Category Archives: Office 365

3 Little-Known Uses for SharePoint Online

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Most business owners know the power of SharePoint Online for team collaboration and document sharing. But did you know that there are many more uses for this vital part of the Office 365 Suite? Together with Vorsite and Microsoft, you can unlock the power of the cloud in three easy, timesaving ways.

Cut Down on Web Development Costs with SharePoint Online Websites

SharePoint Online is specifically designed to help small business owners streamline website creation, allowing them to focus on marketing their business to attract new customers. There are plenty of advantages to using SharePoint Online to build your own business website, including:

  1. SharePoint Online websites are easy to set up and painless to maintain.
  2. In addition to being public-facing, SharePoint Online websites have a truly professional appearance.
  3. Choose the default custom URL for your domain, or use a different domain name you already own through the DNS settings built into Office 365.
  4. Instantly add more resources like storage space with the click of a button.

SharePoint Online allows you to create professional websites that appear no different than websites other businesses waste countless time and money developing. If you’re familiar with WordPress, Joomla, or any other content management system, you’re already ready to take advantage of professional website development solutions from Vorsite, powered by SharePoint Online.

Streamline Company Updates and Information

If you’re struggling to find an easy-to-use system for keeping your team up to date on company news and updates, SharePoint Online could be the perfect time management solution for your business. Intranet sites allow you to easily sort vital documents and employee information in a safe, accessible web environment. Using Intranet sites, you can also:

  • Launch and participate in discussion forums
  • Edit and view routine business operations
  • Collaborate on time-intensive projects
  • Set events and reminders

Vorsite and SharePoint Online empower business owners to cut down on email use, instead delegating important tasks and reminders to the Office 365 private cloud space.

Add Custom Code to Any SharePoint Online Module

If the powerful document and content management solutions offered by SharePoint Online aren’t enough for your business, you can also access a Sandbox solution that allows your developers to upload custom code. This allows you to change almost anything you want about your website’s appearance and functionality. You can also take advantage of a number of easy-to-use features like:

  1. Office Web Apps
  2. Silverlight Web
  3. Visual Studio
  4. Microsoft Office Integration
  5. Excel and Access Services

Remember that, with Vorsite, you can unlock the true power behind Microsoft’s cloud solutions. Partnering with some of the most successful companies in the world allows you to cut business costs and wasted work time; focus on what really matters – growing your business.

Vorsite Services Can Revolutionize Workplace Efficiency

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Based on a July 2012 survey by Salary.com, 21 percent of employees waste five hours of work time each week browsing the web and performing other tasks unrelated to their jobs. With substantial lost time to factors that project managers have a difficult time controlling, why lose further time and money on decreased workplace efficiency, something you have full control over?

Vorsite’s on-site evaluation by a team of experts can help you prepare a cost analysis and make recommendations to save you the most money possible during your hosting migration. How much money is decreased workplace efficiency costing your company?

Do You Trust Your Hosting Provider?

Backed by the familiar name of Microsoft, Office 365 does not scan your emails or documents. In addition, you can count on the following benefits when you choose Office 365 cloud solutions from Vorsite:

  • World-Class Industry Standard Compliance (FISMA, HIPAA-BAA, ISO-27001, EU Model clauses)
  • Complete data storage transparency – know where your files are, who can access them, under what circumstances
  • 15-years experience in data security and stopping malicious behaviors

When you manage your customer and employee data on-site with Vorsite cloud solutions, you can rest easy knowing your files and sensitive information are 100% safe and backed by world-renowned brands.

You Can Try All Vorsite Services For 30 Days Free

Vorsite is proud to offer a 30-day free trial on the following services:

  • Microsoft Office 365: Bundles multiple services, including Office Professional Plus, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync
  • Microsoft Windows Intune: Mobile security and IT management solutions
  • VorApps for SharePoint Online: Designed with Email Enabled Lists and Document Libraries in mind.

Try any one of our leading products at no risk to you for a full month before paying anything. We’re confident that you’ll see the full value in each of our services after only 30 days of complimentary testing.

One of our most popular services, SharePoint Online, is an online business collaboration platform where you can empower your staff to work more intelligently and more effectively every day. An extensive suite of tools allows for personal expertise, organizational knowledge, and information sharing. When you take advantage of our 30-day free trial for SharePoint Online, you’ll gain access to the following exclusive benefits:

  • Protect information with easy-to-use security features.
  • Get started with SharePoint Online immediately with minimal training.
  • Use advanced social computing tools to collaborate and innovate.
  • Monitor and analyze data real time.

SharePoint Online is available through our 30-day free trial of Microsoft Office 365, which also includes valuable office applications like Lync, Exchange Online, and Office Professional Plus. Finally, if your organization struggles with IT management and mobile security, you can take Microsoft Windows Intune for a month-long test drive.

