Two things are becoming clear when it comes to the next generation of business technology:

 1.       Moving to the cloud is no longer a distant dream.

It’s inevitable that this necessary transition will happen in the near future if it hasn’t already.

2.       Migration can be a nightmare.

Fears are holding IT decision makers back from making the switch.

Cisco recently published a survey of global cloud migration from 1,300 IT decision makers in 13 countries. The survey found what many business owners already feel; the cloud is simply the next step in the natural progression of technology. Like all technological evolutions, cloud operations must be adopted for businesses to remain at the top of their game.

The Dream Becomes Reality:

When the survey participants were asked which applications had been moved or would be moved to the cloud within the next year they answered:

• 77% Moving or have already moved Email and web services
• 74% Storage
• 72% IM and Web Conferencing

According to Cisco’s latest report cloud deployments will quadruple this year. Currently only 5% of IT managers have migrated at least half of their total applications to the cloud. However by year’s end the number should quadruple to 20% of all business operating at least half of their systems in the cloud! This trend will continually escalate as the business world adapts to its new web arena.

Fears Conquered:

The most common fears concern email, storage and virtual desktop deployment. Essential components of operations like Email need to be migrated with special care.

People don’t trust the cloud yet:

• 39% of Cisco’s surveyed IT managers said they wouldn’t trust their own personal information like a SSN to the cloud provider they are currently using.

Migration Hassle:

• 39% of Cisco’s surveyed professionals would rather get a root canal than address network challenges associated with cloud deployments.

Most business professionals fear length of deployment time, security of data, and smooth transition of applications because they lack knowledge of what steps they will need to take to migrate successfully. They want the cloud; they just don’t know how to get there.

Fears can be alleviated with the right professional assistance. Professional IT support and the right cloud service provider are the wings companies need to soar to the highest levels of productivity and cost efficiency.

Click on the links below for relevant Office 365 migration information:

• Office 365  Migration
• Office 365 Deployment

Authorization has been granted by the Broadcasting Board of Governors to operate under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). This news influences government agencies, but also speaks to every Office 365 customer of how seriously Microsoft takes information security.

Security has always distinguished Office 365. Microsoft has already been the only major cloud based productivity service signing EU Model Clauses with all clients – making global security no new development. Additionally Microsoft’s HIPPA compliance helps non-governmental organizations meet their privacy needs. The list goes on with Office 365’s ISO 27001 certification as well as SSAE 16 & 3402.

The inclusion of these security standards isn’t something extra added onto Office 365 for specific clients. Microsoft will sign HIPPA-BAAs, DPA, and EU Model Clauses with all customers regardless of size.

Transparency brings further peace of mind. To facilitate customer understanding of just how secure their data is Microsoft created the Office 365 Trust Center. This tool puts security information in plain sight.

Inside the Office 365 Trust Center: The Who, What, Where and How.

• Who: Consolidated information about WHO can access your Office 365 data.

• What: WHAT permissions different admins have to WHAT information.

• Where: See not only WHERE in the world the servers that hold your data are, but also what factors determine the storage strategy and how it’s optimized for your security.

• How: Know HOW Microsoft is keeping you safe. You can sign up for e-mail notifications from Microsoft whenever they change any part of their security service. For example they’ll notify you if there is a change to subcontractors used in their security services.

The commitment to develop the best security practices is really a reflection on the product as a whole. Microsoft strives to offer the superior cloud computing service that is appropriate for the highest levels of global business while making it accessible and affordable to any size corporation.

Choosing Office 365 not only increases your business’ productivity through products like SharePoint, Lync and Exchange Online, but also gives you government level information security.

Google Apps is cheaper than Microsoft, but it’s cheaper for a reason. Microsoft produces a richer and more professional end-user experience.

Office 365 is Microsoft’s newest innovating product. It provides desktop versions of Office Pro Plus in combination with additional hosted products like Exchange Online for email, SharePoint Online for collaboration, Lync Online for unified communication, and Office Web Apps.

Office 365 integrates the desktop Office products businesses already know and love with innovative cloud hosted brother programs. This well-known Microsoft family interface provides for ease of use where there might otherwise be a tremendous learning curve. Migrating to Office 365 creates a familiar transition resulting in lower error rates and employee confusion. Conversely the Microsoft products which make your company run won’t work the same through Google Apps.

Outlook is the predominant desktop email application used by business. This overwhelming preference makes choosing Office 365 the logical decision. A continued Microsoft experience will reduce hang-ups in migration and user understanding.

