Understanding Office, Office 365, Student versions etc

[kennysarmy]

Prompted by a parent ringing me saying he was having difficulty buying Office for his daughter who attends the school as our school appeared to not be signed up for the scheme!!

 

I had no idea what scheme and he could n't tell me!

 

On site we have Office 2016 installed on all school PC's, that's it, no fancy Office 365 and AD synchronisations.

 

 

I have signed our school up for Office 365 and have an admin account I can log in to with an email address of @schoolname.onmicrosoft.com - but I've done no more than that.

So at https://portal.office.com/AdminPortal/Home#/users - I'm the only account!

 

 

So I guess I have a few questions:

 

1. What was the parent on about? Is there something I need to do to allow students and staff to purchase cheap versions of Office from Microsoft?

 

2. What do I gain by mass uploading all our AD accounts to the Admin portal - does this mean they will all be able to use online versions of Office?

 

3. What is the @schoolname.onmicrosoft.com" thing all about? I don't want students to be confused with having another email account !

 

 

Any help appreciated...

[newpersn]

Prompted by a parent ringing me saying he was having difficulty buying Office for his daughter who attends the school as our school appeared to not be signed up for the scheme!!

 

I had no idea what scheme and he could n't tell me!

 

On site we have Office 2016 installed on all school PC's, that's it, no fancy Office 365 and AD synchronisations.

 

 

I have signed our school up for Office 365 and have an admin account I can log in to with an email address of @schoolname.onmicrosoft.com - but I've done no more than that.

So at https://portal.office.com/AdminPortal/Home#/users - I'm the only account!

 

 

So I guess I have a few questions:

 

1. What was the parent on about? Is there something I need to do to allow students and staff to purchase cheap versions of Office from Microsoft?

 

2. What do I gain by mass uploading all our AD accounts to the Admin portal - does this mean they will all be able to use online versions of Office?

 

3. What is the @schoolname.onmicrosoft.com" thing all about? I don't want students to be confused with having another email account !

 

 

Any help appreciated...

 

Just done this.

 

Depending on your mircosoft aggreement staff and students can get a copy of office on ther personal machines.

 

Azure AD Connect syncs the account information and allows you to us [email protected] (no need for the @onms.com

[simpsonj]

Hi Kenny,

 

I can have a stab at some of these... If I'm talking rubbish, someone please correct me!

 

1, Assuming you have an EES/licencing agreement with Microsoft, you can get upgraded Office 365 accounts for your students for free. As part of this licence, students can download and install the full suite of Office 2016 onto 5 devices. Once they leave the school, you delete their account, and the access goes away. You may need to talk to your licence distributor to get these licence codes, and I was charged 1p per licence to set them up.

 

There used to be a discount available for staff to buy Office, but since we have the upgraded Office 365 licences for staff and students, due to our EES agreement, I've not rolled that out in years...

 

2, If you can get your students onto Office 365, then yes, they can use the online versions of Office. I believe this can be done with the basic, free licence of Office 365. There are a few ways of doing this, from .csv files, to federating the domain, or using a third party product like RM Unify.

 

3, I wouldn't worry about this email, it'll be created for all users, but they won't really be able to see it. I believe, and I might be wrong, it's used should you choose to change your top level domain name so that you don't lose all your accounts? It may have other uses, but it's not something you need to promote to students. I think it's more of a backstop/backup thing.

[kennysarmy]

When I log in to Office 365 it says I have to assign products for myself and the other users in the organisation.

 

 

So I click assign products and it takes me to this screen:

 

 

Which does n't seem to help, so I click on Billing & Subscriptions:

 

 

and then add subscriptions...

 

 

Which fails and says contact your Admin - but I am the ADMIN!

 

Then I get an error !

 

 

 

What am I doing wrong?

[Mako]

You're not doing anything wrong, you don't have the licenses. You seemed to have access to a provisional trial which, as shown on your third image, expired last year.

 

If you have the right Microsoft Agreement, you may want to contact your reseller/LA/Microsoft (depending on who manages your licenses, at some point somewhere I've been batted around to all 3 of those depending on the issue) to have the appropriate O365 licenses assigned.