SharePoint 2010 – Fixed width, center-aligned layout

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As a web designer there are many unique challenges you’ll face when customizing a SharePoint site that you probably won’t experience anywhere else. Tasks that sound simple can sometime take hours to get functioning correctly, and other seemingly complicated feats can be accomplished in a matter of minutes through your browser interface.

Recently I’d been working on a SharePoint site that posed some unique challenges.  One of my biggest challenges turned out to be creating a fixed width, center-aligned layout. More specifically, the site needed to be optimized for an 800×600 screen but would also need to scale to 1024×768 for the occasional user on a higher resolution monitor.

So, a “semi-flexible,” center-aligned website layout. Simple, right? This actually proved to be somewhat of a challenge. Capping the width of certain SharePoint elements prevented some elements from scaling, put scroll bars in weird areas, and cut off certain areas of text. Frustrating! But after some research plus a lot of trial and error I got it to work. The solution is actually pretty simple after all!

I added this to my CSS:

#s4-bodyContainer {

max-width: 1024px !important;

margin-left:auto;

margin-right:auto;

}

This code tells the container element to not grow any larger than 1024px wide.  SharePoint does the rest because out of the box the site will scale down to about 800px wide.

Here’s what you see at 800×600:

At 1024×768:

And at 1280×768:

Downside:   If you have a lot of content (for example a bunch of columns in a Document Library) some of those columns might overflow the container.  This isn’t optimal, but you do get a horizontal scroll bar to view this long line of text.

That said; just remember this constraint when building your site.  A fixed width design may or may not be the best solution for your intranet site.  Intranets are meant to be fluid because users are constantly uploading and changing content.   A fixed design might not be adaptable enough to handle these changes.

 
Bonus: Want the top ribbon to align with your content, too? Add this to your CSS:

.ms-cui-ribbonTopBars {

max-width: 1024px !important;

margin-left:auto;

margin-right:auto;

}

.ms-cui-ribbonTopBars > div {

border-bottom:1px solid transparent !important;

}

Here’s what you get:

 

Note: This will not center the rest of the content in the ribbon–only the top bar.

Well, how do you center the entire ribbon, then? My advice is don’t. Attempting to center the entire ribbon will only cause you headache. You’ll be left with broken behaviors and wonky button layouts. The ribbon is just too important to mess with. Leave it alone!

Problems logging on to SharePoint Online sites:

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When recently working with a customer we ran across a problem where a user wasn’t able to access their SharePoint online sites.  When accessing a SharePoint site collection the user reported the screen “flickered” and then it displayed an error message.  Upon further investigation we found the “flickering” was actually the browser bouncing back and forth between URL’s in the address bar.  The address bar also changed its background color from white to green which gave it a flicker or flash effect. The error displayed was:

Microsoft Online Services is unavailable from this site
for one of the following reasons:

  • This site may be experiencing a problem
  • The site may not be a member of the Windows
    Live Network

You can:

  • You can sign in or sign up at the other Microsoft
    Online Services site, or try again later at this site

Here’s a screenshot of the error:

My translation of the error message is this: the security settings need to be changed in your browser…

The solution to this problem is to add https://*.microsoftonline.com and https://*.sharepoint.com to Trusted Sites in IE.

Here are the steps to accomplish this:

  1. In Internet Explorer, on the Tools menu, click Internet options.
  2. Click the Security tab, click the Trusted sites zone, and then click Sites.
  3. Verify that the following entries are listed in the Websites list:
    https://*.sharepoint.com
    https://*.microsoftonline.com
  4. If these entries are not present, add them to the Trusted sites list of websites.
  5. After you’ve added the sites, click Close and then Ok in the Internet Options window.
  6. Close and re-open the browser and try logging on again.

With these sites added to the Trusted Sites zone the appropriate security settings are configured to allow for a user to login to the SharePoint Online sites.

 

Connecting PowerShell to Office 365

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Last week we looked at Managing Passwords with PowerShell, this week we look at connecting PowerShell to Office 365.  There are scenarios where the Admin Center and Exchange Control Panel won’t have the option you need to configure (e.g. configuring send-as or send on behalf) and using PowerShell is the only option available.  When you open PowerShell from your computer it’s running a local client-side session with only the basic commands.  When connecting to the Office 365 datacenter servers, the remote server-side session downloads all the available PowerShell commands that allow you to manage your Office 365 environment.  Assuming PowerShell is installed, configured and working correctly, here’s the three lines you can use to connect a computer to Office 365 – simply copy/paste each line:

$LiveCred = Get-Credential

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

Import-PSSession $Session

The first command captures the login identity and will initiate the username and password login window.  The second command uses that identity to login and connect to the remote PowerShell server.  The third command downloads the available PowerShell commands for Office 365 to your local computer.

