Office 365 Guides

Here is a comprehensive list of guides for different suites of Office 365 cloud services published by Microsoft till date. I intend to update this list with new releases as they occur. Hope this list is helpful to Office 365 users and prospective customers.

Name	Description	Includes
Office 365 Guides for professionals and small businesses	Step-by-step instructions for setting up and using a Plan P1 trial account for Office 365 from Microsoft Online Services.	Microsoft Office 365 Customer Purchase and Support Guide.docx Office 365 Trial Guide.docx
Microsoft Office 365 Guides for midsize business and enterprises	Microsoft Office 365 Guides for midsize business and enterprises	Microsoft Office 365 Purchase and Support Guide.docx Microsoft Office 365 Trial Guide.docx
Office 365 Deployment Guide for Enterprises	This document is intended to help you understand the requirements and workflows for onboarding your organization to Microsoft Office 365 enterprise plans.	Microsoft_Office_365_Deployment_Guide.pdf
Office 365 White Paper: Guidance for Office Development in Office 365	This white paper explains the primary differences between developing Microsoft Office client solutions for Microsoft SharePoint Online in Office 365 and for the on-premises version of SharePoint 2010	GuidanceForOfficeDevelopmentInOffice365.docx
SharePoint Online for Office 365: Developer Guide	Use the SharePoint Online for Office 365 Developer Guide to gain knowledge and understanding of SharePoint Online within Microsoft Office 365, and the rich features available to developers and designers.	SPO_DevGuide.pdf SPO_DevGuide.xps
Migrate from Exchange Public Folders to Microsoft Office 365	This document outlines these considerations, discusses the most common public folder scenarios and how they are represented in Office 365 services. It also provides the information you need to decide whether Office 365 is a good match for you based on your current public folder usage.	Migrate from Public Folders to Office 365.docx
Office 365 for Enterprise Service Descriptions	Office 365 is a suite of Internet-based services that are designed to help meet your needs for robust security, 24/7 reliability, and user productivity. This set of documents provides service descriptions for the components of the suite.	Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving Service Description.docx Microsoft Exchange Online for Enterprises Service Description.docx Microsoft Lync Online for Enterprises Service Description.docx Microsoft Office Professional Plus Service Description.docx Microsoft Office Web Apps Service Description.docx Microsoft SharePoint Online for Enterprises Service Description.docx Office 365 for Enterprises Support Service Description.docx Office 365 Identity Service Description.docx Office 365 Mobility Solutions Service Description.docx Office 365 Security and Service Continuity Service Description.docx Office 365 Support for Apple Mac and iOS Devices.docx

Office Professional Plus for Office 365 – Activation Process

Office 365 combines the Microsoft Office Professional Plus client suite with cloud versions of the following products and services: Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Lync Online. The Office Professional Plus offering provides the complete Office client suite as a monthly subscription service.

The Office Professional Plus subscription allows customers to purchase monthly licenses for each of their users. Each user license allows five concurrent installations. Both 32- and 64-bit versions of Office Professional Plus are available in Office 365. However, Microsoft recommends that you install the 32-bit version. You download and manage Office Professional Plus for Office 365 from the Office 365 portal. After you download Office Professional Plus for Office 365, you can make the Office suite available to users in your organization, based on the number of user licenses that you sign up for.

Office Professional Plus for Office 365 and volume licensed product comparison

	Office Professional Plus for   Office 365	Volume licensed products
Download   location	Office 365 portal	Volume Licensing Service Center
Software	Office   Professional Plus	Office   Standard 2010Office   Professional Plus 2010
Product   key and activation	Subscription-based   activationTerms:   monthly per user license	Volume   licensing technologies:Key   Management Service (KMS): 180 daysMultiple   Activation Key (MAK): perpetual activation
When   Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) starts	In 60   days from last activation	MAK:   not applicableKMS:   in 180 daysNotification   mode
Deployment   options	Office   365 portalUnmanaged   and managed options	Unmanaged   and managed optionsMicrosoft   Application Virtualization (App-V)Remote   Desktop Services (Terminal Services)
Allowed   number of copies	5 active installations on different devices per user	One device   per license\activation

Office Professional Plus components and interactions

Office Professional Plus for Office 365 includes new activation technology that enables a monthly subscription model. Every month, Office Professional Plus automatically verifies the status of a user’s subscription. The validation process requires Internet access.

