Microsoft is identifying customers to participate in admin user experience interview sessions based on the nomination survey below. We are interested in customer feedback on planned Admin Scenarios for Office 365 with BlackBerry Business Cloud Services. If you meet these criteria and would like to share your feedback, please contact us using the self-nomination form below. Completing this survey does not guarantee participation, though we hope to speak with as many of you as possible who are interested. Self-nomination criteria: You are an employee of a company which has licenses for BPOS Standard or Exchange Online Standard as well as the current Hosted BlackBerry service from Microsoft. You are responsible for managing cloud email services and setting-up email on mobile phones. You are willing to spend 30 minutes with us on the phone between May 11th and May 20th, 2011 to provide constructive feedback on scenarios. Calls will be done using LiveMeeting and may include one or a few customer participants as well as participants from Microsoft and from Research in Motion. Click here to complete the nomination survey . Click here to see the original post.

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 a small town that is cashing in and creating jobs with the Cloud, and discover a great resource for anyone moving from BPOS to Office 365. 1.

You can use Windows PowerShell to manage Group Policy . Here are 25 cmdlets you can use to retrieve information and perform common tasks. Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

The geolocation feature in Internet Explorer 9 allows Web sites to provide information that is tailored to your geographic location. Here’s a look at

Internet Explorer 9 includes a new security feature called Tracking Protection . Here’s a quick look at how Tracking Protection works and how you can manage this feature . Follow our daily tips: • facebook.com/TechNetTips • twitter.com/TechNetTips • blogs.technet.com/tnmag

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.

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