One of the many conveniences of Office 365 is that you can access your email and calendar on any device via both Outlook Web App and your desktop Outlook 2010 program. Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010 share most of the same features, but sometimes there are small differences when performing some common tasks.   We’ve created two new video training courses describing some of the tasks that are frequent search requests by  Office 365 customers.  These  training courses explain some email and calendar features, and then tell you how to use them in both Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010.   Create an internal team alias in Office 365 Save time and effort by setting up a distribution group that appears in your organization’s shared address book.  When you send one email to a distribution group, it goes to all members of the group. It’s a handy way to encourage collaboration among team members with shared interests.   Share your Office 365 calendar You can invite people to view the appointments and meetings  in your calendar in two ways, and in each case, you choose how much information you want them to see. You can share a calendar with selected people inside your organization, or you can publish your calendar to create a URL that you can give to anybody so they can view your calendar.   You can find these latest training videos on the Office 365 Video Training Courses wiki.  If you have ideas for other Office 365 training courses that you’d like to see, add a comment to this blog or send email to crsfeed@microsoft.com .

Audience: Exchange Online/Office 365 administrators Author: Ram Poornalingam, Senior Program Manager, Exchange   We’re implementing a new policy for migration batches in the cloud-based service. Active migration batches with a status of “Synced” that have no administrator-initiated activity for the last 90 days will be stopped, and then deleted 30 days later if no further activity is taken by the administrator.   What constitutes activity by the administrator?   Stopping and restarting a migration batch Editing a migration batch by using the Exchange Control Panel or the Set-MigrationBatch cmdlet in Windows PowerShell.   How do we determine if a migration batch is inactive? There is a “Last modified time” property for migration batches, and if the value for this property is more than 90 days, the batch is stopped. If the batch remains inactive for another 30 days (in other words, when the value of this property reaches 120 days), the migration batch is deleted.   This new policy applies to all migration types: Cutover Exchange migrations, staged Exchange migrations, and IMAP migrations.   Why are we doing this? Inactive migration batches consume resources in the Microsoft datacenter. By stopping and then deleting these batches, we can free up resources and help improve the migration experience for customers who are actively migrating mailboxes to Office 365.   For more information about migration, see the following topics on help.outlook.com:   Manage Migration Batches in Exchange Online Cutover Exchange migration Staged Exchange migration IMAP migration

Getting access to the new Project slides is in hot demand these days and voila! (see expect a lot more in the future…) https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2012/OSP216   Microsoft Project Online Overview https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/Australia/2012/AIT002   Project Server 2013, a Landmark Release!

Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises   Written by Brendan Reeves, User Researcher II at Microsoft Our user-centered engineering process needs your input to make sure Office 365 matches your needs. The Office 365 User Experience team would like to learn more about how your organization uses Office 365. We are seeking feedback and information on how Office 365 helps your company function. This is your opportunity to share feedback with the product team and help us improve and evolve the Office 365 service. Please go to https://illumeweb.smdisp.net/collector/Survey.ashx?Name=O365users to submit your name, phone number, email address, and company name. The information you provide will only be used to recruit participants for user research projects. Your level of participation in research projects is completely up to you. There will be projects that only ask for a very low-level of engagement (e.g. surveys) and those that require high level engagement (e.g. on-site visits). As a thank you for your participation, we will provide a gratuity ranging from software to gift cards depending on study type. Study types include: Complete a 5-15 minute online survey Attend online webinar Usability lab studies On-site visit to your organization by 3-4 members of the Office 365 team for approximately 3 hours We appreciate your time and understand that it is valuable. If you are unable to participate in any research projects in the near future, you are still encouraged to sign up. User experience research is an ongoing process throughout the product development cycle and you will have the opportunity to participate in lighter weight research projects like surveys, webinars, or conference calls down the road. You can participate in as many or as few research studies as you like and remove yourself from the list at any time. Sincerely, Brendan Reeves If you would like to be removed from the Microsoft User Research program email uccoord@microsoft.com with “Remove” in the subject line.  

