Archive
Setting up a shared mailbox on #Office365
I know it has been a while since I have posted to the blog personally. Alas life has been busy after sorting out my presentation for SharePoint Saturday UK last December, then my Christmas break. Now that I am back in the UK and have got back to work, normal service can resume.
As part of this busy time in my life, a number of changes have happened and I find myself setting up an Office 365 account for my partner to aid with her HR consulting business. Office 365 was an obvious choice and the E1 plan seemed to be the most useful for the least per user cost in our situation. It provides the following:
- SharePoint Online (Enterprise)
- Exchange Online
- Lync Online
- Public Website
Although I had setup an Office 365 P1 plan before with ghamson.sharepoint.com, it had no real purpose, therefore it has just kind of sat there being used as file storage for this blog + a few other things.
Now however, I have a real purpose. My partner needs an online presence, a professional email address and it needs to be in a form that she is useful.
This blog post and probably the next series of blog posts will cover what I do to provide the setup my partner needs to run her business. She doesn’t know SharePoint very well, has no idea what Exchange is really but has used Outlook and Lotus Notes for most of her professional life.
So without further a-do… Our first task after the initial setup is: Creating a shared mailbox:
So if you are used to On-Premise Exchange, this is a fairly simple task, so imagine my surprise when I found out that I needed to use PowerShell to create the mailbox and set the appropriate permissions.
Useful articles:
- Install the Office 365 PowerShell cmdlets: http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-gb/office365-enterprises/hh124998.aspx
- Connect Windows PowerShell to the Exchange Online Service: http://help.outlook.com/140/cc952755.aspx
- Update your PowerShell script execution policy to Remote: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176949.aspx (by default, the script execution policy is set to: Restricted)
- Setting up a Shared Mailbox in Office 365 via PowerShell: http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/Ee441202.aspx (please note that you need to have connected to the Exchange Online Service first and downloaded the cmdlets as outlined in the second link above (Connect Windows PowerShell to the Exchange Online Service).
- GUI Tool for Shared Mailbox setup: http://community.office365.com/en-us/wikis/exchange/1712.aspx
Once you have done the initial mailbox setup, you can then assign a distribution / security group to allow access to the contact mailbox
These instructions are outlined here (also available in the link above):
Create a security group for the users who need access to the shared mailbox In the Exchange Control Panel, create a security group for the staff who need access to the shared mailbox for Corporate Printing Services.
- Select My Organization > Users & Groups > Distribution Groups > New.
- Specify a display name, alias, and e-mail address. In this example, we’ll use Printing Services Staff,corpprintDG, and corpprintDG@contoso.com.
- Select the Make this group a security group check box.
- In the Ownership section, click Add to add an owner, if necessary.
- In the Membership section, click Add.
- In the Select Members page, select the users you want to add. When you are finished, click OK.
- On the New Group page, click Save.
Note After you create a security group, the membership is closed. When membership is closed, only group owners can add members to the security group, or owners have to approve requests to join the group. Additionally, only group owners can remove members from the security group.
You can then run the final PowerShell commands to setup the access rights.
And apparently we are done, and in general we are. However, my partner will not want to log into a separate mailbox to deal with the emails. So I also setup a forwarding rule within the Exchange Online Administration interface to forward any email to go directly to her and myself.
Rule:
Sent to ‘O&H Consulting Contact Mailbox’
If the message…
Is sent to ‘contact@oandhconsulting.com’
Do the following…
Redirect the message to ‘<username>@oandhconsulting.com‘ and ‘<username>@oandhconsulting.com‘
For those interested in the total PowerShell script I used to achieve the above:
//Download the Office 365 PowerShell Cmdlets
Get-ExecutionPolicy
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
$LiveCred = Get-Credential
//You will be asked to sign in here
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
//Exchange Online Cmdlets will download within the PowerShell command prompt.
New-Mailbox -Name "O&H Consulting Contact Mailbox" -Alias contact -Shared
Set-Mailbox contact -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 5GB -ProhibitSendQuota 4.75GB -IssueWarningQuota 4.5GB
//Setup your distribution group in the interface
Add-MailboxPermission "O&H Consulting Contact Mailbox" -User contactDG -AccessRights FullAccess
Add-RecipientPermission "O&H Consulting Contact Mailbox" -Trustee contactDG -AccessRights SendAs
//Setup the forwarding rule in the interface
Practice makes Perfect Pt 1 – Timeline #MSProject #ProjectServer #Office365
I am often asked “why should we upgrade from Project Professional 2007 to Project Professional 2010”. My answer would be “Why not” Project Professional 2010 has some new features/functions that can make a Project Managers live a lot easier.
