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A couple of cross blog references here on resource management topics – and both affect Project Online as well as the on premise installations.  Firstly an issue where you cannot open more than a certain number of resources from your Resource Center in Project Professional 2013 – blogged over on the Project Support blog at https://blogs.technet.com/b/projectsupport/archive/2013/03/11/project-server-2013-why-can-t-i-open-all-my-resources-from-the-resource-center.aspx .  The numbers aren’t exact – but will be around 120 for IE9, then 520 or so for IE10, Chrome and Firefox. The second one is from our very good friend Gary Chefetz over at MSProjectExperts and unlocks the key to the Windows Logon Account field if you wish to add resources via Project Professional 2013 – https://www.projectserverhelp.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=205 .   Also note Gary’s comment on needing to select at least one resource from the existing resource center to open Pro up.

Back in November 2012, we announced our Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool (MCA) Beta client.  We have been very busy working to improve the testing options that are available from the MCA client.  Here’s what we’ve built for the 1.0 release. Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool 1.0 We are excited to announce the 1.0 release of the Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer .  This tool is a companion to the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer web site.  The MCA tool provides administrators and end users with the ability to run connectivity diagnostics for five common connectivity symptoms directly from their local computer.  Users can test their own connectivity, and save results in an HTML format that administrators will recognize from viewing results on the RCA website.   Click here to install the MCA 1.0 tool (Please visit the site to view this video) Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer The MCA tool offers five test symptoms I can’t log on with Office Outlook – This test is equivalent to the Exchange RCA test for “Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP)”. There is an option to run the SSO test provided on the parameters page. I can’t send or receive email on my mobile device    – This test is equivalent to the Exchange RCA test for Exchange ActiveSync. ***New*** I can’t log on to Lync on my mobile device or the Lync Windows Store App – This test checks for the Domain Name Server (DNS) records for your on-premise domain to ensure they are configured correctly for supporting Mobile Lync clients. Also it connects to the Autodiscover web service and makes sure that the authentication, certificate, web service for Mobility is correctly set up. ***New*** I can’t send or receive email from Outlook (Office 365 only) – This test checks Inbound/Outbound SMTP mail flow and also includes Domain Name Server validation checks for O365 customers. ***New*** I can’t view free/busy information of another user – This test verifies that an Office 365 mailbox can access the free/busy information of an on-premises mailbox, and vice versa (one direction per test run). Microsoft Lync Connectivity Analyzer Tool You will also notice the Lync Connectivity Analyzer Tool on the client page.  We are working on combining MCA with MLCA in the near future but wanted to make both these great tools available to customers now to improve our client diagnostics options. Feedback Send all feedback to  MCA Feedback . Please let us know what you think of the tool and whether this will be helpful in troubleshooting connectivity scenarios.  Also feel free to provide feedback on additional tests you would like to see added in the future. Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer 2.1 We are excited to announce the 2.1 release of the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer web site.  The tool provides administrators and end users with the ability to run connectivity diagnostics for our servers to test common issues with Exchange, Lync and Office 365.  We have added new Office 365 Domain Name Server tests, enhanced existing tests, and improved the overall site experience. Be sure to check out the updates to the Remote Connectivity Analyzer website .    