Microsoft products are tried and true. Most businesses have relied on them for years. A fact which helps business owners rest soundly. They see integration as the next step in a history of success.

Features of Microsoft’s Exchange dramatically increase business productivity.

Exchange Online for Email:

1. Calendar sharing permissions. Google has no offering for shared calendars.
2. File-level manipulation of messages. Gmail messages are not .msg files like on outlook and therefore cannot be controlled in the same ways.
3. Outlook 2010 has automated sorting such as AutoArchive and Mail Cleanup.
4. Google does not provide inbox collection of text messages, voice mail, or IMs.

Data Security and Control:

1. Microsoft’s Information Rights Management (IRM) empowers admins to customize access permissions.
2. If an unauthorized recipient is added to a message without IRM they could corrupt or steal sensitive data. Microsoft’s security features safe guard against the threat of these dangers which could result in punitive damages to your business.
3. Google does not offer IRM.
4. Google charges an extra fee for encrypted mail.
5. Key difference: Microsoft gives the option of on-site physical infrastructure while Google is strictly remote and web based.
6. Using Office 365 gives you greater control over the flow and retention of your information.
   1.  For example: If a company phone is lost or stolen you can remotely wipe it.
   2. Information is retained through legal hold also referred to as journaling. Journaling differs from archiving. Through this secure practice companies can record all communication (email, voice, etc.) within the business. This is particularly important for high risk or high security firms like law offices, financial institutions, or medical offices.  Journaling helps companies comply with legal privacy requirements.
   3. When you implement the legal hold feature information cannot be accidentally deleted because a copy of everything lives in a “legal hold archive” outside of your exchange server.

    

Business runs on Microsoft. The software giant recently published case studies of Office 365 migration experiences. One small business owner had tried Google because of the attractive pricing. He ended up canceling with Google after a string of hang-ups such as inability to access technical support and documents not transferring. He had to manually convert each word document in his entire company into Google docs format. He also explained that a move away from Microsoft was really a turning away from the business world. He explained, “We work with a lot of financial services organizations, and they’re going to stay the course (with Microsoft.) With a large enterprise, the safe answer is with Microsoft. You know what you’re getting.”

Office 365 isn’t just safe-it’s effective!

New platforms like SharePoint and Lync enhance productivity. SharePoint allows robust sharing of corporate material and fosters collaboration on documents and other files. Lync connects all communication, across all modes, both within and outside of your business. Lync enables unified instant messaging, presence, voice and video conferencing both within your company and with your clients.

Business gets done faster when everything flows together without hitches. Running Microsoft products top to bottom allows this to happen.

This is a multi-part guide. You are on Part 3: Adding SharePoint Online Libraries, Lists, and Discussion Zones.

Click here to go back to Part 2: Creating SharePoint Online Web-Parts.

Click here to return to the beginning Part 1: Creating a Teamsite Homepage.

Part 3: Creating SharePoint Online Web-Parts

In the previous instructive blog “Part 2: Add SharePoint Online Web-Parts” you learned how to add elements to your homepage. As we begin you’ll want to bring up your SharePoint homepage.

In this section we will be focusing on the left column of your teamsite homepage (see below) where you will find your libraries, lists and discussions. Let’s begin by adding a new library.

Adding a new library:

Document libraries are a one-stop place on the web where you can share collections of files with your team.

1. Click “Libraries”
2. Click “Create”


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3. A pop-up appears asking you to choose what you are adding. First, make sure that you add a “library.” Let’s add a “document library.” Second, give your library a name. Let’s name it “Intern’s Documents.” Third, click “Create.” (see image below)

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Making a List:

A SharePoint list is basically a collection of pieces of common information. To make a list you follow the same exact steps as making a library.

1. On the far left side on the page click the blue hyperlink “Lists” then click “Create.”
2. The familiar pop-up window appears. Choose the item you want to add to your lists. (Let’s make a company phone list) Click the icon “Contacts.”
3. Give your Contact List a name in the box on the right side of the pop-up. (Let’s call it “Employee Phone list.”)
4. Once you give the list a name you can hit the “Create” button below the name box.

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Adding Contacts to Your Contact List:

1. Click “Employee Phone List” on the far right under the “Lists” category.
2. Click the “+ Add new item” hyperlink.
3. A pop-up appears and you can enter contact information.
4. Enter and “Save” contact info.

