Office 365 - how are you using it

[Simcfc73]

Hi,

 

I have spent a few days messing with Office 365 and wondered how everyone else is using it. For what I can see its just an sharepoint site. I have created a new user with the license for office365 apps and the sharepoint site but when you log in from portal.microsoft.com etc.. it takes you to a blank page with a lovely date on the right and some links and then on the left its got a link to the team site and then some links to user tours. (a note to M$, when you are doing tours I want to see a tour of the stuff not hundreds of smiling faces and pointless powerpoint slides). Where are the web apps? Do you have to go into the sharepoint site to use them. I know its free and all that but I cannot see how we would use this in anger in our site unless we went down the road of hosted emails. I am wondering if they looked at Google apps and how easy and simple it is to use and thought... nahhhh... clunky is best.

 

I must be missing something really obvious, I was quite excited about using web apps but I am not going to create a sharepoint site just for that which is independant from what I already have. We are looking at tablets soon and I can't see this working. Please someone tell me I am wrong.

 

PS. I created a user and gave it access to the sharepoint site but its saying that I don't have permission.. I take it it takes a while to propogate

[EduTech]

Hi,

 

First of all Office 365 is not just sharepoint, Office365 as a whole provides you with Exchange, Lync & SharePoint with WebApps & SkyDrive (soon) for Personal Storage. If you have a SharePoint Site Collection configured (Team Site?) then when you go to a document library you will have to ability to create a new document (Wave 15) if you use the current wave which is Generally Available... You need to upload a document and then when that is uploaded you can click on this and then view the document in say the word webapp for example.

 

A lot of new features are coming in the next Wave which is only a week away which will open your eyes to more powerful features, so be sure to check this out soon.

 

If you are having problems with permissions, ensure that the user account us licensed for webapps via the user management in the tenancy and likewise they have access to your sharepoint site collection.. and have the ability to view the document library you have configured.

 

That is it very briefly, need to know a bit more in order to see what is happening.

 

James.

[AliG]

Skydrive (soon)? When? This is what is missing in my opinion. I would want to use web apps direct from Skydrive would this be possible?

[EduTech]

On 27th February it is generally available for businesses. I'm not 100% sure on education but won't be long for new tenancy's.

 

James.

[jamesbmarshall]

I'm not 100% sure on education but won't be long for new tenancy's.

 

Office 365 for education is included in the 27th release. Every new sign up from then will be on the new Office 365 which includes SkyDrive Pro.

[Simcfc73]

Will revisit it then, will Skydrive pro be like in office 2013 where you can upload to a part of sharepoint and not an individual skydrive folders? So it all links into Sharepoint

 

Fo the wishlist a way to link a folder in a users home directory to skydrive so it automatically uploads when they place stuff in it no matter what computer they log on at...

[jamesbmarshall]

Fo the wishlist a way to link a folder in a users home directory to skydrive so it automatically uploads when they place stuff in it no matter what computer they log on at...

 

With the newer versions of Office, and Office 2013 in particular, users can save straight to their SkyDrive Pro folders without having to sync it from a local folder first. For other non-Office files users can drag and drop them into SkyDrive Pro directly in the browser.

 

There is also a sync feature with SkyDrive Pro and Office 2013 which allows you to keep a folder on the local PC in sync with the cloud, but this isn't really suitable for shared devices - however it's excellent for 1:1 devices.

[CyberNerd]

Fo the wishlist a way to link a folder in a users home directory to skydrive so it automatically uploads when they place stuff in it no matter what computer they log on at...

 

You probably want Google apps then - 1) you can syncronise home folders (stored, and backed up on a server) as you describe 2) The office plugin runs on all versions of MSOffice after 2003 and will auto sync word documents into google as only works with the latest version of office and 365.

[Simcfc73]

With the newer versions of Office, and Office 2013 in particular, users can save straight to their SkyDrive Pro folders without having to sync it from a local folder first. For other non-Office files users can drag and drop them into SkyDrive Pro directly in the browser.

 

There is also a sync feature with SkyDrive Pro and Office 2013 which allows you to keep a folder on the local PC in sync with the cloud, but this isn't really suitable for shared devices - however it's excellent for 1:1 devices.

 

Another nail in the coffin for domain machines from Microsoft I am afraid. it does look like there days are numbered and we are all going to be forced to use tablets

[gshaw]

The new UI for 365 is miles better than what's there at the moment, much more user focused

[SYNACK]

I hope they have deved it out a bit, the current one is so far away from an education focus that customising it to be usable would take longer than simply writing our own software. There is also a distinct lack of avalible training that is not massivly expencive or focused at the developer. I would need to employ another person to make the current version easily usable in a primary school. I have high hopes for the latest update and hope it brings at least one or two education related templates into it that you don't have to import and fight with for basic MLE functionality.

[drewp]

Office 365 for education is included in the 27th release. Every new sign up from then will be on the new Office 365 which includes SkyDrive Pro.

 

Are there any details for when existing tenancies will be able to upgrade to the new version?

[jamesbmarshall]

Are there any details for when existing tenancies will be able to upgrade to the new version?

 

Details of the service upgrade to the new Office 365 will begin to appear some time after the service rolls out. Nothing to share at the moment!

[nadeem]

Slightly OT - can someone remind me how to request a delay in my migration from live@edu to Office365

[jamesbmarshall]

Slightly OT - can someone remind me how to request a delay in my migration from live@edu to Office365

 

Contact Live@edu support.

 

Although password copy is now in place, so upgrading is actually (for most customers) a smooth process. You can only defer 1 time.

Edited February 20, 2013 by jamesbmarshall