Office 365 for sharepoint VLE & Email?

[Techv3]

Hi all,

My school have been let down quite impressively by a (big) company who were tasked with providing them a VLE.

I had a quick look into things and offered up office 365 as a possible solution, and while they're at it using the hosted email solution there.

 

I'm assuming this might be a common route as from what I can see this is possibly free (or at least low cost) for educational organisations.

I'm after any views on this as an option and ideally experiences that might speed up me being able to implement it as we've been let down quite badly.

Also any technical considerations? Eventually pupils may be using office 365 for their emails so any internet connection requirements? And is a backup a concern or is that all left to microsoft?

 

Also if anyone has any links to info for getting your head around sharepoint fast it'd be really appreciated!

The company that dealt with this made 'some' good progress on their vle (also sharepoint based), I'd like to replicate some of it - can it easily be exported to another sharepoint site?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Techv3

[jmak]

Also any technical considerations? Eventually pupils may be using office 365 for their emails so any internet connection requirements? And is a backup a concern or is that all left to microsoft?

 

 

You'll need to work out how many people will be trying to do what before you can size your Internet bandwidth requirements

- there are formulas for guesstimating that. Office 365 for UK is hosted in Dublin and Amsterdam with hot failover between the two. Obviously you're dependent on your Internet connection, which I would say is far more likely to break.

 

 

 

 

 

The company that dealt with this made 'some' good progress on their vle (also sharepoint based), I'd like to replicate some of it - can it easily be exported

 

Watch out for copyright on this - you don't want to end up having to pay out for them letting you down.

[Techv3]

I agree! 150 staff ...of which I'd say probably only 80 use intensively day long. We have a hosted solution at the moment for emails which isn't problematic although the kids don't use it. There will be plans for the pupils to use it increasingly . Do you know where I would find the calculation to do once I've ascertained the worst case scenario usage?

 

Good point, I hadn't thought of that.

In regards to all of it or just branding etc. ?

[wiseoldowl]

Regarding copyright - it's not the same as trademark issues which will effect branding. In the UK, once someone has written something they hold the copyright. Using something without the writer's permission could open up a minefield for you.

[wescoll]

Have a chat with Nviron, in Runcorn. Very, very experienced with Office 365 and Sharepoint, with some very large education customers. They have been very helpful to me.