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Creating a Discussion:

Discussions are a way to share and collaborate information with other people.

Advantages of using SharePoint Discussions instead of email:

• The discussion lives forever in a convenient location. Information can get lost or overlooked in a crowded email inbox, but won’t get lost or accidentally deleted in SharePoint.
• You won’t have to remember where you filed a group email.
• When you use discussions you make use SharePoint’s powerful search engine to find what you’re looking for.
• Your information is consolidated and easily accessible.
• New employees will be able to login and see what your business was brainstorming before they came aboard. 
• Company-wide questions and concerns are answered once and posted to your designated discussion.
• All future related or repeated questions answered in SharePoint and won’t land in the already overloaded inboxes of individuals.

To create your discussion follow the same steps you took to create new libraries and lists. (Use above steps and images for assistance creating a new discussion.)

Modifying a Discussion:

Discussions can be modified to include different team members with different levels of access clearance. Follow the steps below to edit your Discussion.

1. On the far right click the hyperlink of the discussion you wish to modify.  (I’ll
   modify “Team Discussion.)
2. In the top dark blue banner find the List Tools tab and click “List.”
3. Go to the far left and click the icon “List Settings.”


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4. In the middle of the page under “Permissions and
   Management” click the hyperlink “Permissions for this discussion board.”
5. At the top of the page in the Permissions Tools toolbar under “Edit” (this should come up automatically) click the icon “Manage Parent”  in the far left corner of your screen.
6. Clicking “Manage Parent” gives your boxes next to each name. Check the box next to the name of the group or person that you wish to edit permission settings for.  (I’ve checked Viewers)
7. Back in the Editing Toolbar at the top click the “edit User Permissions” icon.


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8. A pop-up appears and you check boxes to edit permissions.

Deleting Lists, Libraries, or Discussions:

If you ever want to delete something you’ve created the process is very simple. Let’s practice by deleting my library “Intern’s Documents.”

1. On the far right side click the item you want to delete. (“Intern’s Documents)
2. In the toolbar at the top of the page click “Library” in the “Library Tools” tab.
3. Click the “Library Settings” icon located in the upper right corner of the page.  (Steps 1-3 You’ll remember from the process you used to manage the permissions in a discussion.)
4. Under the same “Permissions and Management” column in the center of the page select the first blue hyperlink “Delete this document library.”

Office 365 Advisors has  helped hundreds of users migrate to Sharepoint Online for easier and more collaborative business practices. To connect with a personal Office 365 advisor call (425) 274-1121.

It was announced today at 12PM Pacific that pricing for most Office 365 Plans have been reduced. Below are all the pricing options (SKUs) that were affected.

All other plans not listed here do not have a Office 365 price reduction associated with them. If you have additional questions about how this change will impact you, reach out to your Office 365 partner of record. If you don’t have one, give us a call at 1-855-IT-Boost.

Return to Office 365 Advisors Homepage

Office 365 Price Reduction 3/14/2012

A notification that many of the Office 365 SKU prices have changed.

Kiosk Worker Updates 1/7/12

An internal announcement by Microsoft yesterday has added optional unlimited email storage and other improvements to its low-cost, limited version of Office 365 called Exchange Online Kiosk. Click above to read more.

Office 365 Updates 11/28/11

An explanation of a number of major service changes. Including but not limited to: Expansion of services into 22 new countries, Admin self-serve password resets, Lync for Mac information, and other major updates.

Office 365 Updates regarding BPOS migrations on 11/08/11

Presented in the format of a “how-to” guide, this link is a compilation of recent updates regarding the migration from BPOS to Office 365.

Office 365 Service Updates for October

A summary of the major service related updates for October

Office 365 Updates 10/22/11

A summary of the October updates regarding compatibility changes to Office 365.

Office 365 Updates To Patch Desktops 9/18/11

A set of recently updated directions for patching desktops to work with Office 365. Includes links to actual needed downloads for both 32 and 64 bit users.

Return to Office 365 Advisors Homepage

This is a multi-part guide. You are on Part 2: Creating SharePoint Online Web-Parts.

Click here to go back to Part 1: Creating a Teamsite Homepage.

Click here to go to the next section Part 3: Adding SharePoint Online Libraries.

Part 2: Creating SharePoint Online Web-parts

After the previous section of this guide, you should now be looking at a partially customized homepage for your SharePoint Online Teams. Please go to your teamsite homepage now if you are joining us in the middle.