In the first part of Practice makes Perfect I am going to talk about one of these new features; the Timeline.
“With the new office version Project Professional 2013 coming out in preview I used that to create most of the images. Remember this is still a preview version so things might change.”
The timeline is a new feature that allows a Project Manager to create a graphical presentation of his project. He can do this over his whole project or just select a few tasks he wants to show. This enable the Project Manager to use the timeline in presentations, documents or just put it against the wall.
The timeline looks something like this:
Click to enlarge.
Pretty neat i would say.
In the timeline you can do a couple of things.
You can change the format of all the task in the timeline. For instance you can color the most important task red. You can also change the format of the text styles to make something clear within the timeline.
Why would i use the timeline? Like I said it enables the Project Managers to create a easy to use view of the project in minutes. Easy to use in for example Word or PowerPoint. They way the data is presented it is also easier to read then a normal project Gant Chart.
There a numerous ways you can use this feature and I am not going sum up all of them. When you have access to Project Professional 2010 experiment with it. Trust me it will be worth your time.
So how do I use it?
There are two ways to you can add tasks into your timeline.
1. Right click your task and the one of the last commands you can give is “Add to Timeline”
2. Go to “Task Information” or double click your task and on the “General Tab” you will fine “Display on Timeline”.
Easy as that.
Enjoy your timeline!
   I am Robin Kruithof. I am working at CXS in the Netherlands as a Microsoft Project Consultant. My passion lies in Project Management and everything in the Project Management domain.
This article has been cross posted from speakingsilent.wordpress.com/ |
#PS2013 #MSProject Online CSOM documentation links #ProjectServer #Office365
So as I continue my investigations into the CSOM for Project Server 2013 and Project Online (Office 365), I came across the following articles on MSDN.
Hopefully others will find these articles useful also:
High level project CSOM details
What’s new for developers in Project 2013 – CSOM
Client-side object model (CSOM) for Project Server 2013
Project Server CSOM – Sample Code – JavaScript and .NET
Getting started with the Project Server 2013 JavaScript object model
Getting started with the Project Server CSOM and .NET
How to: Create, retrieve, update, and delete projects by using the Project Server 2013 JavaScript object model
Project Professional 2013 CSOM – Sample Code – JavaScript
Project 2013 client programming
Task pane apps for Project Professional 2013
Task pane apps for Project
How to: Create your first task pane app for Project 2013 by using a text editor
JavaScript API for Office
Understanding the JavaScript API for Office
Schema map (apps for Office)
Office 15 preview announcement notes #SharePoint #SP2010 #MSProject #PS2010 #ProjectServer
Well, just as the rumours predicted, Microsoft has officially announced the Office 15 Preview.
The live webcast announcement has just finished and I took some notes whilst I was watching.
Before I get to the notes, the Office 365 preview is available now to all users to try out:
I’ve just signed up for a preview enterprise account and the preview appears to include:
- Exchange
- SharePoint
- Lync
- Office 15
- Just for showmanship here are the new icons of the Office 15 suite:
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Just as you would expect from an Office 365 preview.
** Update **
On further searching, all the various previews including Project, Microsoft Project Server Online! and Visio is available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/officepreview/try-more-products
** Update 2 **
Office Preview Feature Pages:
- Project / Project Online: http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/preview/default.aspx
- SharePoint: http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/preview/default.aspx
- Office 365 Enterprise: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/office-365-enterprise
- Office 365 Pro Plus: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/office-365-proplus
- Office 365 Small Business Premium: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/office-365-small-business-premium
- Office 365 Home Premium: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/office-365-home-premium
- Visio: http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/preview/default.aspx
- Word: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/word-2013-preview
- Excel: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/excel-2013-preview
- PowerPoint: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/powerpoint-2013-preview
- OneNote: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/onenote-2013-preview
- Outlook: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/outlook-2013-preview
FAQ Link: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/faq (Includes specifications etc…)
** Update 3 **
IT Pro / On-Premise Downloads + Useful links:
- SharePoint Server 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973397.aspx?wt.mc_id=TEC_121_1_33
- SharePoint Foundation 2013: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30345
- Project Server 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973403
- Project Professional 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973401.aspx?wt.mc_id=TEC_119_1_33
- Exchange 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973395.aspx?wt.mc_id=TEC_116_1_33
- Lync Server 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973393.aspx?wt.mc_id=TEC_118_1_33
