funkyfin2000

Hi Mate, We did the Novotronix 5 day training for O365 which was really useful to my team (who are supporting our schools in use of Office 365) but it mainly covered off SharePoint and Websites which is our concentration at the moment, not Exchange presently. What's your plan for O365 now? Just email or are you looking at RM Unify etc? Rich

No solution as far as I have researched. To be honest, the schools we have released too havn't had a major issue with - as per se - but they would still like the possibility of switching it off if they don't want to use it. We have come on some way (in our area anyway) in terms of e-safety and changing minds about this type of technology but it doesn't suit everyone and therefore, the ability to disable would be most welcome :S It's also been suggested that we should feedback about it via here: Microsoft Support I have done this!

This doesn't sounds good Will drop you a PM quickly about a few ideas. Rich

Sounds good @Cache. Let us know how you get on. We have a lot of experience in SharePoint and in it's raw state can still be quite a beast to work with. We have purchased RM's Site Creator tool which effectively builds all your SharePoint structure for you through a simple wizard. You can then use that tool to go back and add content to your Sharepoint sites. Pretty nifty and worth a look to see if it could be any benefit to you. My honest opnion otherwise is you will waste a lot of time designing sites in SharePoint to be useful to users.

I can confirm VLSC worked very well on Sunday for me - very fast and no problem using the web download (just my slow 2mb connection was the issue! LOL) 8.1 installed with ease and no problems.

We are shortly bringing on Governors with a number of our schools. This will be done through RM Unify and then passed into Office 365. They will then get access to a SharePoint site that will be set up for them with Governors sitting in their own security group they can only access the data they require. Hope that makes sense. I wouldn't do the staff drive sync personally - just store it in Doc Libs etc but you may need wait before you want to launch to Staff etc. Or maybe use the Governors as a test bed? Rich

Be great if I could even see it in there! What category is it under? Windows?

Windows 8 Pro here on MAK licence and nothing VLSC or on Windows Store...any ideas peeps?

Fab news! What impact does this have if the school has an EES agreement? They can effectively upgrade to Office 365 Pro Plus for free?

If it's Drag and Drop in SharePoint then you can just use Windows Explorer mode but beware it can be a tricky beast sometimes and times out or doesn't like a folder structure if too long etc! I would like to see Drag And Drop on a site be able to handle Folders - wander if it's something MS has thought about

Good question - not quite sure on hybrid

You will need to add some DNS records to validate/verify your domain for Educational licencing (although you can skip this part and come back later and complete it if you wish) - Sounds like you have done this bit. You can then - if you wish - add in the DNS records for Lync to work. At that point you can stop - because otherwise you will be adjusting your MX records and redirecting your mail (something you don't need to do until you are ready) That's it really

and this link too although slightly business related: 10 comparisons between Google Apps and Office 365 - TechRepublic

Just found this for the Office 365 / Google Apps arguments - yes it's pro MS but interesting none the less: A Day in the Life: Sales Rich

Found the answer out from this very useful blog post - might be useful to others Tom's Random Ranting: Importing SharePoint 2007 list templates (STP) into SharePoint 2010

Hi All, Trying to look at the migration of calendar data from a Sharepoint Site from SP2007 to Office 365 SharePoint.... Tried to do it as a list and use the template tool but it doesn't work as the format isn't supported. Does anyone else know of anyway to do it? Going to look at the CSV route but can't see that being a great way :S Cheers Rich

Migration hasn't taken very long at present, most schools are happy to just freshen up and start again - due to the ease of Site Creator creating all your sites and pages, all that needs adding in is the content. Therefore, we have then suggested we will bring over files and folders out of document libraries. We havn't done a lot of that as most schools can do it themselves Any more questions, ask away Rich

Done for you mate. Look forward to hearing from you. Rich

Hi @ass17, We are based in Staffs - we are a support unit that currently supports Office 365 and can certainly come and talk to you about the benefits. We link Office 365 to RM Unify and utilise all the provisioning tools through this. In terms of Google apps - our experience is slightly limited as we are pushing forward with 170 schools to O365 but if you want to have a chat or for us to come and see you in the first instance, being close by might make it worth looking at. Let me know. Rich

Worth considering RM Unify for Single Sign On as well driven by your AD - gives you single sign on to tons of other Educational Cloud services - Discover: RM Unify Dirt cheap as well for the functionality it gives!

Thanks for the update @Gongalong. Interesting times. Like I saw if you want to know anything about how we are getting on with implementation, more than happy to talk and discuss an honest and open picture of things Can you say what LA you are with and what email system they are running? O365 mail is a good way forward for sure. Setting up O365 is simple - we've set up over 100 tenancies now inline with working with each school and can get it sorted in 20mins or so inc DNS changes etc. Mailbox/Sharepoint/Web Apps and Sky Drive all made VERY easy with Unify as all your users are already there and ready to go! Rich

Hi Ricoz, Yeah, I think the post that Andy has linked too is really relevant - I've copied the most important part below: Migration is a tricky area - we are encouraging our schools to look at what they did previously and learn from this before creating a new structure and set up in Office 365. We have RM's Site Creator and today we had a real play with it now it's a live product (came out last week I think) and it is AWESOME! Having done 3 days of raw Office365 training through Novatronix (which has been excellent) we then used the site creator tool to match up our knowledge and see what it did in O365. I have to say it's brilliant, it does the majority of the work for you. It creates and builds all your sites, attaches the permissions and brands and customises the look and feel. After that you can use it to go back and build all your content inside the sites. Tried to break it and muck about in raw sharepoint afterwards and then use it and it dealt with all our changes including template copying extremely well. We will encourage our schools to use this tool to "start again" in affect and then look to manually move any files and folders (dead easy through Explorer view in RM LP) and drag and drop in to O365 SharePoint or use Explorer view again. I think schools will be pleased with this due to the ease of use of the Site Creator tool! It does ALL the leg work for you! ----- So basically, I think you need to look at Migration is a certain light to get the best benefit. If you do want a chat about our project and how things are moving along - or even come on board with us, drop me a line and we can have a chat Rich

Any further update on this @Gongalong ? Got any further?

Quick question on this, is it just a capture of username and password and that's it (and then synced) or is it full on shibboleth whereby other data is also captured and, thus makes it possible to do more than just single sign on?

I was due a login ages ago but not had one sadly, even after several promises of one and calls from various people at Impero. That said, I do have demo coming up in October. So will see what it's like at that and hopefully get a demo ID to have a play.