 

Here's what we have, for reference:

[newpersn]

You're not doing anything wrong, you don't have the licenses. You seemed to have access to a provisional trial which, as shown on your third image, expired last year.

 

If you have the right Microsoft Agreement, you may want to contact your reseller/LA/Microsoft (depending on who manages your licenses, at some point somewhere I've been batted around to all 3 of those depending on the issue) to have the appropriate O365 licenses assigned.

 

Here's what we have, for reference:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]48046[/ATTACH]

 

Same as above.

 

Once thats been done get you domain verified. (Just need to add a Txt DNS entry)

[sted]

if you go https://portal.office.com/start?sku=e82ae690-a2d5-4d76-8d30-7c6e01e6022e there in theory (its been a while since i did it) you can get a free office sub for people on the email domain you put in there. from memory as long as they have an email account you can assign them the correct type of license (easy to spot in the managment interface as you have unlimited. it can sometimes be a pig to get them to recognize youre a school but is basically 0 maintenance once done

excuse the lazy shopping of the image

[kennysarmy]

Our licences are with Capita so I've fired an email off to them...

 

I'll update with any progress later this week, thanks for the help!

[kennysarmy]

Finally, excuse my ignorance again...

 

Once I've got my users uploaded and the licence sorted, how do they then get access to Office to download and install on their home PC's? Do I have to provide them with a specific link?

Do I have to distribute passwords associated with all their new email accounts?

 

Or is this purely an online offering.

 

If it is purely online, do they then need to upload any work they wish to edit before the online version can work on it?

[sted]

Finally, excuse my ignorance again...

 

Once I've got my users uploaded and the licence sorted, how do they then get access to Office to download and install on their home PC's? Do I have to provide them with a specific link?

Do I have to distribute passwords associated with all their new email accounts?

 

Or is this purely an online offering.

 

If it is purely online, do they then need to upload any work they wish to edit before the online version can work on it?

its on the home page when they login up the top right iirc (portal.office365.com iirc) just says download office of similar

[newpersn]

Finally, excuse my ignorance again...

 

Once I've got my users uploaded and the licence sorted, how do they then get access to Office to download and install on their home PC's? Do I have to provide them with a specific link?

Do I have to distribute passwords associated with all their new email accounts?

 

Or is this purely an online offering.

 

If it is purely online, do they then need to upload any work they wish to edit before the online version can work on it?

 

You may want to Sync with the Azure AD Connect tool. (once your domain is setup)

 

Then assign students licences. They can then login with there AD logins (so [email protected] rather than [email protected])

[mavhc]

If you're paying per year for Office licences, then they're per user, so the user can download them at home, basically. This is slightly different to the home use program, a discount for employees of a company that paid per year for Office.

[kennysarmy]

When I log in to our VLSC portal I can now see :

 

Applications O365 ProPlus for Faculty 150 licences

Applications O365 ProPlus for Students 1400 licences

 

 

But when I log in to our Office 365 Admin Center I still can't see anything:

 

Under the licences option it says : You currently have no licenses. You can purchase a subscription or contact Support to renew existing subscriptions.

 

 

Do I need to do something further to link these together somehow or does it take time for it appear?

[kennysarmy]

When I log in to our VLSC portal I can now see :

 

Applications O365 ProPlus for Faculty 150 licences

Applications O365 ProPlus for Students 1400 licences

 

 

But when I log in to our Office 365 Admin Center I still can't see anything:

 

Under the licences option it says : You currently have no licenses. You can purchase a subscription or contact Support to renew existing subscriptions.

 

 

Do I need to do something further to link these together somehow or does it take time for it appear?

 

Just to add - when I log in to the VLSC I use my normal school email address, but when I log in to the 365 Admin Center I use an email address that is the onmicrosoft.com one.....if that matters!

[mavhc]

So you need to verify your domain, then add it to office365, then switch your users, including you, to use the real domain, and go from there

[kennysarmy]

So you need to verify your domain, then add it to office365, then switch your users, including you, to use the real domain, and go from there

 

I presume if we're with RM/SWGfL then they will need to do the TXT record adding to prove ownership?

[kennysarmy]

I presume if we're with RM/SWGfL then they will need to do the TXT record adding to prove ownership?

 

Raised a change request with RM - can take 24 hours! - hope the MS Setup page I'm up to does not time out

[newpersn]

I presume if we're with RM/SWGfL then they will need to do the TXT record adding to prove ownership?

 

Yes RM (we are with EXA but RM hold our domain.

 

We are in the same boat with you. Need to switch from onms.com to our domain. (done all the work but O365 need to change our licening from one to the other.)

 

Had log a call without VL reseller.

[kennysarmy]

YAY!

 

Done! You're now the admin for balcarras.gloucs.sch.uk

[newpersn]

YAY!

 

Done! You're now the admin for balcarras.gloucs.sch.uk

 

Wow.. that local,

[kennysarmy]

OK, so now I'm even more confused than before!!!

 

I have Active users - students with "Office 365 A1 for students" & staff with "Office 365 A1 for faculty"

 

 

How did these get in here?

 

 

If I go to Billing -> Licences it's still not showing "O365 ProPlus for Faculty" or "O365 ProPlus for Students" which have been added to by VLSC...

[Katy]

OK, so now I'm even more confused than before!!!

 

I have Active users - students with "Office 365 A1 for students" & staff with "Office 365 A1 for faculty"

 

 

How did these get in here?

 

 

If I go to Billing -> Licences it's still not showing "O365 ProPlus for Faculty" or "O365 ProPlus for Students" which have been added to by VLSC...

 

It's not "ProPlus" any more - for us, we had to sign in with a new teacher account (which has not had any licences assigned) and pick "I'm a teacher" and that made whatever ProPlus is called these days appear in the licences. Repeat with a student account to get the student version.

 

 

Edit: Found the instructions

 

How to get Office 365 A1 Plus licenses for Teachers and Students, when your Office 365 ProPlus licenses have expired:

1. Login to your school’s 365 portal using an Admin account

2. Create any 2 new users with email addresses and passwords, one a Teacher and one a Student (can be any names, Mickey Mouse or whatever). DO NOT assign any licenses at this stage.

3. Exit portal and wait a short while (say, 5 min.?)

4. Go to www.office.com/getoffice365 and log in using the Teacher’s email and password that you created in point 2.

5. Follow prompts, if any, and wait a few minutes while their apps are being setup (you don’t have to wait till they complete), then log out.

6. Log back in to the school’s portal as an Admin and check that Office 365 A1 Plus for faculty licenses are now visible under Billing > Subscriptions.

7. Exit the school’s portal and then repeat the process from point 4, ensuring that you log in with the student’s email address and password and select Student this time. You will then be asked to enter their date of birth. (NB The student acount hs to be seen as being over 13 years of age when creating this initial account).

8. Once again, follow prompts, if any, and wait a few minutes while their apps are being setup (you don’t have to wait till they complete), then log out.

9. Then log back into the school’s portal as an Admin and check that Office 365 A1 Plus for students licenses are now visible under Billing > Subscriptions.

10. Finally, assign the correct licenses to the Teachers by selecting all the appropriate teachers you want to supply a set of Office 365 A1 Plus licenses for faculty to, and then click on “Edit product licenses” under the “Bulk actions” pop up box, selecting the correct license.

11. Repeat 10 above for students to apply Office 365 A1 Plus for students licenses to them in a similar way.

[kennysarmy]

It's not "ProPlus" any more - for us, we had to sign in with a new teacher account (which has not had any licences assigned) and pick "I'm a teacher" and that made whatever ProPlus is called these days appear in the licences. Repeat with a student account to get the student version.

 

 

Edit: Found the instructions

 

OK, so do I create the account with no licence attached initially?

 

As this:

 

[kennysarmy]

OK, so do I create the account with no licence attached initially?

 

As this:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]48119[/ATTACH]

 

Yes - read properly lol

[kennysarmy]

It's not "ProPlus" any more - for us, we had to sign in with a new teacher account (which has not had any licences assigned) and pick "I'm a teacher" and that made whatever ProPlus is called these days appear in the licences. Repeat with a student account to get the student version.

 

 

Edit: Found the instructions

 

 

Did n't work sadly

 

I still have no subscriptions!