BPOS Rocks

Blackberry and BPOS / Exchange Online

Today on of our clients asked about the possibility to connect their Blackberry's to an Exchange Online environment. Because they only have 12 mobiles and currently don't use Blackberry we advised them to use BIS instead of BES.

Below you'll find a description on using Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) with Exchange Online. It was created by the Microsoft Online Services Team.

This article provides instructions to connect your Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) account with Microsoft Online Services.  BIS only provides e-mail synchronization with Exchange Online.

1. Go to your wireless provider's BIS site.
2. Click Setup Account.
3. Enter your e-mail address and password.
4. At this point, BIS autodiscover prompts you for additional information.  Select the radio button for the option I will provide the settings to add this email account, and then click Next.
5. On the Select Account Type screen, select the radio button for the option This is my work email account, and click Next.
6. On the Set Up An Existing Work Email Account screen, select radio button option for I can access my email account using a Web browser (Outlook Web Access), and click Next.
7. Enter the OWA URL for your location as follows:

• North America - https://red001.mail.microsoftonline.com 
• Europe - https://red002.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com
• Asia - https://red003.mail.apac.microsoftonline.com
• For "User Name", enter the email address you use to sign in to Microsoft Online Services.
• For "Password", enter the password you use to sign in to Microsoft Online Services.
• For "Email address", enter the email address you use to sign in to Microsoft Online Services.
• For "Mailbox name", leave blank. 

Your Microsoft Online Services e-mail account should now be successfully added to your list of "Valid Email Accounts" for Blackberry Internet Service. A new mailbox will appear on your Blackberry shortly.

The BIS infrastructure is run by Research In Motion and your wireless provider, and these instructions may change as the service is updated. As mentioned previously, BIS provides e-mail connectivity only.

Webinar: BPOS 101

From the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog:

On January 21st, Jim Glynn will demonstrate how to explore Microsoft Online Services and demo the basic BPOS feature set. During this webinar, Jim will:

• Install the sign in application
• Send and receive e-mail via Outlook and Outlook Web Access
• Create and receive a meeting invitation
• Create a SharePoint site collection and a SharePoint workspace
• Schedule a Live Meeting
• Start a Meet Now meeting and invite an attendee
• Install and start Communicator

Date: January 21, 2010     
Event Start Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (UTC - 8 hours)
Duration: 1 hour

Click here to register for this webinar.

Presenter:
Jim Glynn
Senior Content Project Manager, Microsoft

Jim Glynn joined Microsoft in 1998 and currently works on the Microsoft Online Services community. During Jim's career with Microsoft, he has worked as a technical writer and program manager on projects like Windows Server, Active Directory, Small Business Server, Live Meeting, and now Microsoft Online Services.

For 14 years before joining Microsoft, Jim held several different positions, including Production Manager, Director of Technical Support, Technical Writing Manager, and Technical Sales Support in a 50 person Redmond, WA hardware and software company that developed products for the statistical process control (SPC) industry. He travelled extensively, participated in trade shows, and trained customers, support and field personnel. Jim also managed the company's network, phone system, BBS, and web site. During this time, Jim also earned his MCSE and MCT certifications, worked as a technical trainer, and consultant.

When he's not working, Jim can usually be found hiking and scrambling with friends and family in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.

Migrating to SharePoint Online

Today Dalton Kroderer of Metalogix and Myself did a presentation on migrating to SharePoint 2010 from a MOSS 2007 or SPS 2003 environment. In the presentation we also discussed migrating to SharePoint Online with the Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager.

Currently the SharePoint Site Migration Manager is fully supported by SharePoint Online Dedicated. It is also supported by SharePoint Online standard however doesn't cover all features.

Check out the presentation below:

If you want to play around with the products you can download them from the following site:

• SharePoint Site Migration Manager 15 day free trial
• Website Migration Manager 15 day free trial
• FileShare Migration Manager 15 day free trial
• Selective Restore Manager 15 day free trial

Wanna play around with the beta? Send me an email.

Migrate Gmail to Exchange Online

One of our SMB clients has been using Gmail as their mail system. While their company grew from 3 people to 12 over the last year they decided to get an enterprise ready messaging system in place. After examining several options they choose Exchange Online. Basically it provided them with all the enterprise ready features Gmail (at least currently) lacks against a great price.

Although the migration in the end was very simple it did take me a little while to figure out in which way we had to do the migration. Below are my findings and steps to do such a migration.

Some considerations:

1. Only the inbox is migrated. In case of gmail this will normally have all mails
2. Contacts and Calendar items will not be migrated
3. You need all users passwords to perform a migration

Here are the migration steps:

1. First of all make sure you have a BPOS account (need a BPOS trial account?).
2. Create all users you need (either by hand, batch import of AD connection).
3. Configure your exchange environment so all meeting rooms etc. are set up.
4. Download and install the Microsoft Online Migration Tools

Installing the Microsoft Online Migration Tools not only give you the MMC snapin but also PowerShell access to Exchange Online. PowerShell access to Exchange Online is pretty powerful. It allows you to create scripts with which you can create / delete users. You can download the migration tools from the http://admin.microsoftonline.com console.

