Tag: Development

What does Windows 8 mean for SharePoint?

Robert Everatt / / Capabilities, Cloud Computing, Office 365, Upgrades

Last week Windows 8 developer preview was released into the world, users were able to install Windows 8 as their new operating system or install it as a virtual machine. One of the biggest new features of Windows 8 was the Windows phone 7 style front page view, the applications and widget ’tiles’ are made mainly from HTML5 and java which is a new direction for Microsoft, but what does this mean for SharePoint?

So far there has been no word from Microsoft as to what Windows 8 might do for SharePoint, but there have been some theories thrown around the internet as to what the new OS could do for SharePoint. One blogger (http://lncn.eu/eghw)thinks that it could greatly improve the SharePoint experiance. “Making Windows 8 widgets from SharePoint lists will be ideal to show important information to the user: Sales forecasts, New team members, Team workloads, New documents published, Internal news and many more.” This could make SharePoint administration much easier to keep up with on large networks, this wouldn’t just benefit administrators but all users, having lists be updated in tiles, allowing them to read announcements and access new documents directly from the Windows 8 front page, this would greatly improve SharePoint’s userbility in my opinion.

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Microsoft Plans to Expand Office 365 with Visio & Project

Michael Bratley / / Cloud Computing, Development, Features

Microsoft appears to be already planning for an expansion of services provided with Office 365. In an article posted by Mary Jo Foley on Zdnet, it is suggested that Microsoft is planning to introduce Visio and Project to the cloud to join a handful of other services already offered. This is a surprising move considering it’s less than a month ago that the service was officially launched to the public. However it does show that Microsoft is committed to the service and the Office 365 brand.

Full details of the story can be found here: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-boost-office-365-with-project-and-visio-cloud-services/10057

A little update on Microsoft’s development roadmap

Michael Bratley / / Capabilities, Limitations, Office 365

In an article by Ed Bott, who attended the Office 365 Launch Conference, asked a few questions at the launch, one of which stood out to me. He asked about the development roadmap of the system and in particular SharePoint Online. As it stands SharePoint Online does not have the same feature set as the standalone on premise version (SharePoint Server 2010). John Betz (Microsoft’s Director of Online Services) is quoted as saying that Office 365 will be updated every 90 days, and that their ultimate goal is for SharePoint Online to have the same feature set as SharePoint Server 2010.

For more details check the article at: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/office-365-three-questions-for-small-businesses/3503?tag=search-results-rivers

Office 365 – What’s Missing?

Michael Bratley / / Limitations, Office 365

From a review written by Mary Branscombe for PC Pro, it is suggested that there are a few features missing from the beta version of Office 365. It is not yet clear when or if the features discussed will be implemented.

The first point Mary discusses is the lack of tools available for partners to manage Office 365 for customers. It is said that these tools will become available at some point, possibly once the service goes live to the public. At the moment these tools are said to be missing due to the fact Microsoft are still working on privacy concerns. At this stage I cannot see this being an issue for the implementation of the service within the University.

Another issue Mary discusses is that voice has not been fully integrated with the online service. It is not yet possible to give out one telephone number for all your possible locations; desktop, deskphone or mobile. Currently Lync offers voice and video conversations, but only through a desktop client, meaning that you cannot take advantage of this feature should you be on the move.

Another potential problem is the lack of federation of public IM services. Lync will only let you connect with Windows Live users, and not Google, AOL or Yahoo.

Lync Online does not have many management tools, although you can control domain federation to allows connections with partnering companies, using blacklists or whitlists. However, currently in the beta version you require a Lync Online hosting provider to on-premise Lync servers to make this function work. This is expected to be fixed before the service goes live to the public later this year.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/office/366913/microsoft-office-365

Where does Microsoft plan to take Office 365 in the future?

Michael Bratley / / Office 365

Dynamics CRM
As explained by Microsoft at the announcement of Office 365 last year, it (Office 365) will expand to include Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Online at some point this year, which will enable organisations of all types and sizes to experience Microsoft’s complete business productivity.

Dynamics Customer Relationship Management is a multi-lingual software package developed by Microsoft. Out of the box, the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Service (help desk) departments.

Dynamics CRM is a server-client application, which, like Microsoft SharePoint, is primarily a web application which also supports extensive web service interfaces. Clients access Dynamics CRM either by using Microsoft IE (version 6 or later), most other web browsers or by a thick client plug-in to Microsoft Outlook.

Office 365 for Education
Microsoft also plans this year to have a dedicated version of the suite for educational institutions.It is an improvement and rebrand from the current live@edu. Microsoft can taylor the suite to the specific needs of the establishment. For students the service will be free, unless the Professional Plus (desktop version of the applications) has been opted for. In which case there would be an approximate cost of £1 per user per month. There will be a charge for educators and staff in the region of £7 – £9 per user per month. The variance depends on whether Professional Plus is being used.