Next time we’ll look at successfully installing and configuring PowerShell to run on your local computer…

Vorsite Cloud Security Solution

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Security Barriers to Adopting Office 365

Secure sensitive data in real time, before it’s sent to the cloud.
Use format & operations-preserving encryption and tokenization.
Eliminate data security, privacy, residency, & compliance concerns.

  • Encryption Preserves
    Data Formats & Operations
  • Keys Retained by Our Customers
  • No Impact on Usability
  • Unified Policies Across Clouds
  • Email, calendar, contacts, and tasks stored encrypted
  • No changes to user experience
  • Works with ActiveSync for mobile
  • No desktop software or plugins

Supported Public Cloud Services:

  • Office 365 E1
  • Office 365 E2
  • Office 365 E3
  • Office 365 E4
  • Exchange Online P1
  • Exchange Online P2
Legal/Regulatory Issue Requirement Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
Data Residency Transfer of personal data outside of a country restricted  Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
FERPA Access to student information must be controlled Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
GLBA Account and other personal information must be secured Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
HITECH Patient information must be encrypted or destroyed Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
ITAR Defense materials cannot be accessed by unauthorized non-US persons Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
PIPEDA Personal information in Canada must be secured Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
Patriot Act non-US data privacy laws limit access to personal data Patriot Act allows Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution
State Data Breach Laws Breach of unencrypted personal information requires notification Met With Vorsite Cloud Security Solution

Contact (anettles@vorsite.com) Vorsite today to learn how Office 365 can meet your security needs.

Managing Passwords with PowerShell

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In Office 365, PowerShell enables many options to manage your users, their mailboxes and domain settings. One of those options is to set a password for an account to never expire. This does not restrict a user from changing their own password, but simply removes the policy that forces a user to change their password. Here’s some examples of PowerShell commands used to manage passwords:

Set a password to never expire:
Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName -PasswordNeverExpires $true

If you want to see if a password is set to never expire then run this:
Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires

Another option is to set all users passwords to never expire, to accomplish this run the following:
Get-MSOLUser | Set-MsolUser -PasswordNeverExpires $true

This is how to manually configure the password for an account and force them to change it at next log on:
Set-MsolUserPassword -userPrincipalName -NewPassword ‘password’ -ForceChangePassword $true

These are a sampling of the commands, to see more type ‘Get-Help Set-MsolUserPassword’ in PowerShell or get-help before any other command to see what’s available.

Justifying Your Website In The Cloud

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The idea of putting your biggest marketing investment in the cloud might be a little scary. But that’s why you’re reading this post — you’re smart and know when to take a well-calculated risk.

The cloud is built for those with a built-in taste for success – who want to provide their customers with an updated website that’s optimized for search and ready to handle the campaigns generated from your marketing and sales departments.

THIS IS WHERE THE CLOUD COMES IN.
For those who like official definitions, Gartner came up with a good one: “The cloud is a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service” to customers using Internet technologies.” Gartner crammed all the important key words in there: scalable, elastic, service, Internet and IT. It makes it a good definition, but what does that mean for your public-facing website?

WHAT ARE THE BEST BETS IN THE CLOUD?
If the cloud is a scalable and elastic IT service, everything should be a good fit for the cloud, right? While that might be eventually true, for now here are the top uses for the cloud.

Public Websites with fluctuating traffic levels often require a big investment in an infrastructure (hardware, power and IT staff) that can accommodate short-term spikes. If your web analytics resembles a roller coaster, it might be a good idea to consider a cloud solution.

B2B / Partner / Client Portals are becoming extremely popular. With the right security features in place, the cloud is the perfect place to host a partner portal as it can experience fluctuations in traffic with every new product rollout or change.

Applications that can be pushed to the cloud are those that are a collection of services, like security services, mobile access, workflow integration, email, spam filtering, archiving, etc. Forrester recommends if you have an OLTP (online transaction processing) application – avoid the cloud for now.

3rd Party Integrations  Integrating 3rd party applications with your website becomes a no-brainer because the cloud acts as shield against your internal systems while providing the necessary scalability and cost savings.

BENEFITS OF USING OFFICE 365 FOR A PUBLIC WEBSITE
A content management system (CMS) makes the web more usable. It’s more important than ever these days to have your website be easy to manage, handle traffic fluctuations and be scalable with your business. Having a CMS solves many issues we face in business today.

Easy to update – Most websites grow organically over time and we find much of the content is out-of-date. If pages were manually updated using tools like Dreamweaver, its likely there are lost pages and things have gotten out of control. The benefit of a CMS is that anyone can learn to update the website.

Remote management – If the majority of your web production team (including content contributors) is off-site, a cloud CMS is a good fit for your business. Using Internet services allows individuals to easily access the information and data they need to effectively manage content and workflows all from within a single tool.

