Microsoft Exchange Online for Enterprises Service Description – Microsoft® Exchange Online is a hosted messaging solution that delivers the capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server as a cloud-based service. It gives users rich and familiar access to email, calendar, contacts, and tasks across PCs, the Web, and mobile devices.

Microsoft SharePoint Online for Enterprises Service Description – Microsoft SharePoint Online is a Microsoft Office 365 service for businesses of all sizes. Instead of installing and deploying Microsoft SharePoint Server on-premises, any business can now simply subscribe to SharePoint Online to provide their employees with an enterprise grade solution for creating sites to share documents and information with colleagues and customers.

Microsoft Lync Online for Enterprises Service Description – Microsoft® Lync™ Online is a next-generation cloud communications service that connects people in new ways, anytime, from virtually anywhere. Lync Online provides intuitive communications capabilities across presence, instant messaging, audio/video calling and a rich online meeting experience including PC-audio, video and Web conferencing. Transform your interactions with colleagues, customers and partners from today’s hit-and-miss communication to a more collaborative, engaging, and effective experience.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus Service Description – With Office Professional Plus, users get the latest version of the Microsoft Office applications, seamlessly connected and delivered with cloud services, so they can access their documents, email, and calendars from virtually any device. Office Professional Plus includes the new Office Web Apps—online companions to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft PowerPoint®, and Microsoft OneNote®—which let users review and make minor edits to documents directly from a browser.

Microsoft Office 365 Apple Devices Service Description – The Microsoft Office 365 Apple Devices Service Description provides customers with an overview of Office 365 capabilities on the Mac and iOS (iPhone and iPad) devices.

Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving Service Description – Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving is a cloud-based archiving solution for organizations that have deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 on-premises. Exchange Online Archiving is an enterprise-class service that assists these organizations with their archiving, compliance, regulatory, and e-discovery challenges while simplifying their on-premises infrastructure, thereby saving costs and easing the information technology (IT) burden.

Microsoft Office 365 for Enterprises Support Service Description – Microsoft® Office 365 for enterprises Support Service Description provides information to customers about the technical and nontechnical support included in their subscription fee to Microsoft Office 365 for enterprises.

Microsoft Online Services Migration Service Description – The purpose of this service description is to provide information about the email migration services that are available from Microsoft Premier Deployment (MPD) for Office 365.

Microsoft Office 365 Mobility Services Description – The Microsoft Office 365 Mobility Services Description provides customers with information on mobility solutions—access to services from phones and devices—that are available for two online services in this current release namely, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint® Online.

Microsoft Office Web Apps Service Description – Microsoft® Office Web Apps is the online companion to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft PowerPoint®, and Microsoft OneNote® applications that helps users access documents from almost anywhere. Users can view, share, and work on documents online with other users across personal computers, mobile devices, and the web.

Office 365 Security and Service Continuity Service Description – This service description describes the security, continuity, privacy, and compliance policies and controls for the Office 365 for enterprises service offerings. It is intended to provide Office 365 customers with an overview of how each of the Office 365 services is designed to provide a high degree of security, privacy, continuity, and compliance—service goals that are derived from the Microsoft Risk Management program.

Office 365 Identity Service Description – This document discusses the design, policies, and best practices related to Office 365 identity, including the creation of user accounts, password policy, co-existence, directory synchronization, and single sign-on ( identity federation). Users can gain access to Office 365 by authenticating to their Office 365 user accounts—either through a prompt to provide valid credentials or through a single sign-on process. Once authenticated, users’ identities refer to the user names associated with the Office 365 accounts.

Download Link: You can download all the enterprise service descriptions from Microsoft’s Web site here.

Each service includes a financially backed service level agreement (SLA) for a guaranteed 99.9-percent scheduled uptime. Microsoft deploys patches, security updates, and back-end upgrades, helping to eliminate the time and effort organizations spend managing their servers.

According to Microsoft, the following features are common to all of the Microsoft business-class cloud services.

Secure access: Each offering from Microsoft Office 365 is accessed through 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. Anyone who intercepts a communication sees only encrypted text.

Intrusion monitoring: Microsoft continuously monitors the Office 365 systems for any unusual or suspicious activity. If Microsoft detects such activity, it investigates and responds appropriately. In the unlikely event that a significant incident occurs, the customer is notified.

