Author: Michael Bratley

Microsoft Office 365 for Education

Michael Bratley / / Office 365, Pricing

Microsoft Office 365 is made up of several components:

  • Microsoft Exchange provides email, calendar and contact lists.
  • Microsoft Office Plus allows Windows PC’s to run Office applications locally or from the cloud.
  • Microsoft SharePoint allows documents, spreadsheets and presentations to be shared.
  • Microsoft Lync Online allows instant messaging and online meetings.

Microsoft are to offer an edition of Office 365 for educational institutions, it will include everything available in Office 365 for enterprises and in addition will be specifically tailored to meet the needs of educators, students and education partners. For students the service will be free, but there will be a charge for educators and staff if they opt for the use of SharePoint Online and Lync Online (this is free for students). Pricing for this version, as quoted by Mary Jo Foley in an article published on ZDNet (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-details-packaging-pricing-for-office-365-for-education/8413) will be in the region of £7 to £9 per month per user, depending on the exact services opted for. There could also be a charge for students depending on services opted for, this will be in the region on £1 per month per user. This additional charge will be in force should Office Professional Plus be in use.

Office 365 for Education will include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online, Office Web Apps, support for My Sites and site search capabilities.

This functionality would allow students participating in group projects to work together on documents in real time, rather than working on their own piece and then tying it all together at the end. This method often does not work as there is no good flow to the document.

Office 365 also allows group members to participate in a group chat, similar to that of Window Live Messenger,  to discuss the work being undertaken.

Users will also be able to take advantage of social networking features such as, ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ to rate documents and other listings, which will help both staff and students recognise good learning materials. This over time will improve the quality of learning materials available on the site.

Students will also have access to Office Web Apps (OWA) for viewing, sharing and light editing of documents.

Microsoft is offering a 99.9% uptime guarantee inline with this service. That means that Office 365 should only be unavailable for 8.76 hours in any given year! This guarentee is also backed financially, whereby a percentage (maximum of 100%) of the subscriptions fee is refunded to the client should this target not be met.

While Office 365 components, like Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), offer a subset of the functionality of their on premise versions, they share the same code base and user interfaces, so they are familiar to end users.

In this manner, organisations can have hybrid cloud/on premise deployments of Microsoft collaboration, productivity and communications, depending on their preferences and requirements.

Before Office 365 is implemented, these points should be considered:

  • Learn about the basic features and potential benefits of Microsoft Office 365 and how it lines up against the rest of the cloud-based application market.
  • Find out how Microsoft plans to evolve Office 365, an increasingly important piece of its cloud strategy.
  • Discover the realities and potential limitations of Office 365 and how IT professionals can best prepare for the greatest possible business outcome.

Office 365 is expected to be released in June 2011.

What is a Dashboard?

Michael Bratley / / Capabilities

A dashboard is a personalised solution for information workers that consolidates personal, team, corporate, and external information, and provides single click access to analytical and collaborative tools. It brings an integrated view of a company’s data resources to an individual’s desktop, providing immediate access to key business information.

This functionality could be used to show the ICT Services Desk’s serviceability times, number of open calls, average time to solve or fix problems, and to overall show how well they are performing as a team etc.

A dashboard is the key delivery vehicle for the Business Intelligence (BI) functionality of Office SharePoint Server 2007. It is an easy to use Web Part page that enables information workers to make use of one another’s knowledge and to more easily access and share information, worksheets, documents, and data.

A dashboard can draw information from multiple data sources and formats, combining complex information into one simple interface. A critical component of delivering the right information in the right format is the consolidation of personal, team, corporate, and external information into a single click viewing portal.

A dashboard also provides the ability for information workers to share and access important information that they need to make intelligent business decisions, regardless of where the workers are located.

What is a SharePoint Workflow?

Michael Bratley / / Capabilities

A workflow is often described as a series of tasks that produce an outcome. A workflow in Microsoft SharePoint Online is the automated movement of documents through a sequence of actions related to a business process. SharePoint offers a three state workflow.

The three state workflow is used to manage business processes that require organisations to track the status of an issue or item through three different states and two transitions between the states. With each transition between states, the workflow assigns a task to a person and sends that person an e-mail alert about the task. When this task is completed, the workflow updates the status of the item and progresses to the next state.

The three state workflow is designed to work with the Issue Tracking list template, but it can be used with any list that is set up to contain a Choice column with three or more values. The values in this Choice column serve as the states that the workflow tracks.

Workflows can streamline the cost and time required to coordinate common business processes, such as project approval or document review, by managing and tracking the human tasks involved with these processes. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd285475.aspx

How Organisations Have Managed Upgrades

Michael Bratley / / Upgrades

Many organisations have upgraded from either SharePoint 2003 or 2007. Case studies of organisations who have upgraded often enter pilot schemes to ensure a smooth transition. These schemes often involve just a few of the features enabled, such as My Sites and My Profile. Other features like Tag Cloud/Tagging usually come later.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/sharepoint-2010-case-study-informal-and-social-learning-at-telus-007928.php?pageNum=2