jamesbmarshall

Is AD FS a requirement for your deployment? It sounds like you're hitting problems with the identity piece, rather than the service itself. You don't need to go down the route of a full blown DirSync and AD FS deployment in order to test out the features of SharePoint. All you need to do is provision a new user in the management console of Office 365, assign it a SharePoint & Office Web Apps licence and then you're able to access that feature. I'd strongly recommend holding off trying to integrate with your local AD until you're ready to and comfortable with the service. Did you try contacting support? You don't need to spend hours trawling through TechNet (unless you're into that sort of thing) unnecessarily when there's free support on hand to help.

You don't need to try and untangle this alone - support for Office 365 is free; why don't you give them a call and see if they can help you fix this? AD FS is not something to deploy lightly and, like I said earlier in the thread, isn't something you need in order to be able to test out the full capabilities of the service.

If you're looking just to trial the Office Web Apps I would suggest that deploying full-blown DirSync and AD FS is overkill! While DirSync and AD FS are great solutions to ID provisioning and management, you don't need them up front. You can trial Office 365 with literally no on-premises servers.

It's coming on the 27th.

Plan 1 and Plan 2 both get 25GB mailboxes. Unless you need an unlimited personal archive, or advanced eDiscovery features, P1 is fine.

The only person would be none other than Ray Fleming. The upgrade is very straightforward though; there are lots of places to get more info: • Upgrade Centre • Upgrade Wiki – a global community • Upgrade Planning Sheet • OLMA/OLSync Scripts • Live Demo Lab

There are two streams of work here: 1. The upgrade of customers currently on Live@edu to the current version of Office 365 for education. This is happening right now, and most customers can now upgrade at their own pace, or wait until their scheduled date. 2. The upgrade of the current version of Office 365 for education to the new Office 365 for education (aligned with the 2013 applications and servers for on-premises). This is a separate process from the Live@edu upgrade. There are no timescales to share at this time with respect to when existing customers will be upgraded as the new version is not yet available. Once the new version is available we'll start communicating with customers about what that upgrade is going to look like, when it will happen, and how customers can prepare. If you want to know more about the whole program please keep an eye on the official channels, or speak to your Microsoft account rep. The new version of Office 365 for education enhances the functionality available today, and will be available soon. MS Office 365 release date for business enhancements set for 27 February | Cloud Pro

Log a support call!

All of this is addressed with SharePoint Online When you upgrade your users are brought across onto Exchange Online Plan 1 - meaning they only get automatic access to their mailbox; you need to "purchase" (they're free) additional licenses to assign to your users for SharePoint Online, the Office Web Apps and Lync Online. Once your users have a SharePoint Online with Office Web Apps licence they'll get access to the Team Sites, My Site and Office Web Apps. For newly created users it might make sense to start by assigning them the A2 plan which includes all the aforementioned services.

I wouldn't even go through the upgrade. Cancel Live@edu, and sign up straight onto Office 365 for education - there's no extra benefit in waiting to be upgraded and it avoids complexity.

If you haven't already fully deployed Live@edu I would strongly recommend starting straight on Office 365.

Yes, your AD FS proxies will need a publicly accessible address in order to provide access from outside of your network. Usually this is something like sts.contoso.edu or fs.contoso.edu but anything will do as long as it makes sense to you and your users; this is the place they'll be re-directed to when trying to sign in.

I'm always careful not to get drawn into the emotional Microsoft vs. Google argument, or in trying to "sell" one solution over another; however, I must point out here that you definitely do not have to purchase the A3 plan in order to use Office 365 for education successfully. The A2 plan, which is free for staff and students, includes access to the Office Web Apps (Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint) which are supported on a wide range of browsers and operating systems. This isn't limited to in school, but anywhere you have an Internet connection. That's all I have to say about that.

Have you used the Internet in Microsoft's offices? I understand the constraints that broadband connectivity presents in education - I don't think it's fair to say that either Microsoft or Google is ignorant of that. I guess it depends on your priorities, technical skills and budget. While you can't configure Exchange Online to behave in the way you suggest you might want to look at some of the hybrid options which would allow you to keep your staff local (fully configured using Outlook client, local access, etc.) and move your students to the cloud. There are speed test tools available that would give you an idea of how your connection would perform and I would wager that, while some schools do have very poor connections, the majority have more than enough to move their mail (if nothing else) to a cloud provider.

Frog have announced that they are going to be integrating Office 365 as well as Live@edu; although I don't know what timescales yet. It might be worth you reaching out to Frog for the latest "official" line.

Office 365 is highly available. It isn't possible to configure it in the way you've described. What's the scenario you're trying to avoid?

What's the VLE?

Your AD FS proxy needs to sit in your DMZ as it shouldn't be directly connected to your network (i.e. not domain joined) and you really need a DNS configuration that will allow your internal clients to distinguish between your internal AD FS server and your proxies. From the sounds of it you seem to be deploying 1 server and 1 proxy, which is fine but if either/both go down your users will not be able to authenticate. Although there is more overhead in building out AD FS for HA it is worth it to avoid any issues if a server fails.

OK - everything you need to know is here: Single sign-on roadmap - Office 365 for enterprises. You should always try the official guidance first. I strongly recommend against installing ADFS on your domain controller if you have more than 1000 users.

How have you deployed AD FS? With proxy servers?

It is possible to hide entries from the GAL, but you can't stop users from viewing it (even if it is empty). Hiding entries from the GAL in an individual school is almost pointless if the exercise is to stop kids from emailing each other or members of staff as I can almost guarantee that your staff email addresses are going to be easy to guess and once you know one, you know them all! If you want to shape communication you can, through the use of transport rules, restrict the flow of mail. There are overwhelming benefits to be realised by allowing students to communicate freely with staff; for example, the ability to communicate privately and honestly with teachers without fear of bullying from other pupils. Surely it is better to deal with pupils who spam individually through the sanctions process of the school, rather than block (or at least try to) all communication at the detriment of those who'd use it properly? Then again, I'm just the technical guy! If you want to hide the entries, you can. There's an attribute you can set in Exchange Online which is something like -hiddenfromaddresslistsenabled which you'd need to set to true for all users you want hidden.

Can you send me a PM with your support reference number and some details please? I am 99% certain this is incorrect information.

It shouldn't take two weeks to verify your eligibility for Office 365 for education; you can add in a domain during sign up and should be able to start purchasing academic SKUs within a couple of days (probably hours, maybe quicker) but not weeks. If you are having difficulties log a support request.

15 mins is not necessarily long enough for the licence changes to fully take effect. If the user has no Lync licence the IM block will not work.

If you don't want users to have IM, don't assign them a Lync licence. As for OWA, go to http://outlook.com/yourdomain.com.