• Adding a documents web-part. The most basic web-part you can add is just a simple zone to upload documents. Lets do that now.
1. Turn on editing again. If you are joining us in the middle or coming back, don’t forget to turn the page to editing mode or you can’t make changes. As a reminder: you click ‘page’ up at the top, then click ‘edit’ which will be on the far right of the bar that appears.

Note: Remember not to use the back and forward buttons on your browser, as this will often erase or save changes and will turn off editing mode (if you do find yourself accidentally using the back button, turn editing back on to continue)

2. Add a document library Now that editing is on, you’ll see the editing tools tab has appeared on the ribbon near the top. Click the ‘insert’ tab, this will change the entire ribbon to the insert buttons. From here click the button that looks like a folder and says ‘document library’. (see image below)


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3. Pop-up. Now you will get a pop-up asking to to name the space. Lets call it “New Hire Documents and Company Manuals”. (see image below)


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4. Need to move it? By default the web-part will appear where your text cursor was when you clicked ‘add document library’. Perhaps you had the cursor in the wrong place? No problem, just click on the top portion of the web-part and drag it where you want it. You’ll notice I’ve dragged it to the bottom of the ‘message from our CEO’ (see image below).


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5. Add a document. Adding a document is pretty darn simple. click the button that says ‘+ Add document’, and browse your computer for the right document (see image below).


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If you need to add multiple documents at once, you’ll see there is a button for that as well. Note that certain file types won’t upload either due to the security risk the pose or the fact that they are too large.

6. Add a folder. You can also add a folder which can then hold more documents. To do this, select the web-part (this will bring up the options associated with that library) You’ll see at the top there is a ‘documents’ tab under ‘library tools’, click it. From there, click ‘new folder’, then name that folder and click ‘ok’ (see image below).


Click Image to Enlarge

• Adding an announcements web-part. The next thing I’m going to walk you through is how to add/customize an announcements board. This can be used for many purposes: company events, sales achievement recognition, birthday recognition or as I use it “stuff we need in the office”. Our company uses this exact tool to track employee requests for things such as Kleenex, Notepads, more coffee beans, more snacks, etc. Lets walk through that process.
1. Insert Announcement Click the ‘insert’ tab, this will change the entire ribbon to the insert buttons. One of those buttons is a big microphone that says ‘announcements’, go ahead and click it to create a generic announcement tool. (see image below)


Click Image to Enlarge

2. Pop-up. From here you will get a pop-up text box. Type what you want to call this web-part, in our example we want to call this “Things we need for the office”. Then click ‘Ok’.
3. Drag it where you want it. Once again it will appear by default where your text cursor was, if it isn’t in the right place, move it where you want it. When you are done. Your homepage should look something like the image below (see image).


Click Image to Enlarge

4. Customize it. Now lets make this look how we want. We can actually change the columns in the web-part. Begin by clicking the web part so that the right menus appear. Next click the tab ‘list’ which appears under the heading ‘list tools’, this will change your ribbon menu options. Now you’ll want to click the button titled ‘create column’ (see image below).


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5. Pop-up. This will bring up a pop-up which will need to be filled in. We will be creating a few columns: A number column to track quantity of requested item and a text column for notes on the purchase. I’ll proceed slowly as this can get confusing quickly. If you get lost, the image at the bottom captures all the directions clearly.
6. Create Number Column In your pop-up the first section is ‘Name and Type’. Type ‘#’ as the name, and select the check box that says “Number (1,1.0,100)”. Move to the next section which is titled “additional column settings”. Here you can add details for people who are adding something to the column in the future, lets type “amount of item requested (in denomination of common bundle if relevant)”. Next you’ll see an option “require that this column contains information”, check ‘yes’. Leave the next three options (“enforce unique values”, “minimum/max”, and “number of decimal places”) as their default state. For the “Default Value” lets input ’1′. Ignore the rest of the options for now and click scroll down to click ‘OK’ at the bottom.


Click Image to Enlarge

7. Updating the View for Column A You’ll notice your column isn’t visible? Did you do something wrong? Nope. What is going on is that the this homepage does not show the new ‘default view’ unless you tell it to (right now it is still reflecting the ‘standard view’). So we will need to modify the standard view to add this new column so that it is visible from the homepage (note: that this extra level of complexity likely seems insane without the context of why views are great, which we will cover later. Unfortunately, sometimes good features complicate simpler tasks, this is one of those situations).

Click back on the ‘list tab’ and then click ‘modify view’ (see below).



