Office 365 with SSO availability question

[chazzy2501]

@EduTech how will my users login remotely? username@beaminster or firstlast@beaminster . I suppose is it possible to have a office365 account login be different from their 365 email?

 

Also I assume I can have multiple email addresses for my staff?

 

Should I create a new mailbox policy on my exchange 2007 to give every pupil a primary smtp of username@beaminster and get them using that... (dunno how to do that retrospectively but I'm sure you can)

 

I don't suppose it's possible to make a office 365 use local domain logins with a custom portal?

[EduTech]

@EduTech how will my users login remotely? username@beaminster or firstlast@beaminster . I suppose is it possible to have a office365 account login be different from their 365 email?

 

Also I assume I can have multiple email addresses for my staff?

 

Should I create a new mailbox policy on my exchange 2007 to give every pupil a primary smtp of username@beaminster and get them using that... (dunno how to do that retrospectively but I'm sure you can)

 

I don't suppose it's possible to make a office 365 use local domain logins with a custom portal?

 

They would login with what ever is specified as the UPN, You can technically use the username as the UPN as I say and then just have the Primary SMTP address but I always find you sometimes get problems with some devices if this is the case.

 

You can have multiple email address, if you have different domains just ensure that they are verified in office 366/

 

You can do that, If you want people's Primary SMTP Address to be the [email protected] then you can do this, normally people would prefer to keep their current email address as the primary SMTP address.

 

Nope, with SSO you need to use ADFS & DirSync and use the UPN to authenticate and it has to be a federated domain (public domain) not an internal domain.

 

Regards,

James.

[funkyfin2000]

Just touching on the SSO bit of information and the Single Point of Failure with ADFS - it might be worth considering RM Unify (Discover: RM Unify) which allows you single sign on to a multitude of Cloud Education Service Providers, but also Google Apps and/or Office365 Suite. It also integrates with your own AD (Vanilla etc)

 

Rich

[Edu-IT]

Just touching on the SSO bit of information and the Single Point of Failure with ADFS - it might be worth considering RM Unify (Discover: RM Unify) which allows you single sign on to a multitude of Cloud Education Service Providers, but also Google Apps and/or Office365 Suite. It also integrates with your own AD (Vanilla etc)

 

Rich

We're looking at this. The pricing is really good too. When you look at what others are charging for similar services, you're talking £XXXX's.

[MicrodigitUK]

Are you kidding? It's not often I get to tease, so I take the opportunity when I can!

 

We've been working with some customers on testing PCNS-style functionality with Office 365 but at the moment we have no more information to share publicly. As soon as, and if, I can, I will.

 

So if we implement PCNS like we have for Live@Edu by editing settings in the version of FIM hidden inside DirSync, it might work for 365?

 

Obviously not supported by Microsoft. But is that basically what you are doing with test customers?

 

I'm curious and want to go try this out now.

[jamesbmarshall]

So if we implement PCNS like we have for Live@Edu by editing settings in the version of FIM hidden inside DirSync, it might work for 365?

 

Obviously not supported by Microsoft. But is that basically what you are doing with test customers?

 

I'm curious and want to go try this out now.

 

I don't deal in "might" and "try".

 

Microsoft has not released this functionality for Office 365. Please do not try this at home.

[MicrodigitUK]

I don't deal in "might" and "try".

 

Microsoft has not released this functionality for Office 365. Please do not try this at home.

 

Thanks for that. I found this in an official Microsoft document (for Office365 partners) that I think answers my question, regarding Password Change Notification Services. see screen shot from my Phone:

 

 

Also regarding the old live@edu SSO kit, I found this very interesting.

 

Single sign-on - Upgrade to Office 365 - Office 365 - Microsoft Office 365 Community

 

Basically the old live@edu SSO kit has been extended until December 31, 2014 and modified to work with Office 365. BUT changes must be made to the SSO Toolkit to maintain single sign-on access. Just like they did back when the Legacy Live@edu SSO URL was shut down and people had to patch Live@Edu SSO with changes.

[jamesbmarshall]

With respect to the first document - where did you get it? That is not our current guidance as far as I know, although as you've said it is targeted at partners rather than end customers.

 

The SSO Toolkit for Live@edu users is not for new deployments of Office 365, and will have an end-of-life.

 

I feel I have to be really clear about this, to avoid any unfair expectations: password sync is not currently supported for Office 365. The best, and supported, method is to use single sign-on through AD FS or Shibboleth. Any roadmap for password sync is just that, and you should avoid trying to hack a solution as this will not be supported.

 

I know that's blunt, but I don't want to mislead anyone. "What's coming", "what's possible" and "what's supported", are different things, and I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I recommended something that wasn't supported.

 

[MicrodigitUK]

With respect to the first document - where did you get it? That is not our current guidance as far as I know, although as you've said it is targeted at partners rather than end customers.

 

It was on the Education Partner Network. The Partner Readiness Guide October 2012. see link:

 

https://www.mseducommunity.com/Products/Documents/Live@edu_O365_Upgrade_PartnerReadinessGuide_Final.docx.docx

 

If it does work (supported or not), together with the new Live@edu SSO Toolkit for Office 365 we can finally have a smooth transition to Office365. Not exactly going to ring up Microsoft support if PCNS stop working! Worst case scenario is a reinstall of DirSync to put it back to the defaults to be supported.

 

Anyway RM Unify has PCNS and is based on Windows Azure Active Directory just like Office 365. So if a Partner like RM is allowed to do it why can’t Microsoft support PCNS for end users? It’s not fair . If you know what you are doing why should we Pay people like RM for something we can do for free.

 

We are rebuilding the school domain and main internal server infrastructure this summer, so didn’t want ADFS as it could get knocked out at any point. But will move to ADFS after September. Just needed a solution for the interim and now have one!

Edited May 9, 2013 by MicrodigitUK