Office365 + Outlook + Users Who Roam

[Asgard]

Hi All

 

Long story but we have taken over a local high school and their network needs a lot of work (it's a child domain in the previous academy trusts Forest) and they have local profiles (nothing is redirected)

 

Anyway

 

They have office365 now and it's a painful experience if you move to a different device......

 

I'm recreating their AD from scratch so wondering how people allow staff Full Outlook 2010 with Office365 and get a near seamless experience when they move to a

Different device

 

At the college I work in we have an onsite exchange 2013 box with mandatory profiles, and outlook is set via a PRF. It's seamless.

 

I don't really want to take a backwards step and put a local exchange box in

 

Anyone got outlook 2010 + office365 working with roaming profiles ?

 

I'll also be putting in an ADFS + DirSync box as I'll be giving the students email addresses but they will be using OWA.

 

Thanks guys

[FN-GM]

What seemless experience are you after exactly?

[Asgard]

If they roam to a different device they have to re-run the outlook first time wizard and wait for their mailbox to sync

[Marshall_IT]

I'd use GPO to set up outlook to use online mode instead of cached mode. Then I'd redirect the outlook data folders to a server location. This should achieve what you're after.

[FN-GM]

You can use a group policy to automatically configure outlook so you don't have the wizard.

[Asgard]

Fruit baskets / alcohol deliveries for you two pillars of this here community

 

I think I'll rid the school of local profiles too

Edited June 28, 2015 by Asgard

[fairm010]

Brilliant input [emoji23]

[FN-GM]

Fruit baskets / alcohol deliveries for you two pillars of this here community

 

I think I'll rid the school of local profiles too

 

I have just dumped roaming profiles in favor of local. It kept stuffing up the outlook mail profile. Since changing no complaints.

[Marshall_IT]

At my last School we used local profiles and redirected pretty much everything. At this school are using roaming profiles and is causing my loads of problems. I can't wait to move away from them. I just need the time to map it all out.

[Liam]

We do exactly what you want to do and have office 365 with outlook 2013. I've not managed to successfully get the seamless setup like I have with on premis exchange but to be honest most staff use the same machine daily so it's no trouble. Those who wander I tell them to use owa. If you do know of a way to get it to work with man profiles let us know

[FN-GM]

We do exactly what you want to do and have office 365 with outlook 2013. I've not managed to successfully get the seamless setup like I have with on premis exchange but to be honest most staff use the same machine daily so it's no trouble. Those who wander I tell them to use owa. If you do know of a way to get it to work with man profiles let us know

 

Do you mean the fact it asks you for a password?

[Asgard]

I'm debating trying to replicate our college mandatory profile as much as possible and redirect the outlook data files to a network share

 

My absolute worst case scenario is to throw an exchange server onsite - but it seems like a total backwards step

[Boredguy]

Our Staff have roaming profiles and can't say we have any integration issues with Office 2013 and Office 365. Users only entered their password once, and as we have the autodiscover configured in DNS, that is the only bit of data they had to enter (no need for a PST)

 

We are running in cached mode, so I've redirected the OST to a single network storage location instead of the local machine (since we wipe local profiles at logoff) but in the last 2 years can't say we've had any real problem. Those staff that use multiple machines during the day know to either log off of their office station, or just use OWA elsewhere since you can only have 1 copy of Outlook per user running off of the networked OST file.

[snagrat]

Is placing the PST on a network location support by MS?

 

I thought they recommended not to?

[Boredguy]

It's not recommended, but is possible.

Yes they are limited to 1 instance of Outlook on the network only but that's a bonus

 

The OST path can be specified via GPO and we also set it via registry key in GPP.

If you run in cacheless mode then this is not required since the users don't have to download the e-mails each time they login (and we find that at times the SWGfL proxy servers don't always wants to let Outlook talk to 365)