- Office Web App Server 2013 (Separate SKU now); http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30358
- Visio 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh973399.aspx?wt.mc_id=TEC_122_1_33
- SharePoint Designer 2013: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30346
- SharePoint 2013 SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30355
- SharePoint 2013 Requirements:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Preview/sharepoint-requirements.aspx
- How to install by Eric Harlan:
- What you need to know about 2013 by Andrew Connell:
http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2012/07/16/sharepoint-2013-what-you-need-to-know.aspx
** Update 4 **
Discontinued Features
Microsoft Support have posted the following article on discontinued features:
** Update 5 **
Setting up team development environments for SharePoint 2013
** Update 6 **
Useful Links from Jeremy Thake (http://wss.made4the.net/archive/2012/07/16/office-2013-preview-announced-today.aspx)
- Microsoft Office 365 Marketplace (the rumoured App Store for SharePoint is true!!!): http://officepreview.microsoft.com/en-us/store/
** Update 7 **
Training Material
- Microsoft Office 2013: http://officepreview.microsoft.com/en-us/support/training-FX101782702.aspx
- Ignite Training Material: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30361&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all
- SharePoint 2013 Training Videos: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/technet/en-us/office/media/video/video.html?cid=stc&from=mscomSTC
- How to build Apps + Samples: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/apps
Announcement Notes:
Now on to my notes taken during the keynote announcement and more blog posts will follow as I try things out the Customer Preview version:
Office 365
- new website capabilities
- new social capabilities
- new office web access with inline preview
- mentions of yammer for a more social enterprise including future social connectors
- annotation built in to Microsoft Office
PowerPoint
- full touch interface
- pinch and zoom
- hide / show ribbon including pin
- new animation (1 of many) – “drape”
Presentation editing updates
- finger swipe or tap to switch slides
- pinch and zoom available
- inking used for annotation
Presentation mode updated
- shows next slide (very useful addition)
- slide notes (as standard)
- metro style
- clock / timer still present
Outlook
- same ribbon capability
- full touch
- quick actions tab on right for easy touch based control
- inline reply, no more multiple pop-ups required
Peek functionality
- hover over calendar or tasks for a window to appear showing current calendar or todays tasks
- Double click on the section to open calendar or tasks
Office developer model (Codename: Agave)
Outlook used as the example but it is available across the suite of Office applications.
can be hosted anywhere (Azure, Amazon and other web services for example)
Example shown:
- Bing maps and suggested appointments – scans current email and shows maps or appointment suggestions
OneNote
- updated to metro style
- full touch, slide between notebooks
- ink enabled
- radial menu enables style changes easily with touch (font size like a spinometer)
- integrated camera support in windows 8 (full touch cropping)
Word
- metro ui
- office live sign in
- shared settings
- uses skydrive to save and share templates between devices
- by default it will store it in the cloud
- live layout with touch enabled (Allows you to drag pictures around the screen for positioning)
Reading mode
- inverse colours for reading modes
- presence within comments
- collapse and expand sections
Cloud integration
- embed youtube clips into word now
- flickr and other picture services integrated
- share document capability – skydrive, social networks, publish to blog
- Shared device capability (pick up where you left off – remembers exact document position no matter the device)
- settings and documents sync’d via sky drive
- windows mobile 7.5 and 8 works the same way
SharePoint
Social
- follow documents, sites, tags and people
- suggestions on what you should follow
- activity feed
- like capability
- document previews (Office web apps)
- inline video playback (including youtube)
- tag creation with #tags
- people suggestions as you type
- news feed and presence + pictures inline
- feed appears in sharepoint, office and includes facebook, twitter, yammer via social connectors (coming soon i’d expect)
Skype
- presence built into office just like lync
Excel
flash fill – assumes formulas on the fly
- based on typing it analyses the columns in the sheet and suggests what you are trying to do
- chart suggestions intelligent based on the data in the sheet
Windows 8 scales
- perceptive pixel (company recently bought by Microsoft)
- 80+ inch screen with multi touch
Lync
- touch aware also
- drag users to tele or video conferences
- live meeting functionality built in with touch capability
- open one note from lync and meeting details are automatically brought in.
- Using windows 8 you can pin it for side by side conferencing
- NB: All the above shown on the perceptive pixel screen
- Now for all those excited about the announcement, what are you doing reading this? Go get on the preview and started learning!
Office 365 / #SharePoint 2010 Accessibility Compliance Links #O365 #SP2010 #in
As part of responding to a tender, I needed to do some research on SharePoint 2010 / Office 365 and accessibility compliance. Here are some links that I found…
Office 365 / SharePoint 2010 – Accessibility Compliance
- http://blogs.technet.com/b/whymicrosoft/archive/2012/01/19/why-microsoft_3f00_-office-365-is-accessible.aspx
- http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?PageType=4&ListId=%7b72C1C85B-1D2D-4A4A-90DE-CA74A7808184%7d&pID=431
Office 365 Help:
Conformance statement AA-level (SharePoint Foundation 2010)
Office Web Apps:
