BPOS Rocks

BPOS for the Public Sector

During the U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit Microsoft announced a new version of BPOS; Business Productivity Online Suite federal. This new version of BPOS meets a whole new level of security, including that the environment is housed in a separate, dedicated infrastructure at secure facilities. Microsoft says that access to these systems is limited to a small number of individuals via biometric access controls. In compliance with ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations), these individuals must be US citizens who have been taken through tight background checks.

At this point the BPOS federal version is available to US federal government agencies, related government contractors and others that may require this higher level of security.

Next to the above security features in the BPOS federal suite, currently BPOS meets the following standards:

• International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001
• Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 Type I and Type II
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
• Title 21 CFR Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations
• Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2
• Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) compliance

There is a video available in which the new version is discussed:

Microsoft Voices of Launch

Microsoft Holland is trying out something new. They will do a virtual launch of Office and SharePoint 2010 through their website Voices of Launch.

Check out their site: http://www.microsoft.com/netherlands/office/social/Default.aspx?tag=share

Setting SendAs of Send on Behalf Of Permissions in Exchange Online / BPOS

Until recently a Service Requested needed to be sent in to grant users SendAs of SendOnBehalfOf permissions to another users mailbox. With the availability of the new Migration Tools and Microsoft Online Services administrators are now able to grant these permissions themselves through PowerShell.

• GrantFullAccess: Grant full permissions of one Exchange Online user to the mailbox of another Exchange Online user.
• GrantSendAs: This allows an Exchange Online user to send mails As another user.
• GrantSendOnBehalfOf: An Exchange Online User is now able to send mails on behalf of another user.

The command used in PowerShell to grant other users access to a mailbox is Add-MSOnlineMailPermission.

So in order to grant user1@msonline.com Send As permissions on the mailbox of user2@msonline.com the following command would be used:

PS> Add-MSOnlineMailPermission Identity user1@msonline.com -TrustedUser user2@msonline.com–GrantSendAs True

The full string for this command is:

Add-MSOnlineMailPermission [-GrantSendAs] [-Identity] <String> [-Credential <PSCredential>] -TrustedUser <string> [-GrantFullAccess]

Or

Add-MSOnlineMailPermission [-GrantSendOnBehalfOf] [-Identity] <String> [-Credential <PSCredential>] -TrustedUser <string> [-GrantFullAccess]

Next to setting the user permissions the user permission can also be deleted. For this the command Remove-MSOnlineMailPermission is used.

The full string for this command is:

Remove-MSOnlineMailPermission [-RemoveSendAs] [-Identity] <String> [-Credential <PSCredential>] [-RemoveSendAs] [-RemoveFullAccess] -TrustedUser <string>

Or

Remove-MSOnlineMailPermission [-RemoveSendOnBehalfOf] [-Identity] <String> [-Credential <PSCredential>] [-RemoveSendAs] [-RemoveFullAccess] -TrustedUser <string>

Microsoft Online Services SLA

One of our clients asked us about the Service Level Agreement Microsoft offers on its Microsoft Online BPOS environment. To be honest they were the first to ask. A common question is the uptime guaranteed by Microsoft but nobody asks for the actual SLA.

Because of their question I decided to look up the SLA's. They are available through the links below:

• Microsoft Exchange Online SLA
• SharePoint Online SLA
• Office Communications Online SLA

BPOS Sign In Application

I've been using BPOS quite some time now. One of the main questions people ask me is where they can download the BPOS Sign In Application.

The Sign in Application for BPOS can be downloaded from a number of locations:

• My Company Portal:
  https://home.microsoftonline.com/Download/Downloads.aspx
  
• Microsoft Downloads:
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5c2ca866-4107-4ae5-98d5-76bf1b18ff87&displaylang=en

SharePoint Online 2010 Anonymous Access

SharePoint Online 2010 will have a lot of new features compared to the current version. For people wanting to host websites with SharePoint one of the most interesting new features is the possibility to enable anonymous access in SharePoint online. This feature combined with all the great WCM features of SharePoint 2010 will allow people to create websites in SharePoint which are hosted by Microsoft. The details of the SharePoint Online anonymous access offering are not available yet. However it is something to look forward to.

SharePoint Online 2010 Overview

Microsoft is working hard to get SharePoint 2010 ready for the market. Currently Microsoft runs SharePoint 2007 with Microsoft Online Services/BPOS. However a lot of information about SharePoint Online 2010 was given during the SharePoint Conference. Over the next few weeks I'll do some posts about the different options SharePoint Online 2010 will bring based on this info. For now if you want to know which SharePoint options will be available in SharePoint Online 2010 please revert to the list below.

Microsoft announced that they will make SharePoint Online 2010 available in the months following SharePoint 2010 general availability.

Below you'll find the complete list:

SharePoint Online 2010 – Sites

Available now:

• RSS Content Syndication
• Privacy & security
• Audience Targeting
• Site and document aggregation
• Site Manager
• Mobile Device Support
• SharePoint sites and Documents Roll up web parts
• Integration with SharePoint designer (except site backup and restore)

Available in 2010:

• Portal Site Templates
• Site Directory
• Colleagues and membership web parts
• User Profiles import
• Extranet Access
• Anonymous Access
• Large Scale Internet Sites
• Multi-lingual user interface
• New UX
• Cross Browser Support (Safari, IE, FF)
• Office 2010 Client integration

SharePoint Online 2010 – Communities

Available now:

• People and groups lists
• Calendars
• Email Integration
• Task Coordination
• Surveys
• Document Collaboration
• Issue Tracking
• Templates

Available in SharePoint Online 2010:

• Standard Site templates
• Improved Wikis and Blogs
• Social Networking Web part
• Real time presence and communication
• Tagging
• Rating
• Note Board
• Tag Cloud
• Activity Feed
• Standard Meeting Site Templates
• SharePoint WorkSpace
• Improved My Sites