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This brings up a list of all columns that are currently in that web-part (note that there were a lot that you didn’t see before, yet they existed), we are going to un-check the “attachments” option and check the “#” option. Also, lets switch it so that the “numbers” box is the second from the left. Click the drop downs and change attachments to 5, then change “#” to 2. Now you are done, don’t worry about the other options and buttons just click ‘Ok’ (see image below).



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Return to the home page and you should see your column (see image below).



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8. Adding Column B We are now going to add a simple text column. This one will go faster as we are mainly redo-ing the steps above. Note that we could have chosen to only change the view once at the end both, but I figure you need the practice and doing it twice doesn’t hurt =P.

Go to ‘list’, click ‘create column’. In the pop-up, type “description” and change the type to have “multiple lines of text” checked. Don’t change anything else, scroll down and click ‘Ok’.

Now lets add the view. Go ‘list’, then ‘modify view’. Your screen will navigate to the view page. Check the box next to “description”, and click ok (see image).



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9. Add an item. Now you need to add an item. Your web-part should look like the image below. Click “add new announcement”.


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When you see the pop-up, you’ll notice I overlooked something, there was already a body paragraph, it just was hidden from view via the main screen. In theory we didn’t need to create a description box at all as we could have just made the body visible (Opps… I’ll walk you through fixing this in a moment). See the image below to see what I’m talking about, you’ll notice there is both a body section and a description section.



Click Image to Enlarge

So lets finish this process before we fix the mistake. Type a title for the item “Kleenex”, then change the amount from 1 to “10″, then in the description box type “I’m sick of using paper rough towels, please save us!”. Ignore the Expiry box and the Body box. Then click save (see image below).



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Your entry should appear as seen below



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10. Fix our Error We need to delete the other two “silent” columns. Or end users will input data that doesn’t appear on the other end and will be confused. Go to ‘List’ then on the very far right you will see a button that says ‘list settings’, click that button. This will take you to the screen seen below. Under the heading ‘columns’, you’ll see all the existing columns. Click on ‘body’ to edit it (see image).


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Now you will see the options associated with that column, at the bottom you’ll see a delete button. Click it, confirm your selection, then return to the home page.

Now if we click to add an announcement, you’ll see that the ‘body’ section is gone (see image below).




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• Now we should be all done, see your final product below, if anything looks significantly different than I’d suggest re-reading to see where you went off base. You are also welcome to request some private training by calling us directly. Good luck, and proceed to Part 3 when you are ready.


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Click here to go to the next section Part 3: Adding SharePoint Online Libraries.

Note: This is a multi-part guide. You are on Part 1: Creating a Teamsite Homepage.

Click here to go back to Part 0: Setting up and understanding site collections.

Click here to skip ahead to **Coming Soon** Part 2: Creating Interactive Content on your Teamsite Homepage.

Part 1: Creating a Teamsite Homepage

Based on the previous section, you should now be looking at the homepage of your default teamsite. Please go there now if you are joining us in the middle.

• Establishing a Point of Reference. SharePoint has a complex permissions structure which is what allows us to securely put corporate data up there. But due to this, it can seem confusing at first. We will go into how to implement complex permission structures later on in step 3, but for now I’m going to keep it simple and give a general analogy which will help with confusion.

  At the highest level, SharePoint is organized into “site collections”, let us compare these to your company office. It is reasonable to assume that some people would have a key to that building while others would not.

  The homepage of your default teamsite (what you are looking at now) is akin to the lobby of that office building. This is a general space where we start off and get oriented. It will likely have signs that tell us how to get to different rooms, such as “marketing department”, “Client info”, “Sales Department”, etc. It might also have some bookshelves with general info such as “employee handbooks”, “code of conduct”. Maybe it will also have a whiteboard where company members can write down needed office supplies (“More pizza is needed!”)

  If you walk around to the white board and book shelves, you are still in the lobby, however, entering a different room would constitute leaving the lobby. This same principal applies to SharePoint. There are tools called: ‘Libraries, Lists, Tasks, and Discussions’, these are all still in the Lobby (same key). However, when you create sites, this is akin to creating a new room which may use a different key to enter. Generally speaking, create sites when you want to restrict access uniquely.

  Everything we do in the rest of this blog entry is still in that lobby space. This is because we are only working on the homepage of the default Teamsite.