Updated 9/27: Thank you for attending this Office 365 Expert Discussions Series. If you missed it, don’t worry! You can view the  Lync Recording here  and below.  Microsoft Support will be presenting a series of webcasts called the  Office 365 Expert Discussion Series ,  to showcase our tools and content that can be used to help make your Office 365 experience better and help solve common issues more quickly.  (Please visit the site to view this video) Team Members from Exchange Online Escalation Team will be on hand to answer a few selected technical questions followed by open Q&A. Bring any technical questions you may have regarding Exchange Online such as tips for resolving directory sync issues, managing users, improving Outlook connectivity. Join us  on Thursday, September 27th at 8:00 AM Pacific Time  for this exciting webcast. The duration of the meeting is planned for 1 hour. After the meeting concludes a recording of the session will be published to this blog post and the  Office 365 YouTube channel . Microsoft Support will be monitoring the Office 365 Expert Discussion  Forum  and  Wiki  as well as the Community closely for this topic for a week after the event to answer any questions about the live session. Be sure to view our past Expert Discussions here .  To sign up for this webcast please  download and save the calendar invite below  where you will find the Lync invite and all other Office 365 Expert Discussion information.  We are excited to see you there!  —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Presenter :  Jeremy Kelly , Principle Escalation Engineer from Microsoft Commercial Technical Support and other Microsoft Support Team members. Date/Time:  Thursday September 27th , at 8:00 AM Pacific Time . (1 Hour presentation) Online Meeting Information: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. à Join Lync meeting            Join by phone +14257063500 (USA – Redmond Campus)                     English (United States) +18883203585 (USA – Redmond Campus)                     English (United States)   Find a local number   Conference ID: 35047018     Forgot your dial-in PIN? | Help      [! ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Audience: Office 365 MVP and  Grid Members  and open to anyone who is interested in Office 365 Expert Discussions. 

Following recent webcasts, sessions and articles during the past month about The new Microsoft Project please find key content I’ve noticed. If I’ve missed any please let me know and I will gladly add to this list. In the meantime happy reading and watching! TechEd Australia (video): Microsoft Project Online Overview MPUG (video): Overview of the new Microsoft Project, plus QA with Senior Microsoft Product Manager Projects At Work (article): Tool Shop: Microsoft Project 2013 TechRepublic (article): Microsoft Project Professional 2013 new features preview Project Blog: Tasks Integration with Exchange Timelines Everywhere: See and share your work with ease in SharePoint and PWA Get Started with Project Web App SharePoint Tasks List plus Project – Better Together Adding SharePoint task lists to PWA an a lot more to come so please subscribe to the RSS feed !!!! Office Next blog: Click-to-Run and Office on Demand (good read to understand the new Project Pro for Office 365 service) SharePoint blog: Keep Your Team in Sync with Site Mailboxes Other blogs from MVPs, experts, product fans: EPMSource (Alex Burton’s blog, Project MVP) SharePoint (and Project Server Shenanigans) Nenad Trajkovski (Project MVP)

We are very excited to announce two compelling updates for SharePoint Online. The service will support in-browser viewing of PDF files and improved streaming of MP4 video files . We received a lot of feedback noting PDF viewing was limited while a number of customers expressed that they did not want PDF files to be downloadable to user’s desktops. In addition, users found that some MP4 files were being downloaded in full before playback would begin. What will this update mean to the user? A PDF document stored in a SharePoint Online library it will simply launch within their Internet browser. This too applies to PDFs embedded as attachments within list items. Note: Users are required to have Adobe Reader on their machines to ensure the proper browser plug-in is available: https://get.adobe.com/reader . Note: In some isolated instances, you may encounter an error when trying to open a PDF document in your Internet browser. If this happens, please try disabling the Adobe ActiveX plugin by going to  Settings > Manage add-ons , highlight the Adobe PDF Link Helper add-on from the list of add-ons, and then click Disable . An MP4 video file stored in a SharePoint Online library will begin streaming much faster without downloading the full file first. We are at the tail end of rolling out the most recent SharePoint Online service update. The PDF adjustment will soon be a notable experience enhancement for all SharePoint Online customers across all Office 365 plans and offerings. The same applies to MP4 files stored in SharePoint Online – let the streaming begin! Microsoft expects to complete this service update rollout worldwide by the end of September 2012. We continue to improve the experience while maintaining the level of security you expect from Office 365. Thank you for your patience and actionable feedback. SharePoint Online progressively evolves each quarter. At its core, the service is driven by AND adapts to the preferences of how users use it every day. Please keep it coming. You can read about this and all of the latest features and innovation on the Office 365 Service Update wiki . Thanks, The SharePoint Online Team

