Microsoft offers students at eligible educational institutions access to full Office

[Quackers]

This thread got me excited when i saw "Microsoft offers students access to full office" then i saw it was Office 365

[jamesbmarshall]

This thread got me excited when i saw "Microsoft offers students access to full office" then i saw it was Office 365

 

I'm not sure if you've read the stuff in this thread, but I think it's pretty clear that Student Advantage is a benefit that allows schools to enable Office 365 ProPlus, the downloadable full client version of Office.

 

Office 365 is just the delivery vehicle for the benefit - if you read part three of the blog series you'll understand that you don't need to take all of Office 365 Education to get the benefit: How do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education? (Part Three) - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

[tj2419]

If staff use office 365 are they eligible for the free office 365 as well?

[jamesbmarshall]

If staff use office 365 are they eligible for the free office 365 as well?

 

No, Office 365 ProPlus under Student Advantage only applies to students. Staff can get it either as a paid for stand alone component or under plan A3.

[agibson]

I might be being impatient, but has anyone received their keys for this yet? I haven't had an email and there is nothing sat waiting for me in the VLSC. Spoke to RM (our reseller) back in early November and they said it was being processed but I haven't heard a thing.

[jamesbmarshall]

Spoke to RM (our reseller) back in early November and they said it was being processed but I haven't heard a thing.

 

Resellers were not able to process orders until Dec 1st since that's when the benefit launched, so you should see this appear over the next couple of days.

[Boredguy]

Spoken to our reseller this morning and just waiting for them to work out the procedure at their end. Once it's all working we'll let the students know about our Christmas present from MS

[Arthur]

Preparing students for the workplace: Student Advantage is now available « Office News

[chazzy2501]

I've been nagging OLC since 1st They need a purchase order, Finance here are having trouble raising a £0.00 PO!

 

haven't set up dirsync yet, just want to make some manual accounts for testing.

[jamesbmarshall]

There are a whole bunch of posts up on our blog to help with Student Advantage, but if you want a good place to start, look no further: Deploying and Managing Office 365 ProPlus - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

[Simcfc73]

My renewal is January so good timing for us.

 

Just wish there was a better way to sync onsite accounts/passwords with the cloud. Google took 5 minutes for us so we used that instead.

[jamesbmarshall]

Just wish there was a better way to sync onsite accounts/passwords with the cloud.

 

Better than DirSync + Password Sync?

[Max_Power]

Emailed reseller late on last week, and they began processing the licencing on Monday - said it could take a few days to sort final keys and licences out etc.

[Simcfc73]

Better than DirSync + Password Sync?

 

Maybe its changed since I set it up last year.... can't get into my account now so I am a bit stuck.

[timbo343]

@jamesbmarshall I have an EES in place for Staff which includes an onpremiss exchange. I have also setup our students on Exchange Online Plan 1 for students and this is setup on a sub domain of our domain. Will the students be able to gain access to the downloads of office here? How do i link the student side of office365 to our agreement?

 

We dont offer ADFS as we are keeping things seperate for the time being as we have an unreliable internet feed at times.

[jamesbmarshall]

How do i link the student side of office365 to our agreement?

 

How do I get Student Advantage in Office 365 Education? - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

 

As long as you've covered all of your FTEs for Office via your OVS-ES or EES VL agreement you just need to speak to your reseller to get Student Advantage. They will add the number of Office 365 ProPlus licences that you need to your agreement, and you'll get details of how to activate them against your tenant (see blog posts on my blog!).

 

ADFS is not required, in fact none of the Office 365 workloads (i.e. Exchange Online, Lync Online, SharePoint Online) are required. Office 365 ProPlus can be taken on its own via Office 365.

 

I've spent quite a bit of time pulling everything I think people need to know to get started into some posts, they're all tagged "student advantage": Browse by Tags - UK Education Cloud Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

[jc1875]

@jamesbmarshall with many PCs (particularly ones school children can access) being shared with parents/siblings in the same home, will other users be able to use office suite too (i'm thinkin specifically where multiple profiles are held on the same pc).

