Microsoft live@edu Vs Google Apps for Education.

[Sentro]

Hi All,

 

I am looking into the live@edu and Google Apps for education hosted services and wondered if anyone has had any experience with either. The features of the live@edu service seem great but I'm a little worried that I can't find anything relating to what logging and auditing is available to prevent any misuse by pupils. Maybe these are services intended for only the really good students in schools?

 

Any ideas, thoughts or general comments would be great.

 

Thanks

Edited May 9, 2010 by Sentro

[SYNACK]

Here is a comparison writeup by ZDnet Google vs. Microsoft: Number wars, students as weapons | ZDNet, not heavy on detail though.

 

I know that a few on here do use the Live@edu solution and seem to find it good, hopefully one of them will be able to answer your questions.

Edited May 9, 2010 by SYNACK

[nadeem]

There are quite a few auditing/logging features available

 

I don't use them, but off the top of my head they include;

bad word filter

only able to email within the domain

ability to flag emails with certain word

delivery reports

anti-bullying

 

I'm sure there is a lit somewhere of these which might be this Security and Compliance

[RabbieBurns]

We have turned off the closed campus option of live@edu which means the students can only email each other, and their teachers.

 

We have also implemeneted a basic bad word filter.

 

Not looked at anything else yet.

[gshaw]

It's a very interesting battle and one that I reckon will change massively in the next 6 months or so. Do you have a requirement to integrate with a VLE at all?

[enjay]

We've just started looking at these too - I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is using one...

[RabbieBurns]

We've just started looking at these too - I'd be interested to hear from anyone who is using one...

 

We use live@edu.. feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

[CyberNerd]

We use live@edu.. feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

 

likewise, were using google apps.

 

yesterday, one of the ICT teachers told me "using google apps was the best thing (for ICT) that the school has ever done"

[plexer]

We use live@edu for generic school accounts and lea provided google apps for all staff and student accounts

[enjay]

I guess basic questions to ask of you would be how easy they both were to set up? Do they need to have separate logins and passwords? Can you as admins get into their mailboxes if need be? Any obvious drawbacks or limitations with them? Also, can you have a centrally-managed address book?

[RabbieBurns]

I guess basic questions to ask of you would be how easy they both were to set up? Do they need to have separate logins and passwords? Can you as admins get into their mailboxes if need be? Any obvious drawbacks or limitations with them? Also, can you have a centrally-managed address book?

 

All users are automatiaclly in the global address list, and its easy to add contacts etc. Its all seamless with Active Directory, so same usernames and passwords, although this isnt the easiest method of doing it. Good question about getting into their mailboxes, its not something Ive come accross as an obvious option, but might be possible.

 

One thing ive not looked at doing yet, but which again doesnt seem to jump straight out of the menu options, is to create distribution groups. Its certainly possible as my sisters uni use live@edu and they have all sorts of groups setup.

 

Overall, its an excellent service, and works well. But it was pretty hard to set up, to get it all automated like we have it now (accounts automatically created, passwords automatically sycning etc.. if you want to run a more manual setup, its a lot easier)

[CyberNerd]

I guess basic questions to ask of you would be how easy they both were to set up? Do they need to have separate logins and passwords? Can you as admins get into their mailboxes if need be? Any obvious drawbacks or limitations with them? Also, can you have a centrally-managed address book?

 

From a google apps perspective - It's a simple overnight synchronisation, single sign-on. centrally managed address-book, centrally (or user) managed groups either on web UI or via Active-Directory. admins have rights over mailboxes.

[enjay]

Thanks RabbieBurns, that's really useful. Once you'd had the headache of getting everything set up, the ongoing upkeep is easy though, right?

[ShorehamGeek]

Is it possible to get Google Apps to authenticate using the AD username and password?

[enjay]

Thanks CyberNerd - sounds like once it is up and going, you just walk away from it; how was the initial set-up?

[CyberNerd]

Is it possible to get Google Apps to authenticate using the AD username and password?

 

yes - use a single sign on method (we use moodle) but there are plenty to choose.

Google Apps replicates the ActiveDirectory though a gui.

[CyberNerd]

Thanks CyberNerd - sounds like once it is up and going, you just walk away from it; how was the initial set-up?

