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Office 365 for Enterprise Service Descriptions

Zubair Alexander — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 19:03:44 +0000

Office 365 for Enterprise is a suite of Internet-based cloud services offered by Microsoft. There are a dozen different services that Microsoft offers. Here is an overview of these services. The detailed description documents can be download from Microsoft here.

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.

Error: Word experienced an error trying to open the file

Zubair Alexander — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:08:02 +0000

Have you ever experienced the following error in SharePoint Server 2010 when you try to open a Microsoft Word 2010 file? I have run across this error a few times on Windows Server 2008 R2 computer running SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010.

Word experienced an error trying to open the file.

Try these suggestions.

* Check the file permissions for the document or drive.

* Make sure there is sufficient free memory and disk space.

* Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.

Here’s a solution that has worked for me.

Open Word 2010.
Click File, Options, Trust Center, Trust Center Settings.
Select the Protect View option.
Deselect all the Protected View options. You may not have to disable Data Execution Prevention mode. Experiment with the various options until you get the results.
WARNING! Obviously, depending on your environment and security requirements you may be taking risks when you disable Protected View. Microsoft recommends that you do not change any Trust Center settings. I know, I know! Easy for them to say.
Open Word 2010 file. It should open fine.
I have noticed that once I am able to open the file I can go back and enable the Protected View and it still open the files just fine. Hmmm? I haven’t spent enough time to really research this but just wanted to let you know.

You may also experience this error in other Microsoft Office 2010 applications. Just use the same method to disable Protected View.

Applications Included in Microsoft Office 2010 Editions

Zubair Alexander — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:25:02 +0000

My students are often asking me about this and it’s hard to remember all the applications that are included in various Microsoft Office editions so I put together a list for myself and thought I should share it with others because it can come handy. I am assuming Microsoft probably has something similar somewhere on its Web site but finding it is not always easy.

You can download a PDF version here.

Evaluation Copies of Microsoft Products

Zubair Alexander — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:33:09 +0000

My students are always asking me where to get the evaluation copies of various Microsoft products. I’ve put together a list of some of the latest software evaluation downloads. My goal is to try and keep this list updated but frankly it is going to be challenging because Microsoft is known for changing the URLs without any redirection. Here is a list of either free or trial editions of some of the popular Microsoft products. A typical Microsoft evaluation software includes a 180-day trial but some are limited to 60 or 90 days.

WARNING! I should warn you that sometimes when you download a trial software you may think that you are opting out of receiving phone calls and e-mails from Microsoft but you are not. For more information read my blog post: When Microsoft Says No, It May Mean Yes.

Microsoft offers more free products to consumers than any software manufacturer I know. And I am not talking about free evaluation software, I am talking about free tools, utilities and various products and services. Besides software, Microsoft offers these free TechNet and MSDN labs. These are a series of guided, hands-on labs which can be completed in 90 minutes or less. SharePoint Foundation 2010, which I included in the above list for convenience, is a free product from Microsoft. In the past, it was known as Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).

Last Updated: May 27, 2011

MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 Demos

Zubair Alexander — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:00:17 +0000

If you are new to Microsoft SharePoint technologies you might want to check out these demos. They are also a good resource to show in your class if you are an MCT.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 demo

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 demo