Will office just need to be activated once by the child (and subsequent validation checks) but available to all users (ie no registration for dad)?

[AngryTechnician]

There is no single activation; you have to stay logged in to the Office desktop applications using your O365 credentials for the licence to be applied, so if you're on a different user account it will prompt for login credentials.

[jc1875]

There is no single activation; you have to stay logged in to the Office desktop applications using your O365 credentials for the licence to be applied, so if you're on a different user account it will prompt for login credentials.

 

From the slideshare FAQ - "Activation is handled automatically, so there is no exchange of 'keys' per se Office 365 ProPlus is automatically activated by KMS services."

 

 

So if Dad logs in and wants to type a letter to the bank, the child has to log in to o365?

Will having 2 copies of office 2013 on the same machine be an issue?

 

Or will they just avoid it all and retain bad practice - one single admin user account on the pc!

[jamesbmarshall]

@jamesbmarshall with many PCs (particularly ones school children can access) being shared with parents/siblings in the same home, will other users be able to use office suite too (i'm thinkin specifically where multiple profiles are held on the same pc).

Will office just need to be activated once by the child (and subsequent validation checks) but available to all users (ie no registration for dad)?

 

I haven't poured over the licensing terms, but I'd imagine the small print says that the copy of Office is for that user. Clearly, that's hard to enforce if said student installs the software on the home PC and other family members make use of it but just because you can't enforce it doesn't mean it's right for you to break the rules

 

The TechNet site goes into pretty good detail about how Office 365 ProPlus works, activates, can be deployed, etc. so I would check it out: Overview of Office 365 ProPlus

[fiza]

@jamesbmarshall - Any news on how Microsoft will be dealing with those schools who get provided Office365 from their service provider? In our case LGFL. Are we still eligible? Although we do have an EES agreement, office365 is provided for us. Edited December 9, 2013 by fiza

[jamesbmarshall]

@jamesbmarshall - Any news on how Microsoft will be dealing with those schools who get provided Office365 from their service provider?

 

Yes. It won't. (That sounds blunt, but it's pretty simple, read on)

 

You have two routes:

 

1) Go to your service provider, in this case LGfL, and ask them about it. It's their service, and it'll be down to their desire to implement it that will dictate if you get it.

 

2) If you don't want to do that, or your service provider does not want to implement it, then you can sign up for Office 365 for free and do it yourself.

 

Obviously, I talk to service providers and partners as well as you guys so it's not like they aren't aware of Student Advantage; however, how they choose to deploy Office 365 is pretty much up to them - I can't force them to offer it to you, sadly. If they can't, or won't, support it then the only option is to sign yourself up and offer it out that way.

[fiza]

1) Go to your service provider, in this case LGfL, and ask them about it. It's their service, and it'll be down to their desire to implement it that will dictate if you get it.

 

2) If you don't want to do that, or your service provider does not want to implement it, then you can sign up for Office 365 for free and do it yourself.

 

 

Have asked and been told they have no plans to make it available.

If we do it ourselves then wont we end up with 2 accounts for students to use? 1 to allow the Student Advantage and 1 for school use provided by our service provider?

[jamesbmarshall]

Have asked and been told they have no plans to make it available.

 

That's a shame. I hope that will change in time.

 

If we do it ourselves then wont we end up with 2 accounts for students to use? 1 to allow the Student Advantage and 1 for school use provided by our service provider?

 

Correct, although you don't need to take any of the other workloads in your separate Office 365 tenant, your users will have a separate username and password to access their software benefit. It's not ideal and, like I say, it is a shame that LGfL are not planning to roll this out at the moment, but that's the situation we're in. I honestly wish I could step in a wave a magic wand to make it easier but when you take Office 365 from a third party provider, even though it's the same fundamental cloud service, you are at the mercy of what they are willing to provide.

[fiza]

@jamesbmarshall - Thanks for clearing that up. At least we know where we stand if we want to pursue this.