Month: August 2011

Quick Project Update

Michael Bratley / / Office 365

Just a quick project update. Following our first introduction session, we came away with a couple of areas we needed to look into, until this point these two areas had been overlooked. We have now covered Microsoft OneNote and InfoPath 2010, information on these can be seen in their own posts. Before moving on to anything major, we decided to review any other features that have been overlooked so far. We will be reviewing Office for Mac integration (starting with 2008 Version 12.3.0, later we will look at 2011 Version 14.0), Audience Targeting and RSS Feeds over the next day or so.

Info Path in Office 365

Robert Everatt / / Branding, Features, Office 365

In a recent meeting that Michael and I set up, we were asked about Info Path and Office 365, unfortunately would could not answer the question as we had not looked into Info path at that time. I have quickly checked it out this morning and it appears to be quite a useful tool in SharePoint development. Info path can easily create forms for SharePoint 2010+, granted this can already be done within SharePoint online, however, it is possible to customize it with different fonts and images to make it look more professional. There is an example of this on the right. Info Path needs to be connected to be connected to the SharePoint site before anything can be made for SharePoint. It is also only compatible with the Enterprise edition of Office 365, therefore making it difficult to test this program.

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Microsoft OneNote

Michael Bratley / / Features, Office 365

Following our introduction session with a handful of other colleagues, two topics arose that we had not previously looked into. One of these is Microsoft OneNote integration. OneNote has good integration, joining the other three applications that Microsoft offers through the Office 365 service. It is really simple to create a new note within the desktop application and then save it directly to a SharePoint site. All you need is the web address of the library you wish to save the file to. Once saved the document will then appear on the SharePoint site. Users are then able to edit the document directly within the browser. As with all the Web Apps some of the functionality is limited, and OneNote is no exception. As shown below the Web App is unable to show some parts of the document. It is unable to show drawings and the highlighting. Apart from this all the text remains, and enables the user to continue working when access to the client app is not available.

The screenshot below shows the document created in the client application.

The screenshot below shows the document as viewed in the Web Application.

Office 365 is working again

Robert Everatt / / Office 365, Public Facing Website

As you may have seen in some of our posts, we have been receiving and pretty consistent and pretty annoying error for the last month and a half . Microsoft have been on the case for the last 3 weeks and I finally got an email last night, the email gave me very simple instructions to a very simple problem, it took an entire 10 seconds to fix the site. The problem with the site was that the default master page was not set to v4 (something I may have accidentally done when fiddling with it) and all I had to do was right click and “set default”, I’m a little annoyed it has taken a month and a half for Microsoft to give me this solution, however, I am relieved that the site is now fully functional again.

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Mobile Phone Compatibility

Robert Everatt / / Cloud Computing, Office 365, web design

It appears that Microsoft Office 365 is a little vague when it comes to their mobile phone compatibility. It appears that each type of phone has different functinality.

Both the Android and iOS can view the team site in a very basic and unattractive web page, there is no supported application for either phones. The mobile view can access all workspace areas from the home page and from there navigate through all the pages.When viewing any list, the list will just show the title until you click on it. The user is still able to upload new items to a list, custom or stock. Features such as workflows do not work and calendars only work in an extremely basic form. Documents are also viewable in the web browser but are not editable, it is also not possible to upload files to SharePoint.

Office 365 compatibility with Nokia’s smartphone OS is a little different (possibly due to Nokia’s recent deal with microsoft?) Most of the features in Nokia are pretty much the same as Android/iOS with the exception of being able to download and edit documents from the team site on the device. Unfortunately, I cannot comment any further on the Nokia OS as I am yet to test it personally.

Microsoft have this to say about Blackberry’s Exchange compatibility:

“The previously available Hosted BlackBerry for Microsoft Exchange Online will not be available for Office 365. Instead, RIM will provide BlackBerry Business Cloud Services as part of a Beta offering by end of 2011. BlackBerry Business Cloud Services will have an improved feature set compared to the Hosted BlackBerry service. The service will be hosted, licensed, and supported by RIM and will be offered at $0 per user per month. The service will require the appropriate BlackBerry data plan from the customer’s mobile operator.”

The Office 365 Team Site’s and other work spaces, work on the blackberry much like they do on the Android and iOS.

It appears Microsoft have not really paid any attention to any mobile phone operating system other than their own. Windows Phone 7 has its own SharePoint application, which is extremely feature rich. From this application the user can collaborate with PC users on a word, excel, powerpoint and one note documents. The user can browse the pages and lists in a very appealing (windows tiles) user interface.

The email system works much the same on all smart phones, they connect to outlook using Microsoft Exchange active Sync. On the iPhone, the user only needs to enter the email address and password and the rest is done automatically, on android the user enters the same information plus the server domain which is, in this instance is; pod51014.outlook.com

Despite the unattractive user interface it is still an improvement on the SharePoint 2003 as the page is loaded as it is on a PC making it difficult to view on a small screen.

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