Are you looking for more details about Microsoft Office 365 plans? Perhaps you’ve compared Office 365 plans and pricing and narrowed down your options, but you need more specifics. What exactly can you do in one Office 365 plan that you can’t do in another? What’s the best plan for your organization’s needs?  Are you in an IT team trying to understand the features of the online service compared to what you use today in your datacenter?   If this sounds like you, then the Office 365 Service Descriptions are a new reference here to help. These online articles detail which features are available in which Office 365 plans, such as Office 365 Enterprise E1 and Office 365 Enterprise E3, across all of the individual services, such as Exchange Online and Office 365 ProPlus.   The Office 365 Service Descriptions have been recently updated to better support the continuously updated Office 365 service.  The new service descriptions support continuous publishing so that they always reflect the most up-to-date version of the service.  Now that the documents are available on the web, we’ve added links from within the service to help admins compare and understand certain features in the context of the task they are performing.   Later in the blog post I’ll show you how to print a customized PDF file with the Office 365 Service Description content. And if you’re looking to filter out the columns and rows you’re not interested in, I’ll show you how to copy and use this data into Excel .   Updated Office 365 Service Descriptions now available A few weeks ago Microsoft announced the new Office 365 general availability release . In conjunction with the new release, we’ve updated the Office 365 Service Descriptions. Feature availability information is now available to you online, making it easy to access and link to. There are seven service descriptions available on www.technet.com .   Office 365 Platform includes information about the Office 365 hosted solution platform that is common across the other services.  The Office 365 Platform service description is where you’ll find details about Office 365 user management, support, service updates, privacy and security policies, and other operational details that apply across the individual services and are part of the core Office 365 service.  Exchange Online is a hosted messaging service offered in some Office 365 plans that web-based email, calendar, contacts, and tasks from PCs, the web, and mobile devices. In the Exchange Online service description, you can easily see which Exchange features are available across Office 365 plans. In addition, you can compare Exchange Online feature availability to an Exchange Server 2013 on-premises environment. SharePoint Online is a hosted website service offered in some Office 365 plans that provides intranet sites, file storage, enterprise content management, social and collaboration tools, business intelligence solutions, and more. In the SharePoint Online service description you can easily see which SharePoint features are available across Office 365 plans. In addition, you can compare SharePoint Online feature availability to a SharePoint Server 2013 on-premises environment. Office Web Apps  allow you to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents in your web browser. Office Web Apps make it easier to work and share Office files from anywhere with an Internet connection, from almost any device. In the Office Web Apps service description, you can easily see what you can and can’t do in the Office Web Apps versus the installed new Office desktop apps such as Office 365 ProPlus. Office 365 ProPlus is the full Office desktop suite that is available in many of the Office 365 plans.  Office 365 ProPlus is the full Office desktop applications that you’re already familiar with, such as Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint delivered as a cloud-based service that provides a monthly subscription tied to a user account with the ability to install Office on 5 different PCs and Macs. In the Office 365 ProPlus service description, you can easily compare the subscription license version (e.g. Office 365 ProPlus) to the perpetual license, one-time purchase version (e.g. Office Professional Plus 2013) of the Office desktop suite. Project Online is a hosted project portfolio management (PPM) service that works in conjunction with SharePoint Online. Project Online enables team members to work and collaborate on their projects from anywhere with an Internet connection. In the Project Online service description, you can easily compare Project Online service-level features with a Project Server 2013 on-premises environment. Lync Online  is a hosted communication service offered in some Office 365 plans that gives users access to presence, instant messaging, audio and video calling, rich online meetings, and extensive web conferencing capabilities. In the Lync Online service description, you can easily compare Lync Online service-level features across office 365 plans.   Want an easy bookmark? Use this shortened URL to quickly access the Office 365 Service Descriptions, aka.ms/o365sd .   Feature availability tables for each service Go ahead and dig into any of the product service descriptions. You’ll find each top level service description has a table comparing feature availability across SKUs. For example, if you click the SharePoint Online Service Description you’ll find a SharePoint feature availability table. Use the table to compare feature availability across Office 365 families and SharePoint Server 2013—the on-premises solutions for customers that want to deploy and manage their own servers.    Click on a blue link in the Feature column to read more about that feature. For example, when you click the Ask me About me you’ll be redirected to an article that provides an overview of what the feature is and how it works, and includes links to product help content that explains the feature in even more detail. You’re able to get an overview of the service and decide which features are relevant for further investigation by you or someone else who needs to administer the service.  We’ve done our best to help you discover all that our services have to offer.   Print Office 365 Service Descriptions Printing a topic from any of the service descriptions is simple and easy. Whether you’re printing a single topic or multiple topics, you can always be sure that you’re downloading the most updated information about the Office 365 services.   1. From any Office 365 Service Description article, click the printer icon in the top-right corner of the TechNet page. 2. Select Print This Topic or Print Multiple Topics . 3. If you’re printing multiple topics, then click Start . You’ll see a new toolbar appear at the top of every TechNet page. 4. If you find a topic that you want to add to your list of topics to print, click Add This Topic . 5. When you’re ready to print, click on Collections Topic(s) to see the list of topics you selected to print. 6. You can drag and drop topics around in the list, if you want a certain topic to go above or below another.   7. When you’re ready to print, click Generate . Note: At this point, if you’re not already, you’ll need to sign in to TechNet with a Microsoft account, such as your Hotmail, SkyDrive, Xbox, or Outlook.com username and password.    8. When the PDF document is complete, you’ll see a blue link to Download Your Document . Now you can save, email, and print that PDF document. Use Microsoft Excel to filter and sort large feature tables Every service description includes a feature availability table. The table allow you to easily scan for what you want to know — is a feature available in the Office 365 plan you’re interested in?   Sometimes when doing a comparison of the different Office 365 offerings  you might find it easier to copy and paste the tables into Microsoft Excel. This will allow you to customize your view, by hiding columns that aren’t valid to your needs and by filtering rows to focus on the features you’re trying to compare
across plans. With Excel, you can search for a feature by name and quickly jump to that row in the table. Excel maintains the help article links, so you can always find more information about a particular feature.   Keep in mind, we’re continually updating the service descriptions to match the current state of the service. If you create an offline copy of these tables, you won’t see those changes.   If you have comments or questions about the Office 365 Service Descriptions, we’d love to hear from you. Just send your feedback to Office 365 Service Description Feedback . Your comments will help us provide the most accurate and concise content.

