Category: Office365

Office 365 vNext: Ignite Session October 2012

This week I have been attending the Ignite Sessions on Office 365, three days of Technical Deep Dives and the newest features of all the products in the suite. There is quite some new stuff in there!

To enable businesses to use all of those features I think it’s time (at last) to get some form of user training. Because the changes in the client side of the next Office 365 are drastic (and, IMO, users are stuck when it comes to effectively using Office apps). Yeah! Training Time! Not only because of Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013, but also because of Windows 8. We must be very happy with these new versions because now the toolset is in such shape that we can really work on user productivity. Note that I am not using the term “end user”, just “user”. Because the same applies to systems engineers, administrators and so on.

The Windows Desktop and Office Suite haven’t changed much since Windows 95 and Office 95. And neither have our habits of using them. In those days, user training was booming; I trained over a 1.000 persons to get from MS-DOS/WP5.1/Lotus 123 to Windows 95/Office 95. Why did we stop doing that? We invested billions in hard- and software over the past two decades but we left users where they were and thus still are. Seems like a waste. So here is a brand new Desktop and a brand new set of Apps. Boy, will user be baffled when they see a couple of demo’s on touch-windows8-wordwebapp, adoption will take a lot of time if we do not put some effort in education.

So, that being said, what’s new in Office 365? It’s too much, but here are some of my highlights.

The Portal

The top navigation bar will follow whether you go to Outlook Web App, SharePoint Online, People, etc.

 

 

Mail

Two years ago I read on some Exchange Expert blog “We’re done”, Exchange is final, finished, nothing to do anymore. Well, they got it wrong. Exchange 2013 has a couple of totally new architectural concepts. For starters, there are only 2 roles left: Client Access and Mailbox. Secondly RPC/TCP is no longer supported, everything is RPC/HTTP(S). For the real details please look on http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/en-us/exchange-preview.aspx .

On the client side, well Outlook is still Outlook, no very radical changes. OWA is a bit sober, no more colors but the feature set is as expected. Best news is the partial OST-file. Just cache mail from the last 12 months or whatever setting you like.

 

 

Files

SharePoint has been overhauled thoroughly. MySite is now called SkyDrive Pro and there are (touch)tiles all over the place:

 

 

 

 

Everything is called App, so a Library is an App, a List is an App. You add Apps to your sites. A really handy feature is the SiteMailbox. You then have kind of mail able teamsite to keep mail and documents together in either Outlook or SharePoint.

Very spectacular is the way in which the Office Web Apps behave over different devices; the Apps seem to know when you are using a touch (Windows 8) device or a full (mouse) desktop device.

The way in which project, documents, lists are displayed is the same way as the new social pages, now to be found on the top menu bar under People and Newsfeed. So you can follow documents(sets), and people in the same way; very nice and easy!

 

Office

As mentioned, it’s school time! Is it SharePoint or is it Office? I really think that we can boost our productivity significantly by starting to use all of those features the way they are meant to be used. So finally, normal.dot is no longer hardcoded on A-4 or legal paper size. Knowing that just a small percentage will ever be printed. That makes sense and also a huge difference for reading pane and editing panes. Much more fluid and logical. Excel Pivot-tables now so easy for everyone to make use of, some great improvements there, especially when you add Apps into it, like Bing Maps.

Deployment and updates are smooth streaming processes and there even is an option for Office-On-Demand! Need Word for just now, click and go, nothing left when you’re done (I use it all the time on my servers, to read configurations guides and stuff like that).

There is a really nice OneNoteMX Metro App (Preview), it’s kind of “always on” whether you’re on a Mobile device, tablet or desktop, multiple people all at the same time in the same OneNote. Brilliant!

 

And now we’ll have to wait….. current Office 365 Customers will be upgraded and are able to choose for example when SharePoint gets the new looks. No hard dates just yet, somewhere Q1 2013 we’ll have General Availability.

Upcoming Blog: building Exchange 2013 Hybrid Deployments using ONLY Server 2012 (challenge with AD FS).