Security audits: Microsoft regularly assesses the Office 365 infrastructure to ensure that the latest antivirus signatures and required security updates are installed, and that high-level configuration settings are in compliance with Microsoft security policies. For details, refer to the Security and Service Continuity for Enterprises Service Description.

High availability: Microsoft Office 365 services have a 99.9-percent scheduled uptime. If a customer’s service is affected, Office 365 offers financial remedies subject to the terms and conditions of the SLA. For details, refer to the Service Level Agreement for Microsoft Online Services.

Service continuity: Redundant network architecture is hosted at geographically dispersed Microsoft data centers to handle unscheduled service outages. Data centers act as backups for each other: If one fails, the affected customers are transferred to another data center with limited interruption of service.

Microsoft Online Services Portal: This easy-to-use website is the center for activities related to Microsoft Office 365. The portal provides services based on each organization’s specific needs. Prospective subscribers can use the portal to sign up for a free trial. End users accessing the portal can find online help, open Microsoft SharePoint site collections, and launch Microsoft Outlook^® Web App. Administrators can manage users, administer services, download tools, and learn about service administration from online help.

Directory Synchronization tool: For subscribers with Active Directory^® directory services deployed on-premises, this tool helps keep the on-premises Active Directory and the Microsoft Office 365 directory synchronized.

Remote administration: With Microsoft Windows PowerShell™, administrators can perform many tasks using a script or automated process. For example, tasks such as creating users, resetting passwords, assigning licenses, and obtaining service-use data can be fully automated.

An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line7, position 12.

This issue occurs because the “&” character is a reserved character in XML. Therefore, the character causes the parsing for current logon user to fail. Here’s how you can solve the problem. The solution used to be documented in KB article 2491951 but recently when I tried to find the article on the Internet I was unsuccessful. Luckily, I have documented the solution for you in the following steps.

1. Copy all the installation files from the CD to a hard disk, and then open the ManageScheduledTask.ps1 file in the scripts folder.
2. Locate the following lines.
   function Get-CurrentUserName
   {
   [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]$id = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
   $id.Name
   }
3. Change the lines as below.
   function Get-CurrentUserName
   {
   [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]$id = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
   [System.String]$fixedName = $id.Name.Replace(‘&’,'`&’)
   return $fixedName
   }
4. Save the file, and then try to install Exchange Server 2010 SP1 from the hard disk.
5. Install Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1.

1. Close Outlook. While you are in Outlook you cannot change the location of the OST file because it is in use.
2. In Windows 7, click Start, Control Panel.
3. In the upper right hand corner type “mail” in the search box.
4. Click the Mail icon.
5. Click Data Files.
6. Double-click the data file that you want to work with.
7. On the Advanced tab, clear the box “Use Cached Exchange Mode.”
   
8. Click Outlook Data File Settings.
9. Click Disable Offline Use.
10. Now you should be able to browse and change the location of the OST file. If you want to use an existing file, simply browse to it. If you want to change the location of the file then first copy or move the file to the new destination and then select the file in this step. By default the file is located in your user profile under AppData, Local, Microsoft, Outlook folder.
11. As soon as you add the file, offline use will be enabled automatically.
12. Select the Use Cached Exchange Mode box again to enable cached mode.
13. Click OK and close all the windows.
14. Restart Outlook 2010.

First of all, make sure that the attached file that you are trying to preview in Outlook has the application installed. In other words, if you are trying to preview a Word file in an Outlook message then Microsoft Word must be installed on your computer. For security reasons, you have the option to selectively remove some or all the attachment previewers.

If you want to selectively use only certain attachment previewers in Outlook then follow these steps.

1. Click the File tab.
2. Click Options
3. Click Trust Center.

   

4. Under Microsoft Outlook Trust Center, click Trust Center Settings, and then click Attachment Handling.
5. Do one of the following:
   • To turn off all attachment previewers, click Turn off Attachment Preview.
   • To turn off a specific attachment previewer, click Attachment and Document Previewers, clear the check box for a previewer that you want to turn off, and then click OK.

   

The wait for my HTC EVO was totally worth it. I could have waited for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 smart phone but just like any other product, it will take Microsoft a while to fix all the bugs. Although everything I have heard about Windows Phone 7 is encouraging and Microsoft is supposedly going to spend 1 billion (that’s not a misprint…..that’s a billion with a B) to market Windows Phone 7 around the world. I like Windows Mobile OS but wanted to try Android for a change.

Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to synchronize your HTC EVO Contacts list to Outlook.

1. Download and install the latest version of HTC Sync here. At the time of writing, the latest version was 2.0.40 that came out on 6/16/2010. I have tested the software successfully on Windows 7 and Windows XP SP3.
2. Start the HTC Sync software from Start, All Programs, HTC, HTC Sync. You won’t be able to configure the Sync Manager until you have plugged the USB cable from your phone (micro USB connector) to the USB port on your PC.
3. On your HTC EVO you will see a screen that prompts you to choose a connection type. There are four options:
   1. Charge only
   2. HTC Sync
   3. Disk drive
   4. USB tethering
   Select HTC Sync and then tap Done.
4. You will be prompted to select a name for your phone. The default option is “My HTC Evo 4G.”
5. As soon as you are connected to your PC, you will see a third option on your HTC Sync screen on your PC called Application Installer.
6. Double-click the Sync Manager and then click the icon next to Settings to load the Sync Manager Settings window. Here you can configure the options to sync only the Contacts, or the Calendar, or both. You can also configure how to resolve any conflicts between the contacts on your mobile phone and the Outlook.
7. Configure the settings as necessary. For example, if you have multiple Contacts lists, such as one in your Inbox and one in your PST file, and you want to make sure that you keep your Mobile Contacts list separate from your Outlook Contacts list like I do, you need to specify which Contacts list you want to sync. By default, the HTC Sync will synchronize the default Contacts folder, which may be the one in the Inbox. If you only have one Contacts list and you want it to be the same on both your HTC EVO and Outlook then you have nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if you want to keep the two lists separate, like I do, then you need to be careful or else you will end up making a mess of your existing Contact list. If you have more than one Contacts list, click on the Properties button in step 6 and then clear the box Use default Contacts folder.Note: As a precaution, you should backup your Outlook Contacts list and also export your contacts list on your HTC EVO. To export HTC Contacts list go to Contacts, Menu, Import/Export, Export to SD card. If it’s the first time you are exporting the list you will be prompted to export your Contacts list to “/sdcard/pcsc_pcsc_00001.vcf”. If it’s the second time the name will be “/sdcard/pcsc_pcsc_00002.vcf”, and so on. Click OK to export the list. You can import a backed up list at a later time if necessary.
8. Click the Set Folder button and select the appropriate Contacts list.
9. If you don’t want to synchronize the calendar, then clear the box Synchronize this category under Categories, Calendar.
10. Usually you don’t have to modify the Conflict Policy and Silent Sync options.
11. Click Automatic Sync and select the appropriate options. I prefer a manual sync because I don’t sync my calendar, I only sync my Contacts list and it doesn’t need to be synchronized too often. If you are synchronizing your calendar then you may be interested in the automatic start of synchronization.
12. Click OK to apply the changes and close the Sync Manager window.
13. You can start the synchronization either from the Sync Manager on your PC or your mobile phone HTC EVO. I usually start the synchronization from my mobile phone.
14. You will see the synchronization process start as the data is prepared from your phone.
15. During the synchronization process you will see the progress as records are added (if it’s the first time) or synchronized with your Outlook.
16. Once the process is complete you can verify that all the Contacts were added, updated, or removed.
17. The Synchronization Summary report shows you all the details.
18. It also shows you the options that you select in the Used settings section.

So far I am loving HTC EVO 4G. Because there are so many things you can do on a smart phone these days, I think securing the information should be a major concern for all the mobile phone users. I hope to write about securing smart phones, especially HTC EVO in a future post.

Troubleshooting Tips

As you can see, the process of synchronization of data between your Outlook and HTC EVO is pretty straight forward. However, there a couple of things to keep in mind when you are troubleshooting.

Make sure that you configure the Sync  Manager before you start synchronization because if you accept all the defaults it will synchronize the default folder. This is not an issue if you have only one Contacts list but if you have multiple Contact lists you may experience some unpleasant surprises.

If you are unable to get your data synchronized, make sure that you select the second option “HTC Sync” in step 3 on your HTC EVO. Sometimes if you are not looking at your cell phone, the option may default to Charge only and disappear off your screen.