 

quite easy - once we figured out how not to lock out admin accounts. (phonecall to google and they sorted it)

AD integration is all done through a gui, then a scheduled task runs overnight.

only maintenance has been removing old accounts (by tweaking the gui once in a while)

The single sign on difficulty will depend on how you want to do it. With Moodle it is as simple as installing the module, and it all worked first time.

 

having said all that. the difficulty (as always) is getting staff ready for a new way of working. Google apps isn't just about email !

 

edit: one other major setup task was setting up the calendars. The calendaring is much better than our old exchange 2003 setup, but it did require a bit of thinking about.

in the end we set up different accounts for each diary type and then gave users edit rights over them.

Edited October 1, 2010 by CyberNerd
addition

[RabbieBurns]

Thanks RabbieBurns, that's really useful. Once you'd had the headache of getting everything set up, the ongoing upkeep is easy though, right?

 

Its set-and-forget. Literally 0 maintenance after its all up and running. It runs every 2 hours from 8am to 8pm and picks up any new user accounts that might have been made in that 2 hour window, and makes them their email account. Password changes are synced up to live@edu instantaneously.

[enjay]

Thanks guys, so not much to separate the two then - until you look at the "office" apps, when live@edu wins on account of familiarity I suppose. Do you just use them for email, or do you also use the apps?

[CyberNerd]

Thanks guys, so not much to separate the two then - until you look at the "office" apps, when live@edu wins on account of familiarity I suppose. Do you just use them for email, or do you also use the apps?

 

I keep saying that the apps are the main part! - but not just the office apps, there is much more than that if you look at the google marketplace. Google Apps Marketplace

 

At the time we choose google it was because the office apps were further ahead than Microsoft, google pioneered much of that work.

Of course google and @edu both have integration with MSOffice.

 

Some of the selling points for us were the google groups, Picasa integration for *all* those photos (scheduled this year), domain wide google video, postini, google sites and just the sheer speed at which new features are integrated.

[enjay]

I've been reading up on these, and there really isn't much between them - the key swing point I can find is that Google would allow me in to users' mailboxes, which from a safeguarding point-of-view must be near-essential.

 

My one concern on that is that Google's site doesn't actually say about this, it was cybernerd who confirmed it was possible; this makes me wonder if MS can also do it, but (like Google) they don't say so. Can someone on Live@edu confirm whether it is or isn't possible to view users' mailboxes...

[PiqueABoo]

Can someone on Live@edu confirm whether it is or isn't possible to view users' mailboxes...

 

Yes. The admin can run a powershell command[1] to give themselves permissions to open one or more mailboxes, and then they can open them via the normal GUI (open other mailbox).

 

[1] add-MailboxPermission -Identity NaughtyStudent -User admin -AccessRights fullaccess

[enjay]

Thanks PiqueABoo - I was kind of hoping you wouldn't say that, as it would have made my decision for me, now I need to try and choose again!

[gshaw]

It is a very close call, we chose Live@Edu here as students didn't like the GMail conversation view (which has just been given the option to disable now!) and also we teaching predominantly MS Office so Live@Edu sits better with that product portfolio.

 

We're in the slightly odd position of creating Live accounts before they're on our AD (thousands of part time students changing daily isn't the easiest to manage!) so we're using a custom SSIS \ SQL script in conjunction with PowerShell to provision, so far so good

 

As for Moodle integration the Live one works and gives you instant access to calendar etc but the Google one has a better authentication system imo as Moodle sets of Google Apps for authentication rather than the other way around with the Live plugin. Basically it means that if you want Live@Edu with Moodle all your accounts have to sign in with their Live@Edu account whereas as far as I understand it you can keep your existing authentication system with Google Apps (although if anyone has the Live plugin working with ldap accounts on Moodle I'd be very interested to see it!)

 

One quick qu for RabbieBurns, have you found any way to sync initial user passwords i.e. you can set the students password via AD and it will work on Live without being changed? As it stands that's been the reason I haven't bothered with ILM \ PCNS as we don't want students to have to change their password on first logon but yet still have Live accounts that will work with the set password.

Edited October 5, 2010 by gshaw

[nadeem]

Yes. The admin can run a powershell command[1] to give themselves permissions to open one or more mailboxes, and then they can open them via the normal GUI (open other mailbox).

 

[1] add-MailboxPermission -Identity NaughtyStudent -User admin -AccessRights fullaccess

 

so can one amend the powershell to do this for all students in one command?