Upcoming: Office 365 Ignite Training + Office 365 User Group NL Meeting

Next week I will be attending the Office 365 Ignite training in Amsterdam to get all the tech-deep-dives for the vNext of Office 365.

A lot of the attendees at the Ignite training will go to the Office 365 Dutch User Group Meeting on Thursday evening. http://www.o365ug.nl if you would like to register.

So watch for my blog posts next week; I have some writing to do 🙂

Update Certificates in AD FS for Office365

As Office365 was launched just over a year ago, there will be organizations that will run into an issue with their AD FS (SSO) implementation, the result of which is that NO FEDERATED USER  is able to Sign In to any of the Office 365 Services!!!!

Set it and forget it works for just 1 year if you implemented AD FS the fast and easy way. A couple of things might have happened in those 12 months:

–          Token Signing Certificate is expired

–          MSOL Services Module for Windows Powerhell has not been updated

–          Sign In URL Certificate is expired

In this blog post I’ll do a walkthrough of the update process of the first two from this list. The web service (Sign In URL) probably involves a public certificate and has to be updated through IIS Management console after renewing your public web certificate.

Of course it is best to do this BEFORE the expiration dates!!!!

The starting point for renewing the Token Signing Certificate is taking a look a the current settings in both AD FS Management Console and MSOL Powershell:

Open MSOL Services Module for Windows Powershell and enter the following commands:

$cred = Get-Credential                    (enter your Online Admin credentials)

Connect-MsolService -Credential $cred

Set-MsolADFSContext –Computer <your adfs servername>

Get-MSOLFederationProperty –DomainName <your domainname>

The output looks something like this:pic1

 

Have a close look at the Token Signing Certificate “not after”  date and the thumbprint, which are both equal on Source: “your AD FS Server” and on Source “Microsoft Office365”.

The second step is to verify the current settings in the AD FS Management console:pic2

 

In this console you click “Add Token-Signing Certificate:pic3

 

Probably you’ll end up was this warning and this Wizard will not continue, fortunately the warning gives us exact information on how to add a new certificate to AD FS:pic4

 

Open Powershell as Administrator and run:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Adfs.Powershell

Update-ADFSCertificate -CertificateType: Token-Signing -Urgent:$true

You can check the new certificate by looking at the date in the AD FS Management Console:pic6

 

Now we have to update the Microsoft Federation Gateway with this newly created certificate on our AD FS Server because there is a difference between the settings on the two.pic7

 

The command for doing that is:

Update-MSOLFederatedDomain –DomainName <your domainname>

Check the result by entering the following command:

Get-MSOLFederationProperty –DomainName <your domainname>pic8

 

If you did not use the self-signed certificate in AD FS but assigned certificates through your local PKI please see the following website: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2383983 .

To avoid any issues of this kind you can use the Microsoft Office 365 Federation Metadata Update Automation Installation Tool which you can download from:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Office-365-Federation-27410bdc

Finally, it might be a good idea to check if you are using the latest version of the MSOL Service Module for Windows Powershell. For as far as I know this tool is not automatically updated by Windows Update.

 

Good Luck!

Microsoft Cloud Certification – So What’s New?

A couple of weeks ago I already blogged about the 2 new Microsoft Exams on Cloud. There’s nothing new about Microsoft introducing new exams and new exam tracks.

And yet, there is something really different going on now. Most of the Microsoft exams are about servers, their installation, configuration and management.

Well “Server Huggers”, I have bad news for you! We’re done with servers, it’s all about Services! Those of you who already took the Office365 (beta) Exams know what I’m talking about.

For the MCT-Community that is going to be tough as well. A lot of my fellow (senior) consultants are still thinking “servers” and are having a hard time in shifting that towards “services”. And as senior consultants are having a hard time in making that shift, imagine what that means for Systems Engineers, the people we train.

So, are you up to it? Are you able to let go of your servers? Because you have to “walk the talk”, don’t you. You cannot preach services while clinging on to your servers. There is loads of stuff out there to train yourself in shifting from servers to services:

–          Office365

–          Windows Intune

–          Azure

–          System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012

–          System Center 2012 as a whole (that is a lot of food….)

