Office – Tom on Tech

Office 365 / Azure Integration Update for Windows Server 2012 R2

If you’re a Windows Server 2012 R2 user and you use the Essentials Experience role (same features as the standalone SKU) in a multi domain controller (DC) environment, you may have noticed that the wizards for integrating with Office 365 and Windows Azure Active Directory are disabled. This is because they were designed to function in a single DC environment.

Today, Microsoft has corrected this behavior as part of update rollup 2975719. If you install this update rollup, you should now be able to use the wizards as intended.

More info: Update Rollup August 2014 | Office 365 Integration KB

SkyDrive Pro Preview

People have been wondering what SkyDrive Pro is. SkyDrive Pro is the latest rebranding of SharePoint Workspace. With SkyDrive Pro, enterprise users can sync SharePoint libraries to their computers. Below is a quick look at how it works.

SkyDrive Pro asking for location to sync to. (Similar to consumer counterpart)

SkyDrive Pro preparing to sync.

Syncing has begun and path to files is shown.

SkyDrive Pro integration with Windows Explorer.

Tip: Windows 8 Mail App and Outlook 2013

I thought I’d share something that I ran into after I installed the Office 2013 Customer Preview on a Windows 8 system.

Before Office 2013 was available, I’d been using the Mail Metro-style app. After I installed and configured Outlook 2013 I noticed something strange. When I’d click on e-mail addresses in messages from Outlook 2013, I’d be prompted to either open the Mail app or use them in Outlook 2013. This got annoying fast. Fortunately, there is an easy fix.

From the start screen, show Charms (either swipe or press WinKey-C) and click Search. Search for “default.” Click on Default Programs.

Click on Set your default programs

Click on Microsoft Outlook and then click on Set this program as default

Office 2013 Welcome Videos

Welcome to Office 2013

At a press event in San Francisco today Microsoft announced the Customer Preview of Office 2013.

Office 2013 has been built around what Microsoft calls “the modern office.” People want to work where they want, when they want, and they want their data to be available from anywhere they are. With Office 2013, SkyDrive and SharePoint integration is baked deep into the entire suite of products.

One of the more important scenarios with Office 2013 is what I’m calling the Better Together scenario. With Windows 8 on the horizon, Microsoft has put much time and emphasis on touch and inking support, integration with Windows RT, and is bringing OneNote and Lync to Windows 8 as Metro-style apps.

As I mentioned earlier there is a huge focus on the cloud. Just like on Windows 8 your settings travel with you. Settings you make on one computer such as dictionaries, templates, and recently opened documents are synced to all your other computers. By default, documents are saved to your SkyDrive. This means that your documents are available wherever you are.

For the enterprise users, Microsoft will be integrating Yammer (a recent acquisition) into its SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics products. Skype is being integrated with Lync. If you are a Lync user you can bring Skype contacts into Lync and call or instant message them. Lync 2013 feature HD video conferencing with the ability to show and markup presentations.

The Office 2013 Customer Preview is available from http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en and I highly encourage everyone to check it out.

Microsoft releases Windows Server 2012 Essentials Public Beta

Today Microsoft has released the public beta of Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

Windows Server 2012 Essentials is the replacement for Windows Home Server, Windows Small Business Server Standard and Small Business Server Essentials.

Windows Server 2012 Essentials has the following features:

Dashboard implements the Metro user experience styling
Office 365 module is now built-in
Remote Access website has been updated with new color scheme and has option for tablet and desktop modes
Anywhere Access enables VPN and / or Remote Access website
Media Streaming
Built on Windows Server 2012 with full access to Storage Spaces, Windows Server Backup, and leverages Active Directory
Official support for Windows 8 Release Preview

For the build number curious amongst us, this is build 9552 and is available today from the Microsoft Download Center. The CRC and SHA1 hashes for the ISO have been posted below along with steps to check the integrity of the downloaded ISO.

Hashes for today’s release:

WindowsServer2012Essentials-Beta-English-Install.iso
SHA1: 7bd66fd27aa40e51a53c161f2b178a7123494ee0
CRC: e7bb8495

WindowsServer2012Essentials-Beta-English-Restore.iso
SHA1: 492cb8c4196705b12aee6ed405f6f2950172b1b2
CRC: 33ddcc37

To run MSCDCRC against an ISO file that you have downloaded follow these steps.