• What are we looking at? Before we go any further let us look at what comes pre-packaged on the page and discuss some of the features. The image below has numbers on it which correlate to each of the following items:
  
  
  
  

  Click Image to Enlarge

  1. General Textbox Fields: These zones are designed to allow to easily plug in text, pictures, and other types of “non-interactive” data.
  2. Web Parts: These are moveable per-configured tools that allow member visitors to interact with data. Examples are: A place to put files, a mini-calendar for whatever specific topic the page relates to, various types of announcements and discussion tools, video/audio interactive features, etc. Often these same web parts can be created into a library or list instead (see below).
  3. Libraries, Lists, and Discussions: These are similar to web-parts, but it creates the interactive tool on a new page so as not to clutter the existing interface and allow for levels of organization. For example: I want to have a document folder, but I don’t want it on the main page. So I create a new library, this then appears on the left as a new click-able option. (we will go over how to do this very soon)
  4. Sites: Instead of putting that library on the left, you can make it into a whole new site. For example, perhaps I’m putting Quickbooks data there and don’t want the general employees to be able to access it. So I create a sub-site, called quick-books data, and lock up the permissions to that space so only me and the CFO can get in.
  5. Page Options: This will allow you to edit the page you are currently looking at. It also includes some options to add libraries and integrate the current page to sync with your Office Pro Plus desktop programs (such as Outlook and Word, this will be covered in later sections).
  6. Site Options: This options section allows you to make changes across the entire website. Everything you can do in Page options can also be done under site options, but there are a whole bunch more features, so it can quickly get confusing to use this menu. We will start with page options to keep things simpler at first.

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  That was a lot of info to take in at once. Go grab a cookie to reward yourself, then come back and we will start pushing buttons.

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• Clear the slate. You should be looking at your teamsite homepage. As you can see there is already some stuff on there. I like to begin by getting rid of the stuff Microsoft creates by default as I don’t find it helpful. This is also a useful chance for you to learn how to effectively “Undo” mistakes you might make in the future. We will be learning how to delete web-parts and data on a site.
1. Click “Page”, which we noted previously is where you find page options.
2. On the far left side, click the button “Edit” to activate editable mode on the page. (see image below)


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3. You will notice more options are now present, there is now an “editing tools tab. Depending upon where you click on the page, you will have even more options appear. For Example: if you click on the web part labeled “Shared documents” you will get option tabs that say “Library tools”, and “Web part tools”.


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4. If you haven’t already, click on that web part now. Then go up to Web part tools and click options. This will change the ribbon menu to the Web Part Options ribbon. You should see 5 buttons, the furthest right button allows you to delete the web-part entirely. Do so now. (see image below if anything confused you)


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5. You’ll see the part is now gone. Next let us delete the existing images and text in the text boxes. Go ahead and select everything with your mouse and press delete. You may need to clean up some extra blank paragraph lines to get rid off all the text footprint. On the right side, you’ll find that it is equally simple. Just keep using the delete key. When you are done, it should look like the image below.


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• Lets add a company message To start somewhere simple. Lets just add a “This is who we are as a company” statement to our homepage. click your mouse cursor into the box you want to type in, and start typing. To access editing and font tools, look to the ribbon at the top of the screen that says “format text”. (see image below as an example of this)


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• Adding photos to Sharepoint Online Perhaps now you want to advertise your company picnic. This will be done using text and also we will want to add a picture. Add text using the same method we just covered, then click on the second tab under ‘editing tools” at the top, this one is titled ‘insert’. From here we want to click the lower half of the button that says ‘picture’, this brings up a drop-down menu from where we will select the first option ‘From Computer’(see image below).


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This will bring up an option to browse for photos, click ‘browse’ and find the photo you want on your computer, then click ‘open’. (see image below) By default it will store this under site assets, that is a good place for now. (if you start to have lots of photos, you may want to organize them differently, but most people won’t have that issue).



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Now it will take you to a screen where you can name and save the file. (see image below)



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After you are done it will auto-add the photo to the area you had your cursor in at the start of this process. You can see the final result below (see image below). Note: clicking the photo will create an editing tab that allows you to modify the picture.



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In the next guide will will add some interactive widgets (web-parts) to this homepage. This will allow employees to input info and access files (see link to next guide below).

Proceed to next guide. Part 2: Adding Interactive web-parts to your default Teamsite homepage

As I needed to build out a site that I would use to demo SharePoint Online to customers, I figured I might as well wrap it up in a blog and share the know-how. This will only cover a few basic items to get your brain juices flowing and is targeted to people who have little to no SharePoint experience. I Hope you may find it helpful.