If you haven’t begun already you should start right now! I’m talking about your future, no kidding. The other day I attended a seminar at Microsoft about the Microsoft Datacenters. The speaker was very, very clear: the server huggers will be the first people to lose their jobs in the next 3 to 7 years.

Get Ready!

Windows8 and Office365

After 48 hours of playing with Windows8 I found some interesting things when using Office365 Services.

Exchange

Windows8 comes with a Mail client. For my company Qwise, we have set up Active Directory Federation Services. But when connecting with the Windows8 Mail client, you just put in your mailaddress and your password and your ready to go. Apparantly the redirection to the Federation Server occurs in the background. That’s neat!

And you can have multiple accounts in there as well; I use Office365 for both my workmail as for my private mail. As in Outlook 2010, I can connect to more than one Exchange Server! Cool!

Here’s what the mail client looks like:

Sharepoint

When connecting to SharePoint Online you do get redirected from the Portal to your AD FS Server for credentials. But from that point all looks great in Internet Explorer 10 (?).

Here’s a shot of Word WebApp:

Lync

The Lync client is a bit less….. it does not run as a Tile, you have to go to the old Desktop for running Lync….. I guess there will be some sort of remake of Lync Mobile that will fit in to Windows8.

Looking forward to more………

Office 365 Exams Continued…

Yesterday I took both exams and in my opinion they were tough! I’m MCITP on Exchange and SharePoint, work with those products a lot, work with Office365 a lot, I deliver the Ignite-In-A-Box Trainings for Office365 but these exams are tough, I tell you.

The firts one, “Deploying Office 365” was pretty much as I expected it to be, I commented on about 20% of the questions, which can be of course the diffenence between a Pass or a No-Pass. Looking at “skills being measured” afterwards I think that that section covers it: know your interface and walk along all possible settings. Microsoft sometimes tends to ask strange questions, not really out of the real world but it might be an option and, the question is being asked!

The seocnd one, “Adminstering Office 365” took me about 2 hours to finish, that is a long exam… I had a lot more comments on that one. You know the feeling, the correct answer is not there! but than again, they don’t ask for the CORRECT answer, they ask for the BEST answer!
For this exam I really agree, you need at least one year of hands on experience, and be very familiar with Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, Unified Messaging and Lync, DNS, AD, PKI, AD FS 2.0 and Directory Synchronization. For all those products, prepare your lab environment for failure and fix it!

Now the long wait has started, maybe until April 4th, maybe sooner; my results. I guess a PASS for the first one and a NO PASS for the second one.

Good Luck to all of you taking these exams!

Office365 Exams

So, it seems that as of April 4th Microsoft Office 365 Exams will be available; the beta, with corresponding beta-exam numers (071-321 and 071-323) are available NOW until the end of January or until all seats are filled up.
A true Microsoft track consisting of a Microsoft Certified Technolgy Specilaist series exam:
Exam 70-321: MCTS Deploying Office 365
and a Microsot Certified IT Professional series exam:
Exam 70-323: MCITP Administering Office 365
The skills being measured can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-321&Locale=en-us#tab2
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-323&Locale=en-us#tab2

That is quit a long list and it’s hard to differentiate between “Deploying” and “Administering” . My guess as an experienced exam taker is that for the first one you need to know which button is where and for het latter one you will need to know when and why you should hit a certain button.

There is no preparation material available just yet, it will be there soon. For now, there is lots of stuff on http://community.office365.comand other places on the Internet. And, as a Microsoft Certified Trainer I say: Just do the work! Get yourself some Trial Accounts, set up some labs, buy yourself one or two certificates and domain names and do it.

I delivered a couple of 4 day Ignite-In-A-Box Trainings and practise is really a better way to prepare then reading some whitepapers or abstracts.
Later this week I will take both exams and I will let you know if the content of “the skills being measured” is accurate. Of course there is a Non-Disclosure-Agreement on Microsoft Exams so don’t you count on me to put up a braindump or extract of the exams up here. You do the work yourself, okay?

Enjoy the work and Good Luck on YOUR Exam(s)!