• If a user has a valid subscription, Office Professional Plus is activated for another 30 days.
  

• If the user’s subscription cannot be verified, Office Professional Plus enters a 30 day grace period.

During the 30 day grace period, Office Professional Plus tries to verify a user’s subscription every 24 hours. If, by the end of the 30 grace period, Office Professional Plus still has not been able to verify the status of a user’s subscription, Office Professional Plus will enter Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM)

Activation Components and Process

Office Professional Plus for Office 365 includes activation components that automatically obtain a product key and activate it. Office Professional Plus includes the following client components and services:

• Office Professional Plus client suite
  
• Subscription activation components:
  
  • Office Subscription Agent
    
  • OSA Notifier
    
  • Office Software Protection Platform (OSPP)
    
  • Office Subscription Service (OSS)
    

Office Professional Plus for Office 365 also uses Microsoft Office 365 Desktop Setup, an additional component that is downloaded from the Office 365 Portal. Microsoft Office Desktop Setup is an installer service that checks for and provides important software updates for Office 365.

Subscription activation components

Office Subscription Agent (OSA) is part of the Office Professional Plus for Office 365 download. OSA manages the client-side subscription experience and performs the following tasks:

• Completes initial subscription provisioning.
  
• Interacts with the Office Subscription Service that is described later in this article and the Office Software Protection Platform to manage subscription status and license state, and provides state messages to the subscription notification applications.
  
• Manages all licensing actions by using the Office Software Protection Platform.
  

Office Subscription Agent coordinates with Office Subscription Service and Office Software Protection Platform to apply business rules on the client computer for activation, renewal, deprovision, and reprovision of user subscriptions. OSA also notifies users about important subscription states and prompts for any input required for user account validation.

Office Subscription Agent includes two components:

• OSA core service: runs on the client computer as a network service. This service enforces business rules for the user subscription.
  
• OSA Notifier: runs in user context, notifies users about error conditions, and authenticates the user ID account. The OSA Notifier uses Microsoft Identity Client Runtime Library (IDCRL), a dynamic link library (DLL) file that is used by applications such as smart clients to authenticate user ID credentials.
  

Office also uses Office Software Protection Platform (osppsvc), which is a system service on the client that brokers the license state for installed Office software.

Office Subscription Service is a cloud-based service that manages subscriptions, users, and computers for use with Office Subscription Agent. In addition to interfacing with OSA, OSS obtains computer-specific product keys from the Sell keys service and manages Time Based Licensing parameters through the Activation Verification System (AVS), an Office Software Protection Platform system that manages activation licenses that are based on Time Based Licensing (TBL) parameters set by OSS.

There are four Office license states:

OOB_GRACE	Office was installed within the last 30 days but is not yet activated. Office is fully functional. During this state, Office prompts the user to enter user ID credentials to provision Office.
LICENSED	Office is in full-functionality mode and a key was successfully installed and activated.
EXTENDED_GRACE	Office is in full-functionality mode but is in risk of falling into RFM. This state lasts for 30 days and indicates that the key has not been successfully re-activated. This could be caused by the computer being “bumped” to make space on the license for another computer or by a user being de-provisioned. This can also be caused by an extended time without Internet connectivity, which prevents OSA from validating the user’s license.
NOTIFICATIONS	State indicates that Office is in RFM mode.

Activation process

Office Professional Plus for Office 365 offers a pay-as-you-go, per user licensing model. When a user’s Office Professional Plus subscription is canceled, Office enters reduced-functionality mode (RFM or read-only mode). In contrast to the traditional Office 2010 client activation, which requires that the user enter the 25 character product key, Office Professional Plus for Office 365 includes Office Subscription Agent. It is an add-on component that automatically obtains a product key and activates it. The user only has to enter a user ID and password one time to validate the subscription. A user can have up to 5 concurrent installations by using the same user ID and password.

