jamesbmarshall

I don't think the team is recording them as they're every week and they'd like to drum up in-person attendance to encourage Q&A. That said, they're always open to feedback so if there's a strong feeling for a recording, or a different time, or a choice of options then shout!

Not currently possible. The desire to want a mapped drive to the cloud is something that comes up a lot - but remember that OneDrive for Business is not like a file share on a regular server, it's a part of SharePoint. The best way to interact with it in a shared device setting is via the browser, or natively through applications like the Office 2013 suite. It's a different way of working - especially with 1TB of quota. (I'm not saying that it wouldn't be super-convenient if it worked the old-school way though...)

Yes, just an hour

*bump* Just letting you guys know this still happens every week. Now that schools are pretty much broken up for summer, maybe you can spare an hour* to find out more! *I kid, it's the summer holidays. There are no spare hours.

This is a big topic. Do you want encryption of data in transit, at rest, individual encryption of files, information rights management, etc.? In a service like Office 365, data is encrypted both at rest and in transit (i.e. the disks in the datacentre are encrypted); however, individual files are not unless you have a solution to do so. There are lots of options here, like I say, so it'd be worth understanding what your requirements are before trying to explain it all! There are lots of things that go into making these sorts of decisions - things like total cost of ownership, ease of management, etc. Many of the laptop-replacement style devices like the Surface Pro 3 have keyboards but many also have the option of a tailor-made dock, and almost certainly all support USB 3.0 and therefore any number of third party docks. For example, at my desk at work I have a Surface Pro connected up using a single USB 3.0 cable to a "Targus USB 3.0 Superspeed" dock that drives my two monitors, full-size keyboard, mouse, etc. It's awesome for when I'm doing my day-to-day work, but when I need to go to a customer site, meeting, whatever, I just disconnected the USB cable and off I go with just the Surface Pro and its Type Cover keyboard. The benefits to me are that I have a single device, and I store all my files either in OneDrive for Business (i.e. Office 365), or using the Work Folders feature. I don't have to worry about flipping between two and worrying about what's sync'd where, and which apps are on which devices, etc. Personally, I also feel a great deal of attachment to my Surface Pro - it comes with my everywhere, which means I look after it. The cons, since I'd be a fraud if I wasn't honest, I don't get much hardware flexibility. The Surface Pro has a Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM. That's plenty for most people, but sometimes I process some hefty spreadsheets and other bits and pieces. Whilst it's never caused a problem or let me down, I'd love something more powerful on those (very infrequent) occasions where I need bursts of power, but apart from that it's great. Other niggles (which are addressed in both the Surface Pro 2, and Surface Pro 3) are that I wish I had more variety of angles on the kick-stand, and since I enjoy scrawling notes on things I wish it had a bigger screen, but like I say both of those are more than adequately remedied in the Surface Pro 3 - don't forget that I'm using the original.

As others have said, the great combo here is Office 365 + Surface 2, or Surface Pro 3. iPads are great for consuming information, and you can now get Office for iPad which is pretty cool, but it's not always the best experience to enter lots of data; however, if you're looking for data entry, handwriting notes, etc. the Surface Pro 3 would be my weapon of choice. I got my hands on one earlier this week for the first time and was genuinely blown away with how much better it is compared with my Surface Pro (which I still love and use every day as my main device, but y'know, I'm a sucker for new gadgets!). 1. Depending on your eligibility you might be able to get Office 365 Education for free. 2. Office 365 is accredited for UK government OFFICIAL data which probably covers the vast amount, if not all, the data you work with. 3. Surface Pro 3 when it becomes available in the UK would be a fine choice, and certain the one to go for if you like scrawling all over documents and making notes. There are lots of other OEM devices that would be equally portable, lightweight and powerful but it really depends on the scenarios you'd be using the tech. Food for thought: do you want a companion device to sit alongside an existing laptop or desktop PC, or do you want to simplify things and just have one device. Devices like the 8" Dell Venue 8 Pro, the iPad, Android tablets, etc. all fit neatly into the companion device category where you can gets apps to supplement your "main" machine; however, devices like the Surface Pro, Dell Venue 11 Pro, Lenovo ThinkPad 10, etc. can be full laptop replacements.

Lync Online, part of Office 365, is free [for education customers] and works worldwide.

If you're talking about licensing Windows for your computers in school, and you're paying £100 per device to do it, we should talk because you're doing it wrong!

I've corrected that for you.

Services for Senders and ISPs Check this out - might be some useful stuff in there to help you understand why this is happening. You can never guarantee that a mail sent from your Exchange server will get delivered to a mailbox in Hotmail.

Have you added, and verified, your own domain to the tenant?

I'm not in a position to comment on the first bit, so you're best off taking that up with your account manager. As for integration, yes.

Start here: https://about.yammer.com/pricing/ and hit "Activate Yammer". Then follow the instructions.

The only time a licence change occurs is if an administrator has actioned it - so if a trial licence expires, it doesn't automatically swap out to another plan. If you don't have an A2 licences available in your portal to assign to users you'll need to go to "purchase services" and "buy" them. The reason they don't automatically swap is primarily to avoid loss of data (i.e. what if you actually wanted to continue with, and pay for, Plan A3?) but also because can you imagine the nightmare managing the service if it just swapped our licences without your approval?

It's the same presentation every week basically - although with the announcement there'll be a specific mention of it. It's just a drop in session for people to learn more that runs every week, but in future it may be more structured with specific content every week. If that changes, I'll update my post.

Absolutely - I've checked with the guys delivering the webinar and they'll talk about this tomorrow!

It's actually surprisingly difficult to explain in writing - so much easier to show and tell.

A quick search engine query would tell you... However, since not everyone will know, let me summarise: Yammer is an "enterprise social" network, the very simplest way to think about it is a "closed Facebook/Twitter" environment where people can share ideas, work collaboratively on projects, files, etc. It's hugely powerful, but perhaps the best way to get an idea of what it can do is to read this blog post about how it's helped Wymondham High Academy.

Happy times, people! Yammer Enterprise now included in Office 365 Midsize Business and Education plans | Office Blogs If you have an Office 365 Education tenant, you can now activate Yammer Enterprise for no additional cost.

I don't think that's totally fair - a LOT of research went into designing and testing the Modern UI (The Story of Windows 8) but it was probably done on the assumption that the way we use devices would be further ahead that perhaps it is; i.e. fewer people would be using traditional desktops and laptops and there'd be greater penetration of touch-enabled devices. When you make a big change, some things you get right straight away and others you have to refine (i.e. Windows 8.1, and Windows 8.1 Update) based on feedback. After all, you could've ended up with something awful...

Or upgrade to a newer version of Windows!

Hybrid cloud storage optimizes cost and data protection | StorSimple | Microsoft A server that sits locally with two-tier SSD/spindle storage, that then backs off to Azure as needed.

Definitely look at DreamSpark! https://www.dreamspark.com/Institution/Subscription.aspx

It's not as straightforward as you might think. For what it's worth, you might want to look at password sync as an alternative to ADFS if you're not getting the scenario you want. Maintaining a reliable and robust ADFS infrastructure when it's not delivering SSO 100% of the time could be overkill, whereas password sync gives you "consistent" sign-on which doesn't need you to have highly available servers. (I know I've linked to this many times in various threads, but it's still pretty accurate: Deploying Office 365 Education? You don't need single sign-on, and here's why!)

It's not available just yet - there's no ETA at the moment. Very soon is the best we can say...