Introducing SharePoint Online and Workflows, Part 2.

Last week we introduced SharePoint Online Workflows . Workflows allow users to easily trigger a customized email to be sent when a new item is added to SharePoint Online. In part two of this series, Brett demonstrates how you can easily configure a workflow using SharePoint Designer 2007. One example of how you can use a configured SharePoint Workflow is to create a task when the Sales opportunity value meets or exceeds a pre-set value in another SharePoint Online list. The tasks are then linked to Outlook so the executive can easily review and approve.

This Week in BPOS News 12/3

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.

Clearing the Nickname Cache

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.

Groups and Categories

This is something I posted over on my Microsoft blog a while back but it comes up so often that I wanted to repost it over here. Project Server security is something that is very flexible once you get used to how it works but it can be a bit confusing when you first look at it. Here are the basics as I explain them to my customers: The Group Groups contain sets of users and they define the system level permissions that those users have the rights to perform. These include: Logging in, performing certain admin functions, create a new project, create a new resource, etc.. The Category Categories provide access to projects, resources and views. The projects and resources that the category provides access to can be specifically called out by name or they can by dynamically included based on a set of rules within the category itself. For example a category can provide access to all projects where the user is the project owner or a status manager on a task, or all the projects where the Project Owner is ‘below’ the user in the RBS structure. I refer to this set of projects and resources as the “Scope” of the category. Categories can be shared by many groups because of the dynamic way the scopes can be defined. The dynamic options for project and resource scope are dependent on the user and their relationship (via the RBS structure) to either the owner or team members on a project or to the resources themselves. I often, for simplicity, create a role based group and then a corresponding category. It sometimes means that there are technically more categories than is absolutely required but it does make the whole security model a bit easier to follow.   The GroupCategory Permissions This is the part that people often overlook. A group and a category can be ‘linked’ or joined. When this happens there is a set of permissions that sit at that joint. This set of permissions defines what the members of that group can DO with the projects and resources within the “Scope” of the category. If you open a Group and you see the list of Categories that are associated to group there is one of these grids for each category. If you select one of the Categories associated with the group the grid pertains to THAT pairing of group and category. If you select a different category the grid changes and is now pertaining only to THAT pairing. The same is true if you open a category and select the Groups that are associated with it. The grid pertains to the pairing. It can be edited in both places but it remains the same.

Circular Relationships in the PWA Schedule Web Part

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:

Introducing SharePoint Online Workflows

Are you a SharePoint Online pro? Do you know about SharePoint Online Workflows? In this 12 minute webcast, Brett Hill demonstrates how you can easily trigger a customized email to be sent when a new item is added to a SharePoint Online list. The presentation below includes details about creating workflows within SharePoint Online. You will also learn about options that are available to create “if-then-else” type of workflows with SharePoint Designer 2007 for SharePoint Online. You can learn more about BPOS with detailed walkthroughs in our How To section and on Brett Hill’s blog . Was this video helpful? What other BPOS tutorials would you like to see featured? You can comment on this blog post or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.