OSA is installed during the Office Professional Plus for Office 365 installation. OSA is the mechanism through which Office Professional Plus full functionality is enabled or disabled, depending on the status of the user’s subscription. When installation is complete, the OSA system service and the OSA Notifier are started. These two processes are necessary for the correct functioning of an Office Professional Plus for Office 365 subscription.

The following graphic shows how OSA takes a user ID and password as input, contacts OSS to retrieve a 30-day product key, and then loads the key into OSPP. The key only licenses Office for 30 days. OSA contacts OSS once every 30 days to revalidate the subscription and extend the license period for an additional 30 days.

To verify the licensing state of the Office 365 clients, the clients must have reliable Internet access every 30 days.

Information Protection Technologies

Following is a table that recommends the most appropriate data protection technology that can be used to protect High Business Impact information while sharing it on different platforms:

Technology	IRM	S/MIME	EFS	BitLocker and BitLocker To Go™
Technology description	Enables you to apply specific access permissions to documents, workbooks, and presentations to prevent unauthorized forwarding, printing, or copying; and to set expiration dates after which files no longer are available or usable.	Enables you to encrypt and/or digitally sign your e-mail messages so that only the people you specify can access them.	Encrypts your files or folders, and requires users other than you to enter the appropriate decryption key before they can access the encrypted content.	Protects data on your computer by preventing unauthorized access to the hard disk drive
Transmit with internal e-mail	Acceptable solution	Preferred solution
Transmit with external e-mail		Preferred solution
Share by using SharePoint	Preferred solution
Share by using Sharepoint Workspaces	Preferred solution
Storing on a computer New hardware running Windows Vista® or newer	Acceptable solution		Acceptable solution	Preferred solution
Storing on a computer Old hardware running Windows Vista or older	Preferred solution		Acceptable solution
Storing on removable mediaUse Windows 7 or Windows Server® 2008 R2			Acceptable solution	Preferred solution

For more information and recommendations on How to Secure Business Information, download the Securing Business Information Work Smart Guide from Microsoft IT.

Office 2010 – New Protection Technologies

Office 2010 includes new protection technologies and a new trust model that helps provide better resilience against attack through layered defenses. For example, in previous versions of Office, when a user attempts to open a Word document, Word first tries to confirm whether the file is a properly-formatted Word document. If the document being opened was a .docx file created using Word 2007 and based on the Office Open XML specification, Word validated the document by parsing it against the XSD specification for that file format. But if the document being opened was a .doc file that was created using the earlier Word 97-2003 Document binary file format, Word simply loaded the file into memory and displayed it without further validation because of the absence of any XML specification or other standard to validate the file against. The same was true for previous versions of Excel and PowerPoint.

Because of this, the Office team has engineered new protection and threat mitigation technologies into Word 2010, Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010. Two of these new technologies, known as Office File Validation and Protected View, are designed to help protect an organization’s resources by mitigating potentially harmful effects that can result from Office binary file format exploits. A third new feature in Office 2010 called Trusted Documents can work together with these two protection technologies to provide users with an improved experience that requires them to make fewer security decisions when working with documents that contain active content such as macros or ActiveX controls.

With Word 2010 for example, when a user attempts to open a .doc file, instead of having Word itself load the file into memory and display its contents, the file is first passed to a DLL that thoroughly validates the file against the XML specification for.doc files that was created using the results of the intensive distributed fuzzing preformed during the Office 2010 security engineering process. If the .doc file passes validation, this DLL passes the file to Winword.exe which then opens it and displays its contents with full editing capability enabled. If the file fails validation however, there is the possibility that the file may be harmful to the user’s computer. In this case, the file is then opened within an isolated “sandbox” environment called Protected View that allows the user to scroll through the document and view its contents but disables all editing functionality and any active content in the document. At this point it is a special low-privilege sandbox Winword.exe process that renders the document, not the Winword.exe host process.