1. Download MSCDCRC to the same folder that you downloaded the ISO to. (Click here to download MSCDCRC)
2. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder from Step 1
3. Type “MSCDCRC InstallDVD.iso” (without quotes)
4. The integrity check will take a few moments to complete. After the check is complete compare the CRC and SHA hashes to the hashes posted above
5. If the hashes match then you have successfully downloaded the ISO

Team Note-Taker featured in BBC interview

Team Note-Taker from Arizona State University was featured in an interview with the BBC and were introduced by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/external/player.swf

Team Note-Taker from Arizona State University interviewed by BBC

Team Note-Taker presents at Imagine Cup 2011

Today, Team Note-Taker from Arizona State University, presented to the judges in the first round of the 2011 Imagine Cup.

David Hayden, Michael Astrauskas, Shashank Srinivas, and Qian Yan, spoke to a four person panel about the Note-Taker project.

The Note-Taker was conceived in 2007 as a way for David Hayden to solve a challenge he was having. He had added a Mathematics major to an existing Computer Science major and was struggling to keep up with the pace of note taking (12 whiteboards in 45 minutes sometimes!) due to having low-vision. He wasn’t going to let this get in the way of pursuing his passion so he developed the Note-Taker.

The Note-Taker is a hardware / software combination that allows its users to easily take notes without needing outside assistance. Note-Taker combines a USB connected camera with pan / tilt / zoom functionality, a Microsoft Office OneNote 2010 add-in, and a tablet PC into an all in one solution.

One might wonder why not use an existing assistive technology. The problem with existing technologies are that they have what the team calls “board-note-board” delay. This is the delay that occurs when one looks at the board, down to write notes, and then back up to the board again. Note-Taker eliminates this delay because the user stayed focused on their tablet PC and a split screen view shows their notes and the video that the camera is seeing.

The team sees their project as a way to improve access to education for low-vision individuals. According to statistics presented by the team fewer than 40% of the 20 million low-vision individuals in the United States participate in the workforce. Team Note-Taker believes that this is due to the lack of access to education. Through Note-Taker, low-vision individuals now have a way to access education and improve their quality of life.

Note-Taker successfully made it through the first round of competition, and we will find out this evening at 8PM EST if they move on to the finals.

Microsoft Office 365: First Impressions

Yesterday in New York City, Steve Ballmer announced the general availability of Microsoft Office 365.

Office 365 is the long-awaited successor to Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS). BPOS at the core was Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 in the cloud. Also included was Office Live Meeting which could be used for hosting conference calls and presentations.

Office 365 in some ways is an evolution of BPOS, but there is so much more to Office 365 that I see it as an entirely new offering. The offerings in Office 365 are much improved from a cloud services architecture standpoint I’ve included a chart below listing the differences between the two products.

With Office 365, collaboration and communication are on a whole other level. By combining Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync in a cloud solution, Microsoft has made it easy for small businesses to have access to enterprise size technologies at a reasonable price and without having to deal with any of the infrastructure, licensing, and personnel overhead.

What do I mean by enterprise size technologies? Let’s take a look.

Mail, Contacts, and Calendar powered by Exchange 2010
Instant Messaging, Live Meetings, and Audio / Video conferencing powered by Lync 2010
Collaborative Team Sites powered by SharePoint 2010

Best part about Office 365 though, is that they have a pricing model to fit everyone’s needs. Starts out at $2/user all the way up to $27/user based on the services provided. For small businesses and individuals, it’s only six bucks a month!

I’m currently in the process of migrating my single person Google Apps account to Office 365 and will then be migrating my personal e-mail over and then I’ll be relying entirely on the cloud. So far so good. The only hitch I have run into is that I signed up as a partner and there is a bit of a lag between account setup and when the actual licenses show up and are available to be used. Not a big deal. Other than that, I strongly recommend that users keep control of their DNS settings and manually set the appropriate Office 365 settings. I’ve seen too many comments in the Office 365 forums about inability to modify when MS Online has control.

Once I start using Office 365 on a daily basis, I’ll post more of my thoughts, but so far, it’s been pain free.

For more on Office 365, visit http://www.office365.com

If by some chance, you’re a small business in Arizona, and want to talk more about Office 365 and how it might fit in your business, send me an e-mail. tom (at) tomontech (dot) com