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 learn about Microsoft’s new specialty servers, and how Microsoft earned FISMA certification in the cloud. Microsoft Reveals its Specialty Servers, Racks Microsoft revealed the details and designs of new specialty servers and racks. Microsoft engineer, Dileep Bhandarkar, knew that a sleeker and more efficient server was needed, “When Microsoft saw its server counts and data center footprint growing, it became clear that we needed to improve efficiency.” Our first BPOS story comes from Data Center Knowledge and outlines the new Microsoft servers being revealed. The new half-width server design allows for Microsoft to optimize server energy usage. Idle server usage is dropping from using “50 percent of the power (used when the server is active)….to about 30 percent,” says Bhandarkar. Microsoft is not the only company to introduce new efficient servers. Google and the Facebook Open Compute project have also been a part of this “broader industry conversion.” “This is not rocket science,” said Bhandarkar. “Smart people facing the same problems will come up with similar solutions. Driving the entire industry forward helps us in the long run.” What do you think of the new designs? What do you think of the industry shifting its focus to more efficient servers? Leave your thoughts below. Microsoft’s BPOS-Federal system receives FISMA certification, lands USDA as customer * image source Microsoft BPOS has recently received the Federal Information Security Management Act, or FISMA, certification. This certification makes it easier for Microsoft to offer the government cloud services. The United States Department of Agriculture is one of those organizations that will be moving 120,000 employees to Microsoft’s cloud. Microsoft is also making a push to for more FISMA certification across other cloud services. A quote from The Next Web states that “We [Microsoft] plan to pursue FISMA certification and accreditation for Office 365, our next generation cloud productivity suite, after it launches.” What do you think of the FISMA certification? What other Microsoft products should receive the FISMA certificate? Leave your comments below. 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.

Rumor has that to plan such an important day even the king and the queen of this world plan carefully using Microsoft Project … With the 2010 version the groom and the bride can easily visualize a timeline of the wedding, quickly allocate resource using the team planner, be in charge of the schedule using manually scheduled tasks/inactive tasks and last but not least sync this schedule with Office 365 so all involved can collaborate on the wedding plan…

I’ve just posted the links to the April CU (April 2011 Cumulative Updates for Project and SharePoint Servers) – https://blogs.technet.com/b/projectadministration/archive/2011/04/29/microsoft-project-server-and-sharepoint-2007-and-2010-april-cu-2011-are-live.aspx .

I am happy to announce the release of a white paper, diagram and videos produced by Advisicon, entitled Microsoft Project Server 2010: Get the Most for Your Organization, Now and for the Future . The white paper is targeted at decision makers and its purpose is to address some of the main factors for scalability, best practices, and opportunities for creating wins from the potential challenges often faced when implementing a solution such as Microsoft Project Server 2010 . The Visio diagram entitled Project 2010 Scalability Flowchart is designed to assist the different roles and perspectives in dealing with the challenges and the next steps to leveraging Project 2010 and Project Server 2010’s capabilities, depending on your entrance point for using the application.