Audience: Exchange/Office 365 for Enterprises Administrators Author: Robert Mazzoli, Senior Technical Writer, Exchange   We’re happy to announce that the Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant has been updated and now includes support for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and the latest version of Office 365. The Exchange Server 2010 Deployment Assistant supports configuring new Exchange 2010 installations, configuring hybrid deployments using Exchange Server 2010, and migrating your existing on-premises Exchange organizations completely to Office 365.   Check out the full announcement at the Exchange Server blog here .   For those of you not familiar with the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant , it’s a free web-based tool that asks you a small set of simple questions and then, based on your answers, creates a customized checklist with instructions to deploy or configure Exchange 2010 or Exchange 2013. Instead of trying to find what you need in the Exchange library, the Deployment Assistant gives you exactly the right information you need to complete your task.     For those administrators who want to configure or incorporate Exchange Server 2013 in their organization, check out the Exchange Server 2013 Deployment Assistant here .

I just published a couple of posts on the Microsoft Project Support blog over on TechNet covering a couple of issues that appear to be catching our customers out. The first is one on adding Project Online to an existing Office 365 plan that has not yet been upgraded with the recent service upgrade – Project Online- Why can’t I add it to my Office365 yet-   and the second relates to adding one plan to another – such as adding Project Pro for Office 365 to a Project Online plan – Project Online- How do I add Project Pro- I hope you find these useful – and let me know how Project Online is going for you if you have already jumped in!

In the latest Garage Series for IT Pros post, our adventurous desktop specialist hosts Yoni Kirsh and Jeremy Chapman explain the differences between Windows Installer Package (MSI) and Click-to-Run package types, how to download Click-to-Run builds for use with software distribution tools, when it’s necessary to provision user accounts in Office 365 and Yoni tests whether Office 365 ProPlus can be installed before our skydiver, Fully Sik, hits the ground. Tune in at https://www.microsoft.com/garage .   To view previous episodes, check out the Garage Series for IT Pros Archive .