Updated 9/21: Thank you for attending this fantastic Lync and Learn session. If you missed it, you can find the  Lync Recording here  and below. The Power Point presentation is also attached to the blog post below. Lync and Learn is an online session led by Office 365 Product Managers and Community   Grid members .  Lync and Learn sessions address different Office 365 subjects and scenarios and is beneficial to anyone who wants to learn more and expand their knowledge of the Office 365 suite. View past Lync and Learn sessions   here . (Please visit the site to view this video) Come learn what Lync to phone is all about in our upcoming Lync and Learn session.  Sean McNeill  will be leading this presentation and showing us Lync to phone and how to set up Office 365 with services to enable Lync to voice.   If you’re interested in getting a dedicated local phone number for calls with Lync Online, then his session will provide everything you need to get started.   Sean McNeill  was recently awarded Office 365 MVP and has been working in Microsoft technologies for over 15 years. Sean enjoys technology and Cloud Services. Sean is a Managing Consultant with Catapult Systems. You can read Sean’s blog at https://office365evangelist.com/  and follow him on twitter @s_mcneill . Be sure to view his community profile  here . Attend this session to learn more about Lync to phone and to participate in a Q&A session with Sean McNeill.  To sign up for this webcast please  download and save the calendar invite below  where you will find the Lync invite and all other Lync and Learn information.  We are excited to see you there!  Interested in being our next Lync and Learn presenter?  Learn how to join the Office 365 Grid  and become an Office 365 Lync and Learn presenter. —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Presenter :  Sean McNeill , Managing Consultant with Catapult Systems and  Office 365 Grid member . Date/Time:  Thursday September 20 th , at 10:00 AM Pacific Time . (1 Hour presentation) Live Meeting Information: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Join online meeting https://join.microsoft.com/meet/v-joshto/F00T8BQY Join by Phone  +14257063500         +18883203585           Find a local number   Conference ID: 27579341     Forgot your dial-in PIN?   |    First online meeting?      [1033])!] Audience: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Office 365 for enterprises

The Microsoft Outlook team has released updates for Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007 that provide Office 365 users with advance password expiration notifications. These notifications will be displayed in a pop-up message (near the system clock) within a certain time period before the password actually expires. The tenant administrator can configure the amount of time before password expiration that the notifications appear. For users whose passwords have already expired, Outlook will display an error message when users try to connect to their mailbox. In both scenarios, Outlook also provides a link (URL) to update passwords via the browser. When users click on those links, they are taken to the Microsoft Online Portal to change or update their passwords.   For more information about this issue, as well as links to the updates for Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007, see the  Password Expiration Notifications in Outlook. This wiki article also contains videos to show the new user experience when the updates are applied.

I’m looking forward to see many of you next month at Tech.Ed Australia #auteched, September 11-14 on the Gold Coast and at the next Project Ignite training in Sydney September 18-20. First Brad Purdy and I will be delivering my favorite topic these days: Microsoft Project Online Overview . Looking for reasons to attend Tech.Ed Australia? I’ve put a few here , don’t miss it! Secondly, we have put a very solid 3 day agenda and content you cannot miss to get a head start on The new Microsoft Project : Project Ignite Tour starts in September 2012! Register now! (registration link at the end of Jan’s post). There are so many things you need to learn and ramp up on (i.e. Project Online, new app marketplace, deeper SharePoint integration etc.), it would be a mistake to miss this face to face training opportunity! See you next month!