This week in BPOS news is a recurring segment on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog that covers news from all sectors of Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Online Services business suite known as the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). You can read all past This Week in BPOS News segments here. For this week in BPOS news we take a look at the history of Microsoft Online Services and how it came to be Office 365. We also look at why BPOS is right for you and your business. 1. The Road to Office 365: The Past , The Present , The Future Mary Jo Foley is the premiere writer about Microsoft News and information for ZDNet. She has close eye on the Microsoft Online Services front and has taken this week to write an in depth three part series entitled “The road to Office 365.” This series focuses on Office 365 and its past, present and future. In the first part of her series , Mary focuses on the history of Microsoft Online Services which goes back to the year 2003. The article features a comprehensive look at the history with Eron Kelly, Senior Director for Office 365. This is a very interesting read that lays the groundwork for her next article entitled “The Road to Office 365: The Present.” In her second piece , Mary Jo Foley takes a look at what is presently occurring with Office 365. This article examines how the engineering team is managing their workload with creating a new service offering, and also dives into the work the support team is doing to create a better experience for customers. In the final segment of her three part series, Mary Jo Foley peers into the future of Office 365 . This piece starts by discussing the possible release scenarios for Office 365. Mary provides insights on how she pictures customers moving to Office 365. The article then focuses on the community and communication effort that is going to be emphasized for Office 365. “It’s a whole different relationship with the customer now,” when it comes to services, Cole said. “The customer experience becomes the entire life cycle; it’s not just learn and try and buy. It’s a whole end-to-end solution.” We are excited to help bring Office 365 to customers in the near future. As part of the community team, I am thrilled to help make our customer experience better than ever. You can read more about Office 365 on the Office 365 blog . What are your thoughts about the road to Office 365? Would you like to learn anything else not covered in the three piece series? Leave a comment below. 2. Gobble Gobble….BPOS is no Turkey! For our second story we take a look at a Thanksgiving themed BPOS story. Although this article comes to us a week late, it still resonates today. Rich Blank, Management Consultant for Independent, answers a couple of questions that he himself has previously asked. “Is it [BPOS] any different than web hosting?” “Which version do you need?” “Why BPOS?” Rich dives into these questions will real life experience to support his answers. I highly recommend this article for anyone wondering if BPOS is right for them and their business. What are your thoughts about the stories we shared with you this week? Did you see a story you want to share with us? Let us know what other topics you’d like to see. You can comment on this blog post or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

Here’s an overview of using SPShellAdmin

Learn how to distribute a custom Office 2010 installation to remote users who don’t have access to your network installation point. Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

For this week’s BPOS support video we deal with issues involving the Microsoft Outlook nickname cache. The nickname cache (or “AutoComplete cache”) is used to populate suggested recipient names when you type in the To, CC, and BCC fields in an email. The nickname cache is updated every time you send an email with Outlook. Issues may occur with the nickname cache when the on-premise mailbox is migrated to Microsoft Online Services. This video walks us through how to address and resolve nickname cache issues with Microsoft Online Services. Watch and learn more about Microsoft Online Services with our other support and how to blog posts . What support videos would you like to see? We want to hear from you in the comments section below or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

Get a brief overview of the Office Customization Toolkit to help you start customizing the Office 2010 installation in your organization. Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

Thanks to Vicente Rubio Peinado I’m very happy to announce the release of this easy to read, and easy to carry book about Project 2010: Guía Práctica Microsoft Project 2010 Índice de contenidos: Instalación del programa. Primeros pasos. Planificación de un proyecto. Gestión de recursos. Búsqueda de información. Gestión de costos. Seguimiento del proyecto. Impresión de información. Diagrama de red. Configuración y personalización. Funciones avanzadas. It’s great to see an active, vibrant and digital Spanish speaking Microsoft Project community. Key links below to get engaged and learn both Project and Spanish are the same time (Últimas noticias, Información de eventos, Webcast, Trucos, Foros de debate, Videos, Contenidos en español..) ! Únete a la Comunidad de Project 2010 – Todo sobre Microsoft Project https://blogs.technet.com/b/msproject2010 https://www.youtube.com/user/MsftProject2010 https://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3626498 https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112506055464770&v=wall&ref=ts Gracias Vicente!

I recently found that it is possible to create circular link relationships between tasks within the PWA Schedule Webpart. Project Pro checks for things like this as you are editing but the PWA webpart only calculates and checks for things such as circular logic when you hit the Calculate button. The part that makes it more difficult to deal with is that the error message that one gets when the Calculate action finds the circular logic does not contain the ID of the task(s) involved in the link the way that Pro does. This means that if a user goes into the schedule webpart and makes many changes, including some circular logic they will not see the error message until they hit Calculate or Save, at which point the bad link is already in place and the error does not tell them which task it is. The solution is to open the project into Pro which will immediately let you know about the bad logic and give you the task ID. The error you see when you save or calculate is like the one below:

Following this post over a year ago: Microsoft Project Server 2007: Time Tracking Solutions I’m happy to announced that Solvin has recently released an updated version of their TrackTimesheet for Project Server 2010, similar to other recently released partner solution; its great to see that their latest product is leveraging the latest Project Server and SharePoint 2010 technology and functionality product stack (for instance having a dedicated ribbon in their UI). A great solution for customers that require advance timesheet capabilities (Check out their site for additional information: https://www.solvin.com/index.php/tts-en.html

It’s all about Business Intelligence and reporting! I’m sure you all agree, check out this recently released set of diagrams that will explains the options available with SharePoint 2010 to extract and surface your Project Portfolio Management diamonds, rubies and nuggets… https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=fc97d587-ffa4-4b43-b77d-958f3f8a87b9 As a reminder check out the Business Intelligence in Project Server 2010 for specific BI information related to your favorite PPM solution!

A few months ago I purchased this book: