live@edu

[RabbieBurns]

We have 2 domains (one for students & alumni) the other for staff.

 

It's simple to add in external contacts in needed, the slightly harder trick is to create in your staff email system all the contacts for the students!

 

We havent bothered with that. If our staff want to contact the kids, they do it through the messaging in Moodle, which is set up to send an email from the staff address to the student address(es). The kids then reply, and it goes to the staff inbox. Downside is there is no record of sent items on the teachers side, but this hasnt been an issue yet.

[nadeem]

We havent bothered with that. If our staff want to contact the kids, they do it through the messaging in Moodle, which is set up to send an email from the staff address to the student address(es). The kids then reply, and it goes to the staff inbox. Downside is there is no record of sent items on the teachers side, but this hasnt been an issue yet.

 

 

I actually do both (moodle saves me creating umpteen mailing lists!), its quite simple for us to add the students to our main exchange - once I'd got the hang of it.

[Bongo]

At the risk of sounding like a complete numpty here, do you have to enter the 'confirm your domain' CNAME DNS record in your domain DNS server or does the RBC need to do it for you? My domain hasn't been confirmed for over 24 hours now

[RabbieBurns]

Someone has to. If you dont have access to your own external DNS then I guess you will need to ask whatever the RBC is to do it for you.

 

Also, Once the DNS CNAME has been added, dont keep pressing the Refresh or whatever button it is on the live@edu page, as this will set the confirmation timer back (so Ive been told by MS)

Edited November 26, 2010 by RabbieBurns

[RabbieBurns]

Has anyone on live@edu implemented their SSO ?

 

https://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/single-sign-on.aspx?locale=en-US&country=US

 

How does it work? Does it automatically log you into live@edu as soon as you log into a machine, so when you go to outlook.com it takes you straight to your inbox?

[zag]

I'll be looking into SSO with sharepoint 2010 once I've rolled it out.

[zag]

I've been testing this all week and Finally given in. Its not for us quite yet.

 

Blogged about it here

 

Replacing microsoft exchange with live@edu... not so fast

[PiqueABoo]

I could use a genuine school opinion or two right now so did appreciate that (was a close match to what I envisaged for most of the same reasons).

 

Some comments:

 

- I suspect at least some of the pain is the difference between E2K3, and E2K7/10, where it's difficult to avoid working in PowerShell for this and that unless you have fairly basic requirements.

 

- I've now got my eyes set on what Live@Edu will become, presumably at some point next year: "Office 365 for Education". We don't know enough about that yet, but they've promised the same infrastructure and SLAs as for business customers (think I read somewhere it is 99.9%). There is an hour long TechEd presentation called Security and Compliance of the Office365 Platform which has lots of information about that, most of which I imagine (but don't know) will apply to the Edu version.

 

- Speed will obviously be slower than local, but it has been perfectly usable for me.

 

- Sync. Agree. Haven't touched that yet, but I've got that "bloated" feeling too.

 

- SSO. Agree. Looking at the SDK is on my to-do list.

 

- Support. I've asked the free MS support question and that worked OK. But I've found it quite difficult to track down what I think is some fundamentally useful information - the MS UK implementation guide very definitely helped, just not enough.

 

- Search and zap Bad E-Mail[tm]. There's a search feature in the GUI - unproven but I imagine you could use that to take out targeted ones. Or whatever it is you do now in E2K7/10 where you can't use Exmerge.

 

- Backups and Service outages. See the above "O365 for" comment, plus you can get deleted mailboxes back via PowerShell.

 

In addition to the issues you've raised there are some e-safety angles, for instance a school might not want things like the video sharing link on the web client, although perhaps O356 will help there).

 

My summary opinion: Live@Edu started off pitched at higher education with (technically) adult users and it's still a bit of a "squeeze" to make it fit in schools.

Edited December 8, 2010 by PiqueABoo

[RabbieBurns]

I've been testing this all week and Finally given in. Its not for us quite yet.

 

Blogged about it here

 

Replacing microsoft exchange with live@edu... not so fast

 

...I thought I would look into being an early adopter...

 

Its been around since 2004/5 has it not?

[zag]

Its been around since 2004/5 has it not?

 

Yes but I think the point I'm trying to make is that it isn't ready for schools yet. It still seems very early technology to me especially on the ADSync/SSO side of things.

 

All the universitys are going for it but I have only seen 1 or 2 secondary schools do it and now I know the reason.

Edited December 9, 2010 by zag

[RabbieBurns]

How do people who use live@edu deal with students who leave after year 12? We have just had our first batch of students leave since we rolled out live@edu. We have no plans for them to keep their school email address.

 

If I just remove the user accounts from the OU's that live@edu uses, should it then remove them completely?

[zag]

How do people who use live@edu deal with students who leave after year 12? We have just had our first batch of students leave since we rolled out live@edu. We have no plans for them to keep their school email address.

 

If I just remove the user accounts from the OU's that live@edu uses, should it then remove them completely?

 

Good question. I always thought I would just leave them but it might get a bit messy as the years go by.

[jamesbmarshall]

I always thought I would just leave them but it might get a bit messy as the years go by.

 

You can leave them if you wanted to - Live@edu is free for alumni as well, but in a school environment this might not be something you want to have to manage...

 

By de-provisioning an account the next time that user goes to log in they are asked to nominate a new LiveID to transfer the ownership of the SkyDrive; however, they don't get to keep their mail.

 

An advantage for keeping your leavers on for a few months, or even a year, would be that if your sixth form students track their UCAS applications through their school account they may need access beyond their last days at school - leaving them on for a while at least gives them the chance to take a backup of their mailbox before it is deleted.

[vikpaw]

Webinar of interest to the readers of this thread:

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/office-software/69903-live-edu-office365-webinar.html#post623787

[drewp]

What sort of interent connections do you have on campus if you are using Live@EDU? We have an ADSL connection and I dont think its going to play nicley

 

Has everyone gone the route of using ILM, or are some people managing it using CSV files?

[zag]

We use a 10mbit link at the moment with no problems. I tried it at home with my adsl and its fine.

 

I gave ILM a go but its incredibly complicated setup, doubt many will see it as a viable option. I manage on just CSV exports from active directory at the moment and I set it so that passwords are changed on first login. Seems to work. We have 1200 users and it didn't actually take that long.

[PiqueABoo]

I gave ILM a go but its incredibly complicated setup, doubt many will see it as a viable option.

 

Having watched the Office365 videos, my advice would be to stick with CSV rather than playing with ILM now - the equivalent is supposed to be and looks easier, it's just a case of whether you get it in the "for Education" version.

[apearce]

Having watched the Office365 videos, my advice would be to stick with CSV rather than playing with ILM now - the equivalent is supposed to be and looks easier, it's just a case of whether you get it in the "for Education" version.

 

ADFS is the thing to be looking at (active directory federation services)

[zag]

ADFS is the thing to be looking at (active directory federation services)

 

Sadly I think you need 2003 R2 domain for that

[derriunr]

Does anyone know when Office 365 will be released?

[vikpaw]

What sort of interent connections do you have on campus if you are using Live@EDU? We have an ADSL connection and I dont think its going to play nicley

 

Has everyone gone the route of using ILM, or are some people managing it using CSV files?

 

Just thinking about the email side of things, without going into the extras that come like collaboration online docs etc. I imagined that it would be no different to having all members of staff checking their hotmail, since it uses the same sort of interface ( i know it's probably different things at the backend ). All staff have access to hotmail/gmail etc. plus youtube so i don't think there will be that much extra strain. i'm just testing it out with a few members of staff at the moment.

 

Getting all students on there will add some overhead though, i don't think even they would all be online at once, only a limited number of labs. We have upped the 'net connection a little, to be around 4Mb with another 2Mb backup, or something like that. the 4Mb has failed at the moment.

 

Definitely noticed some slowness when using outlook as the client, any slight glitch and i start getting synchronisation errors, which weren't noticeable with the locally hosted exchange. I guess you could always run it in relay mode, so that all is hosted outside, but relayed to internal server, in case the 'net crashes. At least the internal server isn't critical, so keeping it maintained shouldn't be as big a task. I think that is the way we'll run it.

Edited January 31, 2011 by vikpaw
typo

[vikpaw]

Does anyone know when Office 365 will be released?

 

Went to the launch party at the BETT2011, and they were unsure of things, still not finalised pricing etc. It says coming in 2011, but you can still sign up for the BETA, so i guess it's a little way off yet. If you sign up for the BETA even if they don't accept you, you get put on the mailing list for more info.

 

Plus being stateside, you may get to trial it, and will no doubt get it released there earlier. We never even got the BPOS over here properly, after i was singing it's praises to loads of companies after using live@edu. Hope 365 makes its way over here sooner.

[fiza]

For those who use Live@Edu how do you control it so students are not using MSN Messenger, chat and all the other online stuff that comes in the package? Does the admin side allow you to block the options you dont want? We want email and online office and thats it.

[zag]

For those who use Live@Edu how do you control it so students are not using MSN Messenger, chat and all the other online stuff that comes in the package? Does the admin side allow you to block the options you dont want? We want email and online office and thats it.

 

I had a quick look on the outlook administration control panel but didn't see anything to turn it off.

 

I guess when office 365 is released it will be possible though.

 

Here's how to do it in lync at the moment

 

Set up Microsoft Lync Online - Office 365 Beta for enterprises

 

EDIT: Forgot to say you have full powershell access as well so I'm sure its possible somehow.

[staylor1972]

Were having issues with our disabled AD accounts getting their mailboxes deleted! we've got ILm configured to do the account creation and password sync. but we've just noticed that if we disable user accounts they are getting deleted!!!! what do you guys have set in the deprovisioning section of ILM? Ours seems to be set to determind with rule extensions - sure it should be set to make them disconnectors! think some ones been tinkering!