Office 365 is the successor of Microsoft’s BPOS suite for email and collaboration. In this post we will walk through Office 365 and have a look at its new features.
Installation
When starting with Office 365 you are politely being asked to Install Lync 2010 and to set up and configure your Desktop Apps.
The Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant is being installed as a service and not as an application like in BPOS. It doesn’t even have a system tray icon or configuration option.
After the wizard is done we still have to manually create a profile in Outlook (the BPOS Sign-In app did this for us) but this is a breeze with Outlook finding all the necessary settings automatically.
We were having some problems signing in to Lync but setting the server settings to sipdir.online.lync.com:443 for both servers did the trick for us (this is a beta after all!).
Launching
Microsoft have created an Office 365 portal page which can easily be launched from the start menu:
You are required to sign in to the portal with your userID and password (which you can choose to be remembered).
The portal provides easy access to common functions and information such as Outlook, Team Site (sharepoint), Shared Documents and creation of new documents (using Web Apps):
Note how this is different from the Sign-In Client in BPOS which served as a portal, from where separate Outlook and Sharepoint instances where launched. The Office 365 portal provides seamless navigation between its components.
System administrators will love the fact that they can access the admin console from here as well without the need to login to yet another separate web page.
At the bottom you will also see the Website option which brings you to your own public website based on Sharepoint (if you choose to use it). More on this later.
Outlook email, calendar & contacts
Working with the Outlook Web App, it all looks very familiar to previous versions, be it a bit cleaner and fresher. It offers the kind of functionality and ease of use that makes you wonder why you would want to use the desktop Outlook version. I’m guessing that for 99% of Outlook users the Web App offers all they need and more.
When navigating the options panel it becomes clear that Microsoft aims to make Office 365 more self-manageable by users: they can create and request to join groups, wipe their mobile device and there are little help wizards everywhere guiding users through common tasks like connecting a mobile phone, connect Outlook (the desktop version) or import contacts.
Some noticeable changes are under the hood. For example, it is now possible to pull mail from a POP, IMAP or Hotmail account into your Exchange mailbox via ‘Connected Accounts’, very convenient for linking personal or orphaned mail accounts.
A nice to have is the option to customise the looks of your Outlook Web App by choosing a Theme:
It is now possible to add another user’s mailbox in the Web App just like you can in MS Outlook which is great for working with a resource mailbox (an info@ mailbox for example).
Calendar
Not too much news here although we like that it is now possible to connect to other people’s Calendars and show them side-by-side.
Contacts
This is where innovation stopped ;-) The layout and workings are similar to BPOS, we would have liked some social media features such as the ability to enter facebook, twitter or linkedIn accounts. But hey, there is always tomorrow.
Team Site
This is where the Sharepoint power kicks in. There have been quite a few changes from BPOS. The default Sharepoint page is a blank Team page which has been setup with announcements and documents library ‘Web parts’ (pre-set building blocks).
It is easy to add and edit Sharepoint pages and sites for specific purposes and users. It is possible to create a site template from the extended site gallery which includes web databases such as a Contacts Database:
With the built in Office Web Apps it is possible to create, edit and view Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote documents via the web browser even without Office installed on your desktop. A great feature although this won’t work for documents with advanced layout or graphics.
Any Office document can also be edited in your local copy of MS Office with changes being synced back to the online document.
Other great Sharepoint features include syncing lists and libraries to Sharepoint Workspace and Microsoft Outlook on your desktop. Sharepoint Workspace (part of Office Professional Plus) offers the ability to sync documents and lists to the local computer and work with it off-line. As soon as the computer is back online documents get synced automatically.
It is now possible to share sites with people outside the organisation by selecting Site Actions – Share a Site, and inviting a visitor (read only) or member by entering their email address. The recipient receives a link to which they have to sign-in using either a Live ID or Hotmail ID. This ID is then added to the respective group for permissions.
Build your own Website
This functionality is new in Office 365 and a good solution for smaller businesses that want to manage their own website without paying a good deal of money for someone else to do it for them.
It is really easy to build a professional looking (note that I’m not saying good looking :-) website quickly and it is easy to add ‘gadgets’ like a map, contact form or slide show without a single bit of technical knowledge.
The number of design and layout options is quite amazing with many themes, styles and color schemes and the ability to set a custom background, borders etc.
What’s missing?
We would like to see a personal document space (SkyDrive) for users and ideally even with the option to sync files to the Desktop (using Microsoft’s Live Mesh functionality).
Cross-browser functionality. Though Microsoft is friendly to browsers like Firefox and Safari, it is still not very keen on Google Chrome:
Having said this, when continuing all seems to be working fine, but hey, no guarantees! We also tried to run Office 365 on the iPad which was reasonably successful but ran into problems when trying to edit team sites.
2-Factor authentication. With more and more of our data online we would like to see built-in strong authentication with a soft-token on our mobile phones (like Google Apps 2-step authentication).
Although MS Outlook supports iCal, we would like iCal support for importing calendars into the Outlook Web App as well.
Calendar overlay. Where MS Outlook support overlay of multiple Calendars this is not supported in the Web App.
More Apps. Where the Google Apps marketplace is riddled with useful (and less useful apps), Microsoft has some ground to cover.
Conclusion
Office 365 is a major improvement on the already great BPOS product. It can offer a smooth web-only experience and an even better experience with use of Microsoft’s desktop Office products. It also promises a great mobile experience (especially with Windows Phone 7, surprise, surprise.. ;). I think it is an excellent product for knowledge workers and would be extremely surprised if Office 365 wouldn’t catch on BIG time with organisations of all sizes!
About Ben Stege