Note: This is a multi-part guide. You are on Part 0: Setting up and understanding site collections.

Click here to skip ahead to Part 1: Creating a TeamSite Homepage.

Part 0: Setup Admins & Site Collections

“So you just purchased Office 365 SharePoint Online… now what?”

• Log in. Go to your main Office 365 Portal –> Quick link here. Make sure you are logging in as someone who has global administrator access (you can get by with less, but this guide assumes you have it). Also, I recommend you always do SharePoint editing in Internet Explorer 9 as you’ll run into the least amount of error issues.
• Go to the Admin Center. When you logged in as a global administrator, it will have dumped you on the admin tab by default. On this page there are several links that say “Manage”, click the one that is beneath the heading “SharePoint Online”. (see image below)


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• Manage Site Collections. This will open a new window with several administrative options. Click the top link, which says “Manage Site Collections”.
• Check on Default Site Collections. By default your account will come with two default site collections. (See image below)


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What is a Site collection?

• A site collection is a place where you will keep multiple SharePoint sites.
• Lets consider an analogy: Before you paint anything, you pick what you will paint on and how big that canvas will be. If you are painting and suddenly you run out of room, then you will need more canvas space. In the same way, when you make a SharePoint site, you will make it “on” a site collection. If you put too much data on that collection, you will run out of room and need to expand the collection.

Therefore we can conclude that a site collection is the vessel that holds our SharePoint info. And we need to make sure that the vessel is big enough for its purpose.

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• Check on Site Collection Ownership: If you see more than the two default site collections, someone else has been busy in here. You’ll want to know who so that you can ask them what they did (as we don’t want to screw up anything they’ve created). To see who is the “owner” of a site collection, click on the hyperlink associated with that collection. A pop-up box will appear and the third line down will read “Primary Administrator”, that is who is responsible for the site collection in question.
• Adding Admins/Owners:If you want to add a second admin to the overall site collection, you can do that now. Click the checkbox next to the site collection, click “owners”, then click “manage Administrators”.
  
  

  Click Image to Enlarge

  
  This will create a popup screen, the top section is for the Primary Site Collection Owner (there can only be one name here), the bottom section can have any number of Site Collection Administrators. To add a name, type the first part of their email (everything before the @ symbol), then click icon of a person on the right of the box. To add multiple people put a semicolon in between For Example, to add me and my coworker Tracy you would type “thomasa; tracyw” then click the check names button (icon of a person with a check mark). (see image)


Click Image to Enlarge

• Enter your teamsite. We are now done with the boring setup stuff. Now click on the link for the site you want to enter (in our case it is the default teamsite which should look something like: http://*yourdomainname*.sharepoint.com.
  
  This will cause a pop-up window to appear, there is a second link in this window, clicking that will take you directly to your teamsite homepage
  
  (note that you can also get to the site from the Office 365 Portal. At the top of the screenat the Office 365 portal, one of the options says Teamsite, clicking that will also take you to your default Teamsite homepage).

Proceed to next guide. Part 1: Creating your homepage

Yet last week, many businesses had 80-90% of their staff working remotely 3-4 days in a row. For even the traditional business model, presence would have been insanely useful…

As I wake up in the morning, I can glance at the Lync Online dashboard and tell who has signed into work, who made it to the office, who made it to client install sites, and who isn’t on at all. Why is this important?

First and foremost, lets as business owners take a moment to note how much harder it is for employees to “pad hours” with fake remote work logs. As soon an employee steps away from their computer for 5 minutes, they are shown as ‘away’. I can ping them at any moment on IM, and in theory if they are working, they should be able to instantly respond.

For our firm it went much further as we were able easily see what is going on during the “snowmageddon” chaos (not a word I coined… Washington news stations kinda went overboard…).

• Several staff members are on-and-off without power. In a glance I can see who is able to respond to client issues, how many people we have staffing our customer service line (helpdesk), and who is able to answer the physical line vs the remote access to our helpdesk voicemail.
• For meetings we had scheduled it is easy to see if the key players are even available. We then either spin up a quick video/collaboration session or cancel the meeting if needed.

The image below shows what we might see when logging into Lync Online at a given moment. Unfortunately, we do have to censor our client site info for privacy reasons (hence the blue lines), but I think you get the point how handy this can get when tracking 20+ employees.

More Info On: Lync Online Web Conferencing

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Lync Online is great, but one of the major features holding it back is that it has never been able to robustly support major WebEx style meeting services. At first look, this would seem like an obvious early feature given all the other nifty gizmos Microsoft stuck in Lync Online, not true. It wasn’t until long after the product release that it is now finally starting to attempt to compete with services such as Cisco WebEx.

Lync Online is doing this through a new offering that allows for direct dial in over a traditional phone line (your PSTN), as well as a number of new business class conferencing features. A comparison to WebEx is displayed below and more product details are available here: Lync Online Web Conferencing

How does it compare?

More Info On: Lync Online Web Conferencing

Microsoft Office 365′s primary offering is broken into two licensing trees. The first is kiosk workers, which refers to low information use workers (such as those in retail, manufacturing, or anyone in a largely “desk-less” role). The second is its main offering which targets everyone else: Owners, Managers, Desk workers, On-the-go sales people, etc.

Up till now, the Kiosk licensing plans (known as K1 and K2) have been very highly restricted. No archiving, no ActiveSync Support, POP3 only for Outlook, and a mailbox size of 500 MB. Much of this is about to change.

Microsoft recently announced it is adding a number of new features to these lower cost plans:

• Microsoft is adding Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) support for mobile devices to the current Exchange Online Kiosk plan. As of right now, users with these plans (which start at $2/user) only have POP3 support for mail capabilities. This essentially means that changes made at work aren’t reflected on that users phone or home computer. It also can complicate things when changing users as important changes may be stored locally on the previous employees Outlook profile. Needless to say, adding additional options for robust mail integration is going to be huge for end users of the K1 and K2 plans.
• Microsoft will be offering “Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) including legal hold and unlimited storage, to be offered as an add-on to any Exchange Online plan, including Kiosk and Exchange Plan 1,” according to Microsoft Senior Partner Technology Advisor Jesper Osgaard.
• Microsoft also plans to increase the mailbox size of each end user to 1 GB (from 500 MB previously). This doubles the space available and makes the plan significantly more viable for “modest-to-moderate email users”.

When will it happen?

At this time Microsoft is not officially commenting on exact integration dates for the new features. However, March 2012 is being flagged as a possible goal.

Information on other Recent Updates to Office 365 can be found here

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Office 365 was awarded cloud service of the year by technology analyst firm CRN.

Read the full story here.

​The new release of Lync Mobile is supported by both Lync Server 2010 users and Lync Online customers. End users who are supported by those platforms can add the app via their app store.

Lync mobile enables you to stay connected, communicate and conference on the go. This brings the power of unified communications into play, syncing up what you do on your desktop, laptop, and phone for presence, IM, and conferencing. Some major features include:

• The ability to join video and web conferences on the fly with a single touch.
• Federated Presence, see where your business contacts are at any given moment. Lync Online supports presence with location and status awareness so that you can know at a glance who is and isn’t busy.
• Connect securely through channel encryption, transport layer security (TLS) support, and perimeter/internal network protection that help safeguard your communications.
• Communicate with a single consistent identity. Outbound calls from your phone will share identity within your Enterprise network. Making it easier for others to recognize calls from the Lync mobile client.

You can find out more about the network and DNS requirements of Lync here: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/hh416761.aspx

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Last Wednesday, Microsoft’s Office 365 certified compliance for the US based Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the European Commission’s stringent Data Protection Directive. This is a major step in setting itself apart from the other cloud providers who have yet to find a home at more highly regulated firms.

Office 365 Data Protection Standards

Compliance with the European Data Protection Directive will allow Office 365 to legitimize the transfer of personal data via international networks to locations outside the European Economic Area (EEA). As compared to Google Apps, this sets Office 365 up to sweep the market for geographically dispersed firms.

Why?

“European regulators have the option to request that customers halt the use of a service that hasn’t taken appropriate steps to safeguard personal data until they have evaluated the service and deemed it compliant with EU data protection and security standards.” This implies that customers of Google apps could find themselves stranded in the event of a political dispute within the EU over data trafficking. Note that this can even apply to data centers which house data outside of the EEA.

Office 365 and HIPAA

The second major certification, HIPAA, opens Office 365 up to operate for hospitals and clinics. For those who know the industry, this is somewhat groundbreaking as up till now very few medical facilities have moved to the cloud for anything other than email needs. As more and more EMR products are now basing themselves out of the cloud, it suddenly has become an option for small clinics to move on from expensive hardware.

More details

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