Ignite Webcasts are online sessions led by Microsoft Office 365 Product Managers, Engineers and Support staff. The Ignite webcast series addresses Office 365 technical subjects and scenarios and is beneficial to anyone who wants to increase their knowledge of the Office 365 suite.  View the Ignite Site  for more information about Ignite programs and webcasts. You can view past Ignite Webcast sessions and materials  here  and be sure to see upcoming Ignite Webcasts on the  Ignite Events Page .  Be sure to download the Calendar invite below to see all the webcast information. In our latest Ignite Webcast, we will give you an overview of what dirsync is, what the requirements are, and the different options that are available for dirsync. We’ll also cover coexistence and some key deployment considerations. We are excited to have our host and Office 365 Architect, Daniel Kenyon-Smith, back for this session.  This is a great opportunity to ask questions and join a discussion with our Microsoft presenter. Bring your questions!  Our webcast will be led by  Daniel Kenyon-Smith.  Daniel is an Office 365 Architect in Microsoft Consultancy Services in the UK. Daniel works with large enterprise customers to help them migrate to Office 365. You can view Daniel’s last Ignite Webcast presentation here . Remember, to sign up for this webcast please  download and save the attached calendar invite below . We are excited to see you there!    —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Presenter :  Daniel Kenyon-Smith,  Office 365 Architect in Microsoft Consultancy Services in the UK.    Date/Time: Thursday   March 14 th , at 12:00 PM 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

Audience: Exchange/Office 365 for Enterprises Administrators Author: Robert Mazzoli, Senior Technical Writer, Exchange   We’re happy to announce that the Exchange Server 2013 Deployment Assistant has been released and includes support for configuring new Exchange 2013 installations, configuring hybrid deployments using Exchange Server 2013, and migrating your existing on-premises Exchange organizations completely to Office 365.    Check out the full announcement at the Exchange Team blog here .   For those of you not familiar with the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant , it’s a free web-based tool that asks you a small set of simple questions and then, based on your answers, creates a customized checklist with instructions to deploy or configure Exchange 2013. Instead of trying to find what you need in the Exchange library, the Deployment Assistant gives you exactly the right information you need to complete your task.  

Author: Jeremy_MSFT Originally published to the Office 365 Preview blog. Office 365 ProPlus offers flexible software delivery options to suit organizations of all sizes and desktop service architectures. From small businesses where users often install their own software, to large enterprises where hundreds of applications are centrally delivered by the IT department to every user, Office 365 ProPlus installation adapts to your processes and workflows. Install Office 365 ProPlus from the Internet Self-installation of Office 365 ProPlus allows users to install Office on their personal PCs directly from www.office365.com . After the administrator has created the user account, the user can log in to the Office 365 service and install Office 365 ProPlus. Users will need to be local administrators on their PCs when self-installing and the installation will always be the most up-to-date Office build and be enabled to receive automatic updates. When the user initiates the installation, a small setup file (roughly 400 KB) is downloaded and run from the local PC the filename (for example: Setup.X86.en-us_ProPlusRetail_56f7d927-5bf8-435e-a240-9eaeef2f53c5_.exe) contains the installation parameters and what is loaded from the content delivery network site ( https://officecdn.microsoft.com/ ) where Office installation files are stored. Software installation page in Office 365 Self-installation may be appropriate in certain organizations where users have administrative privileges and are expected to install their own software. Self-installation rights may also be provided in well-managed organizations where users by definition cannot install software on managed computers, but are given access to Office 365 ProPlus installation on home or personal PCs. Administrators may also centrally disable the right for user self-installation, but this is a global control within the Office 365 Admin Portal and will apply to all users in the tenant. Process for managed self-installation or home and personal device installation in a managed environment In the process flow above, the IT administrator may optionally define Office configurations using local configuration management tools like Group Policy prior to publishing self-installation steps to end users. End users will be responsible for installing any required add-ins, dependent applications or standardized Office templates if needed and in the self-installation scenario, users are by default configured to receive automatic monthly updates from the Office 365 service. Automated Deployments using Software Distribution Infrastructure Most large organizations use enterprise software distribution or image-based deployment automation to install software on behalf of their users. Office 365 ProPlus enables these tools and processes to install Office either from the network or with support from the Office 365 online service. As with the download process the Office Deployment Tool uses setup.exe to install and configure Office 365 ProPlus. These tools are designed with flexibility in mind so an administrator can point the setup engine at local, network or Web-based file sources. The configuration XML file governs the installation process to determine what products, architectures, languages, and versions are installed and from which sources. It also allows the administrator to suppress installation and first run experiences, accept licensing agreements on behalf of the user, determine where installation logs are stored, enable or disable automatic software updates and configure where Office looks for updates. Process for on-premises software delivery of Office 365 ProPlus With these tools you can follow classic enterprise software distribution approaches where software installation files are installed via local cache or directly from the management or distribution point. New to Office 365 ProPlus is the ability to distribute just the setup.exe file and instruct that Office Click-to-Run packages are installed from the Office 365 online service ( https://officecdn.microsoft.com/ ). This is a great scenario in off-LAN situations when VPN connectivity to a management point is slower than the target machine’s connection to the Internet. Because installations are usually much faster than with previous MSI-based packages, deploying Office pre-installed in a custom Windows image will not save as much time as with previous Office releases and it allows you to pre-cache Office Click-to-Run builds with multiple language support within a captured Windows image (WIM) file, then use scripting automation or your favorite task sequencing engine to install Office directly from the local file source within the WIM file. It is also recommended to install Office native to the language of the operating system as opposed to using language packs atop the EN-US installation of Office, but both options are still possible with Office 365 ProPlus and Click-to-Run. The configuration XML file governs both what is downloaded and how Office Click-to-Run is applied to the target computer. The controls relevant to using setup.exe /configure are the following. Option Description Sample Syntax Add Parent control to determine source, architecture, product and languages to download. From local folder:               From local network:               Remove Used to uninstall Office products.                                 Product Multiple products may be nested under the control and multiple languages may be nested under the control. Office 365 ProPlus      SourcePath Location where the Office is installed from. If SourcePath is unspecified, setup will first look for installation source in the local folder and if not present it will look to the CDN source. OfficeClientEdition Determines the architecture of the product to download, 32 or 64 bit. Note: 32-bit is still the recommended architecture for new Office versions. Cross-architecture installations are not permitted; if a 32-bit Office version is already installed on a system, the 64-bit Click-to-Run package will not install and vice versa.   Or: OfficeClientEdition=”32″ OfficeClientEdition=”64″ Language Language determines the language DAT files to be downloaded with the Click-to-Run package. Updates Configures automatic updating behavior. Updates may be either from the public Office 365 service, local location, local file share or private https:// site. To use a local file share: To use the CDN:   

The new Office 365 Deployment Center is the place to find the tools, guidance, and technical resources to help you pilot and deploy Office 365.  With Microsoft’s recommended approach, you can set-up a 25-user pilot quickly and experience the full set of Office 365 service features including the new Office applications.  Then, smoothly move your entire organization into production and add advanced features, when needed.    1.          Pilot the full set of Office 365 features quickly          Send email via your desktop, phone, or tablet.          Share documents and collaborate online with SharePoint Online and Office Web Apps.          Run online meetings and communicate with others using Lync Online.          Create documents with the new Office applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and Lync.   2.         Transition to production smoothly with the same tenant          Transition your pilot users to deployment.          Scale to the rest of your organization.          Migrate email.          Deploy Office 365 ProPlus to all your users.   3.        Add advanced features if and when you need them such as hybrid configurations for Exchange and SharePoint, and single sign-on.   Go to: https://www.deployoffice365.com  and start your pilot today!