Office 365 first look

    Not so long ago, Microsoft Office 365 Beta was launched , a product of great interest to both IT professionals and small and medium-sized businesses, has already been announced in Russia. Office 365 should be available to Russian customers by the end of the year . But now you can register and participate in beta testing, see what opportunities this product provides us. At the moment, a test account for 25 licenses (users) is available for review, for a period of 6 months, until November 2011.

    After receiving the invitation and filling out the registration form, we are the first to get into the administrative control panel (portal), from where all the services and features of Office 365 are managed, and with the seeming simplicity of the interface, there are quite a few of them. Office 365 is a set of subscription-based online services, the main components included in the package are: Exchange Online - corporate mail, Lync - corporate instant messaging, video calling and online conferences, SharePoint portal for collaboration over documents using Office Web Apps and a SharePoint Web site.

    Admin control panel




    The first three tabs at the top of the screen Home, Outlook and Team Site are available to all users through a similar interface:

    Home - contains basic user setup instructions and duplicates to some extent the functions of the two subsequent tabs.
    Outlook - direct link to the mailbox, calendar and user contacts, Outlook Web Access.
    Team Site - Link to a corporate SharePoint site.

    Admin tab is available only to a user with administrator rights:

    Admin - create new user accounts, manage settings, subscriptions, licenses and check the status of the service.

    Management- contains links to manage the settings of users and domains added to the account.
    Subscription - manage subscriptions, tariff plans and licenses, purchase new ones.
    Support - everything regarding communication with the support service and checking the status of the service is here.

    Adding New Users

    Users can be added in two ways - one at a time or in groups. Single addition occurs using a special wizard, in 5 steps you set the basic user parameters (email address, name, personal data, etc.), assign licenses, depending on whether the user should only have access to the corporate site or also have an Exchange mailbox. The number of available licenses is determined by the selected tariff plan.

    The second method involves mass import of users using a CSV file, which will certainly be useful during migration. There you can also download a template and an example CSV file. Since the ability to export contacts to a CSV file is present in most email programs, and in Active Directory, it is possible to export objects to CSV, this function will be useful also when migrating from a home Exchange server.

    Already created users are available for editing, personal data, addresses, licenses are added / removed, Exchange and Lync settings are changed. Additional mail addresses can be set for Exchange mailboxes, the mailbox size can be viewed, tooltips for sending messages (MailTips) can be set, archiving settings can be changed, etc.



    It is worth noting here that all users must have an email address that is used to access all services as a login. For these purposes, when creating an account, a domain name is created in the format “CompanyName.onmicrosoft.com”. The necessary set of DNS records has already been created for this domain, which allows you to start using mailboxes immediately after they are created and before adding your own domain and changing MX records.

    There is an alternative creation method using the Exchange Online administrative console, which will be discussed in more detail below.

    Exchange online


    The Exchange Online Management Console is available at the General Settings link in the Outlook section . It provides Exchange Online item management tools .

    The console allows you to add, delete and modify mailboxes (Mailboxes), as well as create resource mailboxes, distribution groups (Distribution Groups), external contacts (External Contacts displayed in the corporate address book).

    Migration

    In my opinion, the most interesting point here is Email Migration . There are three ways to choose from automatic mail migration:

    • Exchange 2007 - migration using the Autodiscover service (must be configured on the source server), automatic detection of server settings.
    • Exchange 2003 - server settings are entered manually.
    • IMAP - Email migration using the IMAP protocol.



    When migrating from an Exchange server, this migration wizard will automatically connect to a remote server, create mailboxes on the Exchange Online side and copy all data (including calendar and contacts). You will need to provide a remote server administrator account and password (if Auto Discover is not available, you will also need to provide the Exchange server address and the proxy server address).

    When migrating via IMAP, in addition to the mail server address, the wizard will need the entire list of mailboxes on the remote server, with their passwords.

    This wizard will greatly facilitate the task of migration from an existing mail server, including a public one, thanks to it the migration process looks quite simple, it will help many to decide on the company's transition to Exchange Online.

    Roles & auditing

    Administrator Roles - this section allows you to configure access levels to the settings of Exchange Online users appointed by administrators.

    User Roles - the section allows you to restrict user access to the settings of their mailboxes.

    Auditing - this item allows you to receive reports on various actions performed on the account, such as changing account settings, changing the settings of certain mailboxes by anyone other than users, changes made by administrators, etc.

    Mail control

    Delivery Reports - allows you to receive reports on messages contained in certain mailboxes in the system, according to the parameters "From", "To" or the subject of the letter.

    Phone & Voice

    Allows you to manage mobile devices that are synchronized with Exchange using ActiveSync technology. Turn them on and off, quarantine them, and manage them using policies.
    Policies allow you to flexibly control the settings of corporate devices: set synchronization parameters, security requirements, etc.



    Lync


    From the point of view of the control panel, the range of Lync settings is not too flexible. It is possible to disable / enable the ability to transfer files, audio-video conferences and communicate with external contacts.



    Corporate website and document editing


    A corporate site with a rich set of templates is a SharePoint site with the ability to edit and create documents online (Office Web Apps), including co-editing in real time. Office Web Apps includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.



    A corporate SharePoint site is an environment for efficient data exchange, with a flexible system of access settings.

    Corporate Website

    Also, with the purchase of an account, you get a website that is accessible to the general public, also based on the SharePoint platform, with the ability to edit it. The site address is formed on the same principle as the mail domain, CompanyName.sharepoint.com . The default stub for such a site can be seen in the example of the site created for my high.sharepoint.com account .

    This review was written on the beta version of the account for small businesses, corporate plans provide even more features, such as synchronization with the customer’s Active Directory, flexible settings for spam filters, etc.

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