fine detail before making a decision to go to Office 365?

Well luckily Microsoft have published what the call “Service Descriptions”.  These documents outline exactly what you get, explain the differences between all the plans, and ultimately help you decide what plan is right for you.

The Office 365 for Enterprise Service Descriptions include:

• Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving Service Description
• Microsoft Exchange Online for Enterprises Service Description
• Microsoft Lync Online for Enterprises Service Description
• Microsoft Office Professional Plus Service Description
• Microsoft Office Web Apps Service Description
• Microsoft SharePoint Online for Enterprises Service Description
• Office 365 for Enterprises Service Description
• Office 365 Identity Service Description
• Office 365 Mobility Service Description
• Office 365 Security and Service Continuity Service Description
• Office 365 Support for Apple Mac and iOS Devices

You can find all the information here.

‘till next time!
TNP

One of my favourite things about Office 365 is that by using the SharePoint Online functionality that comes with it, you can quickly create a secure extranet to share documents, collaborate, and communicate with people outside your organisation.

In fact, depending on the Office 365 plan you are on, you can invite up to 50 people who are not on your Office 365 environment to participate!

Not only that, the best part is that it only takes a couple of minutes to set up, and once you have, it is even faster next time you want to create another extranet (maybe for another customer or supplier)

So how do you do it?

1) Go to the Office 365 Admin Portal (portal.microsoftonline.com, and click on “Admin”)

2) Click on “Manage SharePoint”

3) Click on “Manage Site Collections

4) Click on “Settings”

5) Click “Manage External Users”

6) Click “Allow” and “Save”

7) Go to the site collection (the site that will be your extranet) then click “Site Actions”

8) "Click “Site Settings”

9) Look for “Site Collection Administration” and click on “Site Collection Features”

10) Look for “External User Invitations” and click “Activate” (if it isn’t activated already)

11) Go to the site you want to share, click “Site Settings”

12) Click “Share Site”

13) Type in the email addresses of the folk that you want to invite to participate in your new Office 365 / SharePoint Online extranet!!!!

Now one thing that you should note is that at the time of writing this article, your external parties need to use a Hotmail ID, or a Microsoft Online Services ID to log into your extranet.  In the future you should be able to use any email address which will make it even easier.

So there you have it – a fully functioning, secure extranet in just minutes using Office 365!  How good is that!!!!

‘till next time!
TNP

Are you one of the thousands of businesses around the word looking to use Microsoft’s Office 365 “cloud” service, but don’t know where to start?

Well Microsoft Press have made available a free e-book which helps you get started.  Called “Microsoft Office 365:  Connect and Collaborate Virtually Anywhere, Anytime.”

I like this book for a few reasons.  Firstly – FREE!  Secondly, it covers a lot of the questions you probably have about Office 365 and gives you some pretty good answers.  It covers topics like:

• Getting Started with Office 365
• Administering an Office 365 Account
• What your team can do with Office 365
• Creating your Team Site with SharePoint Online
• Posting, Sharing and Managing Files
• Adding and Managing Workflows
• Working with Office 2010 Web Apps
• Going Mobile with Office 365

It is a good blend of technical content for the folk that need to set up and run Office 365 for others, plus a little bit of user content to help you understand exactly how Office 365 works under the covers, and how you can use it to work better, faster, and stronger!

You can download the free Office 365 ebook from Microsoft here.

So you are a small business with a handful of users that use Office 365 for email, collaboration and alike.  What if one of those user’s forgets their password?

Now – if you are a user who has forgotten their password – the best thing to do will be to talk to your IT team, or the person in charge of all your Office 365 accounts.  If they don’t know how to reset your password, simply tell them to read the rest of this article.

If you don’t have a fancy set up like some larger organisations with things like DirSync, and ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services), you will probably just want to reset the password for their Microsoft Online Services account.

To do that, if you are the administrator of your Office 365 “tenant” all you need to do is:

1) Sign into the Office 365 Portal (https://login.microsoftonline.com)

2) On the Admin page, you will see a number of “Admin Shortcuts” at the top of the page.  Click on “Reset User passwords”

3) Select the user from the list that you want to reset the password for – make sure you check the box beside their name

4) At the top of the list of users, now select “Reset Password”

5) Select whether or not you want to email the user their new password

6) Click “Reset Password”

Simple as that!  Now if you are the administrator of your Office 365 tenant and have forgotten your Administrator Password… stop panicking!  Take a look at this article from the Office 365 Technical Blog which will help you reset your Office 365 administrator password.

‘till next time!
TNP

Ok… so being The New Paperclip you know I love everything Office. Well my old friends at Microsoft are just about to launch something new. It is a little different to the Office that you are used to though. But don’t worry, it is a good thing!!

They call it Office 365.

So what is Office 365? Well if you run a small business, or are a manager at a larger one, you might be interested. Office 365 gives your business:

• Email & Calendar functionality so you can manage your day
• Office Web Apps, so you can view and edit your documents, spread sheets and presentations from any computer with an internet browser
• A website for your business
• The ability to instant message, video conference and set up professional online meetings

All of that out of something Microsoft calls “The Cloud” – that is just a fancy way of saying you don’t need to run your own servers if you don’t want to – Microsoft will do it for you.

The other exciting part is that instead of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars up front for the above, you get to pay per user per month. Depending on which Office 365 version you sign up for… you can also get a subscription based version Office 2010 on your desktop as well, without having to pay up front!

If any of the above sounds like it would help your business, you should check out Office 365 at www.office365.com

In the mean time, here at TheNewPaperclip.com we are broadening our content – we are now publishing tips and tricks and other articles that will give you all the Office 365 Help you need. You will see more and more of that content appear over the next few weeks and months.

’till next time!
TNP