BPOS Rocks

Single Sign In Tool: Unable to establish a secure connection

Today we faced a strange problem with the Single Sign In tool of one of our customers. The tool displayed after trying to sign in:

"The client was unable to establish a secure connection with the server. Please try signing in again. If the problem persists, please contact your system administrator."

   

Finally we solved this problem by changing the system time to match the server time. The system time was 5 minutes behind the server time.

 

Microsoft Online Services Administration Center Available in other Languages

Earlier today I created a post stating SharePoint Online now has support for other languages then English. When checking the administration console I noticed this is available in other languages then English (and the other original languages).

You can change the language settings for the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center at the top right of your screen.

Below a screenshot of the Dutch version:

Updated: Big BPOS Wish List

I have just made an update to the Big BPOS Wish List. Both the August 2009 Microsoft Online Services Update and comments from a few persons with requests for more functionallity have added. You can find it at: http://www.bposrocks.com/2009/08/big-bpos-wish-list.html

Change Include:

• Exchange Online features
• Exchange Online SMTP Relay (solved)
• Exchange Online Journaling (solved)
• Single Sign In (links)

BPOS August 2009 Feature Update

The Microsoft Online Team announced the new features in their August 2009 service update!

Below you'll find a copy of their post:

The Microsoft Online Services Service Update for August 2009 begins deployment into production data centers this week and is scheduled to be available to all customers by the end of August; updates to the release deployment status will be posted to the comment section of this blog post.

   

No scheduled downtime is planned for the Microsoft Online Administration Center or the availability of the services in the Business Productivity Online Suite.

The following features are included in this Service Update: 

New Language Options for Microsoft Online Administration Center (MOAC)

The Microsoft Online Administration Center is adding eight new language options: Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

SMTP Relay Support

Exchange Online is enabled to support for SMTP relay, allowing SMTP-enabled applications to send e-mail via Exchange Online.

   

Exchange Online Journaling

Exchange Online journaling is enabled, allowing email to be journaled to third-party archiving solutions, including Exchange Hosted Archive. Journaling can be enabled by contacting Microsoft Online Services support and opening a Service Request.

 

While Exchange Online journaling allows email to be journaled to third-party archiving solutions, Microsoft Online Services does not support or certify these third-party solutions. It is the customer's responsibility to configure their archiving solution to work with Exchange Online journaling.

BPOS Delegated Administration by partner

At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft announced a great new functionality which lets technology partners who have demonstrated having a good knowledge of BPOS administer their customers environments. Qualifying partners will be provided a mechanism to perform technical administration on behalf of their customers with a single partner log-in. Most partners, like us, really need this functionality badly. It allows us to easily help customers with their environment. The exact specifications for Delegated Administration haven't been released yet, however below are some screen shots which give a general idea about the functionality:

A partner logs into the delegated administration portal using a partner-linked username and password:

From there the Microsoft Online Services Partner Administration Center is available. Here the partner will be able to search for his/her customers:

At the bottom of the customer information a link Act as Administrator is provided.

Clicking the Act as Administrator gives the partner acces to the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center. From here all administrative tasks can be performed by the partner without having to use an Admin account provided by the client.

The Delegated Administration functionality should be available during Microsoft's Q2 FY10 which is the end of 2009.

BPOS Support 24/7

One of our customers asked about the support Microsoft Online provides for their BPOS service. First we couldn't find out at which hours support is delivered. After asking the support desk at what hours they give support they stated support is given 24/7 (in English) (later we found out it is also specified on the support page).

There are two ways to contact support. You can either post support questions online, or call the BPOS support desk. We prefer asking questions online. Normally they are dealt with very quickly (within 1 to 2 hours), however more difficult questions and questions with a low priority sometimes take longer.

The BPOS / Microsoft Online support number can be found on the following page: http://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/bpos/index.html?page=html%2F76970997-2861-4a0b-94d3-e08f963aba97.htm

Admin user cannot change its own account

The first user created in BPOS is the Admin user. This user gets a login name which hasn't been customized with the domain which will later be the standard domain.

The user name will be ie: admin@wortell2nl.emea.microsoftonline.com

When a custom domain has been provided new users can be created with this new domain as their default domain. Either this can be done by default or after they have been created. The user account from that time on will be *@wortell.nl instead of the long, unusable *@wortell2nl.emea.microsoftonline.com.

In order to do this the following steps must be taken:

Users / User List / Click username / Change domain with dropdown

However; this cannot be done for the BPOS admin user for his/her own account when the admin is logged in itself.

In order to change the domain name for the admin user a new user needs to be created with admin privileges (or an existing user needs to be given admin rights). When logged in with this (new) admin account the domain can be changed of the actual administrator.

Microsoft Online Services (BPOS) USA gets update

Over the next few days BPOS usa will get an update. This update will provide some extra functionality but does require some changes to SharePoint Online and the Directory Synchronization tooling. Next to this you'll have to update the SSO tool.

The message send by the BPOS team is copied below:

Upgrade Timeline

3/26 The new version of the Sign In application is available for download 4/15 Optional upgrade notifications appear in the Sign In application 5/15 Mandatory upgrade notification appears in the Sign In application

We are writing to inform you of three changes to the service that may require updates to your environment.

1. Sign In Application

In mid-May, Microsoft Online Services will require an update to the Sign In application. The options for deploying this upgrade are:

Allow users to automatically upgrade the Sign In application when prompted (no administration required)     Suppress the display of update notifications until you are ready to upgrade     Deploy the Sign In application to your users' computers

See Upgrade Your Sign In Application to assist you in planning for this change to your environment.

2. SharePoint Online Update

Have you customized your SharePoint Site Collections? If you have changed the SharePoint Online master page or uploaded a custom master page, you will need to take action before the April upgrade. See Update Your Microsoft SharePoint Online Site Collections for more information.

If you have not customized your site collections, no action is needed.

3. Directory Synchronization Update

Do you use the Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool? If so, you will be interested to learn that Windows Update recently released a high priority update that will stop your Directory Synchronization service. After installing this update, you will need to restart Directory Synchronization. For more information, see Directory Synchronization Update.