SharePoint Online 2010 – Content

Available now:

• Document Information Panel
• Document Action Bar
• Retention and Auditing policies
• Navigation controls
• Content publishing
• Page Layouts

Available in SharePoint Online 2010:

• Improved Content authoring
• Slide Libraries
• Document Management Site Templates
• Standard Enterprise and Publishing Site templates
• Policies, auditing and compliance
• Improved Records Repository
• Legal Holds
• Metadata and taxonomy
• Content Organizer
• Metadata driven Navigation
• Document IDs
• Document Sets
• Office Web Apps

Not available in SharePoint Online 2010 (for the time being):

• Integration with Microsoft information rights management (IRM)
• Site variations
• Content staging and deployment
• Configure Information Management

SharePoint Online 2010 – Search

Available now:

• Search in a single site collection

Available in SharePoint Online 2010:

• Enterprise content sources
• Cross site-collection search
• Admin & Management
• Indexing Controls
• Business Date Search (via Federated Query)
• Phonetic Search
• People search

Not available in SharePoint Online 2010 (for the time being):

• Business Data Search (via Indexing)
• FAST
• Defining new custom content sources
• Crawling BDC Data
• Relevance Features
  • Did you mean?
  • Query Recommendation
• Configure crawled file type
• Authoritative pages

SharePoint Online 2010 – insights

Available now:

• Integrated business intelligence dashboards
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Filter web parts
• Integrated flexible spreadsheet publishing
• Share manage and control spreadsheets
• Web-based business intelligence using excel services
• Data connection libraries
• Business data web parts
• Business data actions
• Report center
• Visio Integration
• Web Analytics
• Improved usage analytics

Available in SharePoint Online 2010:

• Performance Point Services

SharePoint Online 2010 – Composites

Available now:

• Forms libraries
• Custom non-code workflows
• Centralized forms management and control
• Design once development model
• Form import wizard
• Integrated deployment model for no-code forms
• Compatibility Checker

Available in SharePoint Online 2010:

• Improved Forms Technology
• Improved Workflows
• Business Document Workflow Support
• Partial trusted workflow actions
• Browser based forms
• Improved BDC (Read/Write)
• External Lists
• Access Services
• Improved SharePoint Designer
• Sandbox Solutions

Not available in SharePoint Online 2010 (for the time being):

• Custom Installed InfoPath form templates

SharePoint Online 2010 – Service Specific

Available now:

• Multiple Site Collections per customer
• Manage Site Collection Features and quota
• Off-boarding of customer data

Available in SharePoint Online 2010:

• Vanity domains for non-SSL sites only
• Tenant admin across site collections
• Better control of FQDNs
• Managed path site collections
• Standard and Enterprise USL

SharePoint Online 2010 – Other

Available in SharePoint Online 2010:

• Project Online
• Access Services

Not available in SharePoint Online 2010 (for the time being):

• Configure blocked file type
• Self service site creation
• Custom Managed Paths
• Roll up usage Analytics

Support for SharePoint Online in Mac

Following my previous post; The new servicepack for Microsoft Office 2008 (Service Pack 2 (12.2.0)) contains a new application. microsoft Document Connection.

http://www.nuxnix.com/macosx/43-microsoft-document-connection-for-mac-new-in-office-mac-sp2.html

BPOS & Mac

Some time ago I did a post on Mac support for BPOS (http://www.bposrocks.com/2009/11/bpos-now-offers-mac-support.html). Actually this was just a repost of the Microsoft Online Services Team announcing the public beta of Mac support for OS X.

In the meanwhile Microsoft has released its final Single Sign In tool for the Mac OS X. You can download it from here: Download Sign In application for Mac OS X. The sign in applications allows you to use single sign in with the applications like Entourage 2004/2008/2008 EWS, Live Meeting and My Company Portal.

The usage of the Sign In application has some limits:

• SSO only works with Safari 4 or higher must be the default browser. If another browser is used there will be no automatic login to My Company Portal.
• Communicator is not currently available for the Mac
• Document Connection can be used but will not be auto configured

When you open the package make sure you install it in the Applications directory. If you place it somewhere else it doesn't work as it is support to and will post an error message stating you have the wrong username and password.

The following software requirements are applicable:

Software	Supported Version
Operating system	Macintosh OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Macintosh OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
System software	Java client 1.4.2
Browser software	Safari 3 (on Macintosh OS X 10.5 or Macintosh OS X 10.4)
E-mail client software	Microsoft Entourage® 2008 Microsoft Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition Microsoft Entourage 2004
Authentication software	Online Services Sign In application
Improved access to SharePoint Online	Microsoft Document Connection for Mac
Office Live Meeting software	Live Meeting Web Access

Although the Sign In application works perfectly a big missing part in Entourage is the possibility to lookup users through the Global Address List (GAL). This problem is created because Entourage uses LDAP to talk to the directory server. Because an LDAP connection is not possible with BPOS / Exchange Online it just doesn't work. There are to workarounds for this:

• OWA GAL Search
• A script provided by the Entourage Help Page

Some additional information:

• Macintosh Support Service Description: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c54976c5-cddc-4682-afc8-9a1dafd6ed11
• Microsoft Online Services Sign In for Mac: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a3f34420-bb96-47ce-9844-4eab1eb9026d

BPOS or GAPE (Google)

In the last few months people ask me what product they should choose. BPOS or Google's GAPE. I am focused on BPOS. Therefor I know the benefits of BPOS best and thus normally can tell people a lot more about the different benefits of BPOS. Last week I ran in to this video presentation. It describes the differences between both systems.

Click here to view a recording of this webinar.