Hopefully, you know by now that as an existing Microsoft Online Services customer, your subscription will be transitioned to the equivalent Office 365 suite or service after it becomes available. In anticipation of these upcoming changes, I wanted to provide some resources on what will be happening, what steps you will need to take, and what you can expect during the transition process. The transition process itself will be automatic. However, there are a few things you should do to prepare. Recommendation #1: Download the transition guide This guide is your go-to resource for all questions you might have related to your transition. Make sure to review this comprehensive overview to get a better understanding of the tasks you need to complete, the scheduling process, the system requirements for each of the products within the Office 365 suite, information on the transition experience for the administrator and your end-users, as well as detailed checklists to help you plan. I am calling out suggested resources with specific details within the transition guide that you should read: Detailed transition checklist Transition experience for customers Key decisions and actions You can download the guide at any time. Recommendation #2: Watch the Office 365 transition video This video explains the overall transition process to Office 365—the future of collaboration, communications and online productivity. The video is in English, but the presentation used within the video is available in other languages. Recommendation #3: Keep your team informed – create a distribution list The best way to keep your team updated about the transition is to generate a distribution list for all the key technical contacts in your organization. Create a unique alias for this list, and use the alias as your contact preference within Microsoft Online Services. Get started right away by adding your distribution list to your contact information on the Microsoft Online Services Administration Consol . Recommendation #4: Be sure you know the Office 365 system requirements Depending on your current desktop configuration, updates may be required to enable some of the Office 365 features. Check out the system requirements for more information on features such as synchronization of on-premises mailboxes and Active Directory, configuration services for Single Sign-On, and re-delegation for your email domain (MX Record) to enable email. Recommendation #5: Always stay up to date The transition center web site at www.bpostransition.com is the place to learn anything and everything about the transition process. Do you have questions still? Join the conversation in the transition forum . Next steps Over the next few months you will be hearing from Microsoft again with another update and this will include a personalized survey to let us know approx. when transitioning will work for your business. Once your business has filled out the survey, we will send you an email to your email address contacts on file – including the technical contact email address – to let you know about your scheduled transition date. This is why it is very important to ensure that your technical contact information is both up to date, and to add a transition distribution alias as this contact. It will help to ensure that we are communicating to the right folks in your organization to make this as seamless as possible. Is this helpful? Do you need other information? Let me know by providing a comment to this blog post. Michael O’Neill

Here’s the problem. You’ve created a project schedule, and now you want to send it to a team mate for review. Your team mate is having trouble opening and viewing the project because she has a version on Project earlier than yours. At this point, you have a few options, depending on who has which version of what: Which Project version are you using? Which file version are you trying to open? Things to keep in mind Project 2007 Project 2010 No converter is available. If you received a Project 2010 file that you want to open using Project 2007, ask the person who sent the file to first save it to the Project 2007 file format. Alternately, you can install the trial version of Project 2010 and then view the file, or save it to the Project 2007 file format. Project 2003 Project 2007 or Project 2010 There are two possibilities here. If you are using Project 2003 with SP3, project files from later versions of Project can be opened read-only. Download Microsoft Office Project 2003 Service Pack 3 . If you are using Project 2003 without SP3, there is no converter available. Upgrade to Project 2003 with SP3, or ask the person who sent the Project 2007 or later file to save the file first in the Project 2000-2003 file format. Project 2000 or Project 2002 Project 2007 or Project 2010 No converter is available. Ask the person who sent the Project 2007 or later file to save the file first in the Project 2000-2003 file format. Project 98 Project 2000 and later versions No converter is available. Consider upgrading to the latest version of Project, or install the trial version of Project 2010 to try out Project’s enhanced functionality. Alternately, ask the person who sent the Project 2000-2003 file to save the file first in the Project 98 file format. Note Project 2007 and later versions of Project do not have the ability to save to the Project 98 file format. That’s a nice table, but how do I tell which version of Project I have? For Project versions 98 through Project 2007, click the Help menu, and then click About Microsoft Office Project . For Project version 2010, click the File tab, then click Help . Will I lose my data? In nearly all cases, no. There can be a few exceptions, however. if you open a Project file created from a later version and save it the file to your current version, you can lose data or formatting in areas where the later versions contains enhanced functionality. For example, new fields and custom fields Information within new fields from later versions of Project, or any formulas relying on new fields, will be lost. New options that are set on custom fields created in the later version of Project will be lost. Another example. New calendar exceptions that were added to project and resource calendar functionality (such as monthly exceptions, yearly exceptions, and those with arbitrary dates) will be lost.

Internet Explorer supports numerous Group Policy settings.

Internet Explorer 9 has many command line switches that can be used with the installer. Here’s an overview of the command line switches you can use when running the offline installer for Internet Explorer 9. Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

In our latest BPOS Support series video , we learn how to configure Outlook 2011 for Mac with the new Sign In application. Microsoft Online users with Macintosh computers will find the video below very helpful. If you installed Outlook 2011 for Mac, you may need to install the new Sign In application. This video shows you how to install the new Sign In application as well as some other great tips and tricks including the following: Creating a new Outlook identity Configuring Outlook 2011 Check account settings Was this video helpful? 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.