Saves time – Instead of struggling to publish content through your overloaded development team, a CMS gives non-technical staff the ability to publish directly with a push of a button. All with the added ability to revert back to an older version of the content should someone have hit publish too early.

Consistent user experience – The more your website can scale, the more you can take advantage of the cloud. Using templates gives your website consistency and pushes best practices out to your rogue teams.

Download the eBook to find out how to use Office 365 to build your public-facing website.

Digital Marketing In The Cloud

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The cloud has been around long before we gave it a name and marketers are poised to lead. The cloud is a no-brainer for marketers. The majority of content is designed to be public facing, so security is not a hot button and cloud technologies provide an entire department with built-in processes that require fewer resources to manage with a more predictable budget. But the most important reason is that marketers need to drive the adoption of cloud technologies in order to stay competitive in the marketplace.

Are you preparing your marketing department to support the coming changes?

What Came First: The Cloud Or The Behavior?

We have been going to the office from 8am to 6pm for decades. So, what changed? Given the competitive nature of business and the draw to stay

The mobile workstyle is a new generation of employees who expect a flexible work schedule and willingly submit contextual information that can be harnessed by marketers to inform their customer creation and retention strategies.

What Is Contextual Marketing?

Mobile is giving marketers deep insight into a user’s context, making timely and relevant marketing the golden key to success. As the adoption rate for cloud technologies and smartphones increase, marketers who are not using contextual-marketing tactics will be left behind.

A customer mobile context consists of:

  • Situation: location, altitude, environment conditions and speed.
  • Preferences: personal history as shared with social networks
  • Attitudes: customer behavior and logistics

Having this deep insight into consumer behavior will change the way we market. It will require small and mid-sized businesses to adopt marketing automation software and cloud technologies in order to compete. Marketers will be creating hyper-targeted messages based on the customer’s situation, preferences and attitudes. This requires understanding your customer on a whole new level and will require multiple tests before you get your message and target right.

Technologies that drive contextual information

Source: Forrester 2011

What Can Cloud Technology Do Now?

Getting into contextual marketing will be important in the next five years in order to stay competitive but the first thing organizations need to do is implement the systems that shifts time away from maintaining databases and manual inputs and moving to a streamlined approach. Implementing an integrated sales and marketing system empowers your teams to work together and build a long-term marketing strategy that uses the technology that will enable innovation and advancement in the coming areas of marketing.

Cloud Technologies Marketing and Sales Teams Use Today

  • CRM Online – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is a cloud-based solution integrated with outlook, giving marketing teams insight into sales performance reports.
  • SharePoint Online – Whether you’re building an intranet or a public-facing website hosting information in the cloud will streamline processes and lower the technical barrier for content management practices.
  • Exchange Online - Communicate anywhere?  You bet. If you have a connection to the Internet, your team will have access to the resources they need to communicate with each other.
  • Lync Online – Easy web conferencing with integrated phone & video.

Resources

Download PDF of mobile marketing terms – http://www.mmaglobal.com/glossary.pdf

Ask, J. A., Gownder, J., Riley, E., Brown, E. G., Parrish, M., Schadler, T., et al. (n.d.). Digital Marketing: The Future Of Mobile Is Context.

Ried, S., Kisker, H., Matzke, P., Bartels, A., & Lisserman, M. (2011, 04 21). Sizing The Cloud.

Identity Management in Office 365

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There are three types of identities supported in Office 365: Cloud IDs, Cloud IDs with directory synchronization and Federated IDs. The type of identity approach you take will affect aspects of the user experience, administrative requirements, deployment considerations and capabilities using Office 365.

Cloud Identity

Built for small organizations that may not use Active Directory.

  • No servers required on-premises
  • No Single Sign-on
  • No two factor authentication
  • 2 sets of credentials to manage with differing password policies
  • IDs mastered in the cloud

Cloud Identity with Directory Synchronization

Built for larger organizations with on-premise Active Directory.

  • Users and groups mastered on-premises
  • Enables co-existence scenarios
  • No Single Sign-on
  • No two factor authentication
  • 2 sets of credentials to manage with differing password policies
  • Single server deployment

Read more about directory synchronization

Federated Identity

Built for larger organizations with on-premise Active Directory and require Single Sign-on.

Federated IDs (Federated Identity) is a more sophisticated approach for larger organizations. In companies with Federated Identity set up, users can sign into Office 365 services using their Active Directory credentials. The corporate Active Directory authenticates the users, and stores and controls the password policy. With federated Identity, credentials are authenticated by on premises.

  • Single Sign-on with corporate credentials
  • IDs mastered on-premises
  • Password policy controlled on-premises
  • Two factor authentication solutions possible
  • Enables co-existence scenarios
  • High availability server deployments required

Read more about Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0

Source: Vijay Kumar