Five Issues With Office 365 Deployment

Lists a few issues partners might face in installing and configuring Microsoft Office 365 for their customers 

Last month Microsoft delivered the new Office 365, its line-up of Web-based office productivity applications. Designed for businesses of various sizes, Office 365 comes in several modules, each having a different set of features and capabilities. At the top of the heap is Office 365 Small Business Premium which is targeted at companies with less than 25 users.

Besides adding three new SKUs to the 10+ Office 365 editions it introduced earlier this year, Microsoft delivers some new layers of complexity. For VARs and IT departments, this means they will need to navigate a new set of subtleties for installing and configuring each user so that his desktop and browser apps work in harmony with SkyDrive and other cloud-based storage and collaborative tools. Here is a look at what is in store.

Desktop apps
Only Office 2010 or Office 2007 for Windows will work with Office 365. Compatible Mac OS versions are Office for Mac 2011 SP1 and Office 2008 for Mac with update 12.2.9 or later. Earlier versions of Office will not connect with Office 365. Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.9 also will need Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition.

Assuming that the target computer meets the requirements of Office 365, it will also need Microsoft Lync. We set up our test machine by signing into the Office 365 portal and selecting Office 365 settings from the ‘Gear’ menu in the upper-right corner. Select Desktop Setup and follow the prompts. This will install the .Net 3.5 Framework and other plumbing to connect desktop apps to their cloud-based counterparts. You also can install Lync and Office apps from there. The process was easy and took only about 10 minutes, but it is manual for each client.

Mobile devices
Office 365 Small Business Premium is compatible with the mail and calendar applications of mobile devices running Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian and of course Windows Phone. Thanks to Microsoft’s Lync 2010 client, Office 365 users can perform instant messaging, audio calling and audio conferencing with other Office 365 users, and can get presence information too.

The catch is that it requires a Lync Server or Office365/Lync Online account, and administrators might have to do some manual account juggling if crossing organizations.

The Office 365 portal also provides detailed, step-by-step instructions for setting up the mail client on each supported platform. What is more, there is context-sensitive help that IT admins will appreciate more than anywhere else. Our hats are off to Microsoft for the progress it has made with its online help documents.