1. Make sure you have all the info you need

Basically you need to know:

• Gmail user accounts
• Gmail login names (basically the same as the user accounts)
• Gmail passwords (all users would have to provide their individual passwords)
• Source Server: pop.gmail.com
• Each users target identity

Especially getting all users password can be quite a task.

1. Do a test run with PowerShell

Although you could skip this test I always like to do a test run. I do this test run with the Migration Command Shell, which by the way gives you a lot of other commands as well.

The command for a migration is:

PS C:\Windows\system32> Move-XsPOPMailboxToExchangeOnline -sourceidentity "danny.burlage@gmail.com" -sourceserver "pop.gmail.com" -SourceLoginID "danny.burlage@gmail.com" -sourcepassword "PASSWORD" -targetidentity "danny@dunamareog.emea.microsoftonline.com" -targetcredential (get-credential)

You would have to replace all the bold parts.

Below you'll find a screenshot of a test migration run. The first run has an error: "Failed to connect to server mail.gmail.com".

1. Create a csv file for the import

After you have tested the migration of one mailbox you can now create your csv file to migrate users in bulk. The setup of the csv file is as following:

SourceIdentity,SourceServer,SourceLoginID,SourcePassword,TargetIdentity

Each user would then have to be put on a new line.

1. Import all users

Now that your csv file is ready you can now use the Migration Console or Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools to perform the migration.    Start the Migration Console, select POP/IMAP and choose Add mailboxes on the right hand side. Select the csv file which was created. The Migration Console will show all mailboxes which need to be imported and their migration status.

Not select all mailboxes you wish to migrate and click Migrate selected mailboxes on the right pane.

After a migration has taken place you can perform the migration again for the already migrated mailboxes. Only the new items in the inbox will be migrated.

 

You're done! All specified mailboxes have been migrated.

Wortell and Metalogix sign partnership

Wortell and Metalogix signed a partnership agreement. This partnership agreement allows Wortell to resell and implement the Metalogix products. The reason we signed the partner agreement is that we were impressed by the functionality the Metalogix software provides for migrating SharePoint 2007 environments to SharePoint 2010 environments.

Next to SharePoint 2010 migrations Metalogix can also be used for migrating content to SharePoint Online. The Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager allows you to migrate content from an on premise environment to a cloud environment. Over the next few weeks I'll post something about the steps you can take for this migration.

SharePoint & Exchange Online to 25 GB

I just heard the great news that SharePoint Online and Exchange Online will be upgraded to 25 GB's starting the end of January. I was told by a helpdesk agent regarding a question why I couldn't buy any additional storage. The message said the following:

I have just gotten an update which explains why you are not able to buy additional storage.
From the end of January the default allocated space per user (of Share Point Online and Exchange Online ) will be 25 Gigabyte with no further charge and no further possibility for extra storage.
In the meantime, especially with regards to exchange, it is not possible to buy extra storage as it will come for free and automatically very soon.

A lot of people have been asking about this. So this is great news!!

Because the news came from a helpdesk agent and I did not have a change to verify the details please await the official announcement.

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.

 

Download Office & SharePoint 2010

Starting today you are now able to download SharePoint and Office 2010: http://www.microsoft.com/2010

Microsoft versus SalesForce.com

Microsoft and SalesForce.com are going head to head in an online debate hosted by the Economist.com. Microsoft is represented by Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft's Business Division. SalesForce.com is represented by Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce.com.

Microsoft believes in a mixed cloud / on premise strategy:

"The cloud cannot be all things to all businesses. A mixed approach to the cloud, with the choices afforded by software plus services, is a much more flexible and realistic scenario for most organizations. While I advocate the cloud, there is a desire among many customers to avoid a technology ultimatum. So it is smart to focus on what customers want, and their readiness to embrace the cloud for various applications in the context of their circumstances, instead of forcing a decision to move everything to the cloud." Stephen Elop states.

SalesForce.com believes in a cloud only strategy:

"That is why companies trust the cloud today: It delivers more innovation at far lower cost and complexity. And although there are still customers who prefer to trust the devil they know, more and more each day are rejecting the cost, complexity and meager returns of client/server technologies and are choosing cloud computing." Mark Benioff states.

Me personally: I believe in a mixed strategy. Users will always want rich applications which are always on. Which work regardless of your location and if you have a connection or not.

Do you agree with me and Stephen Elop? Vote yes!

Follow the debate (and cast your votes) at: http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/157/Cloud%20Computing

BPOS now offers MAC support

From the Technet Blog:

Because many of you have asked to use your Macs with Microsoft Online Services, we've been developing a Mac Sign-In application to provide Mac users with the same "single-sign-in" functionality provided to our PC users.

After installing and signing-in to this application, you can send and receive Exchange Online e-mail and access SharePoint Online sites from your Mac without having to sign-in multiple times. This application will also configure Entourage to connect to your Exchange Online mailbox.

Preview the Mac Sign-In Application

To get an early look at the Mac Sign-In application, register via the Microsoft Connect site using this Invitation ID: MAC-Y689-6QBR. After downloading the application and the documentation, you're ready to get started.

If you have any issues connecting to the site, downloading or using the sign-in application, send e-mail to the BPOS Mac Preview Program team.