Once the user has examined the contents of the document and has determined that it is from a legitimate source, the user then has the option of enabling editing for the document by responding to a prompt displayed in the Message Bar. At that point the Protected View sandbox process terminates and the document is reopened using the Winword.exe host process with full editing capability enabled, and if the document contains any active content a second Message Bar prompt will be displayed that presents the user with the choice of enabling the active content. If the user then chooses to enable active content within the document, a new feature of Office 2010 called Trusted Documents can now remember the user’s trust decision. This means that when the user later reopens the trusted document, the active content in it is automatically enabled without prompting the user again. This behavior is different to that for Word 2007 where the user was prompted to enable active content each time they tried to open a document that contained macros or ActiveX controls.

Similar DLLs to that for Word 2010 have also been included for Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010. These are used for validating .xls and .ppt files, and both Excel 2010 and PowerPoint 2010 also display files using Protected View if the file fails validation. Administrators can also configure Office 2010 to submit information concerning files that fail validation via the Watson error reporting channel so the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) can investigate them. When new Office binary file format vulnerabilities are discovered, updates to the XML specifications are released and automatically downloaded by Office 2010 so they can be utilized by Office File Validation. A key benefit of this approach is that provides a faster response to addressing newly discovered file format vulnerabilities than the traditional software patching process.

Office 2010 – Defense In Depth

By implementing multiple, redundant security controls at different levels of an information system, security threats are able to penetrate one defensive layer can still be stopped by another layer. Office 2010 leverages this strategy by providing four defensive layers to safeguard users against threats involving maliciously crafted Word documents, Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations. Each security layer in Office 2010 implements specific countermeasures that are designed to initiate the moment a user tries to open a file using an Office 2010 application and which continue in effect until the file has been successfully opened for editing. As shown in diagram, these four layers of Office security perform the following functions:

• Harden the attack surface through improved security engineering together with key Windows operating system security features integrated into Office 2010. Support for Data Execution Protection/No Execute (DEP/NX), robust and agile cryptography, and other technologies provide a strong, first layer of defense against threats posed by malicious Office data files.
• Reduce the attack surface by limiting the types of files applications can open and by preventing the execution of certain types of embedded code. Office File Validation is a key technology at this layer, as are two other Office 2010 features file block settings and the Office ActiveX kill bit. Together these technologies reduce the number and variety of possible attack vectors that managed to get through the first defensive layer.
• Mitigate exploits so that any attack that gets through the first two defensive layers can have its impact minimized. The key Office 2010 technology at this layer is Protected View, which allows dangerous Office files to be displayed and examined without any harm to the user’s computer or the wider network.
• Improve the user experience by reducing the number of security decisions the user needs to make and by helping the user make better security decisions. The new Trusted Documents feature of Office 2010 is key here as it prevents “prompt fatigue” a condition that can afflict most users when they are faced with too many, repeated security warnings and results in them basically ignoring future warnings.

 

Defense in depth for Office 2010.

 

How Office 2010 Helps Mitigate Exploits

 

Sequence of steps that occurs when a user attempts to open a file using Word 2010, Excel 2010 or PowerPoint 2010.

 

To learn more about New Security Features in Office 2010, download this white paper on Keeping Enterprise Data Safe with Microsoft Office 2010

Clear the clutter with Outlook 2010

Microsoft® Outlook® 2010 gives you tools you need to stay on top of practically everything. Save valuable inbox space with improved e-mail conversation tracking and management. Compress long e-mail threads into a few conversations that can be categorized, filed, ignored, or cleaned up with a few clicks. From advanced e-mail organization and search to a completely redesigned look, Outlook 2010 provides you with a world-class experience to stay productive and stay in touch with all of your networks.

 

Watch this interesting video here:

 

 

http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/a4dfd233-d248-492a-9ae7-bc971d1c3fb6 

Office comes to Windows Live

 

Quote from Brian Hall from Office 2010 Team

Office comes to Windows Live

Today is a real milestone for people who use Microsoft Office or Windows Live. Starting today, a select group of SkyDrive customers will be invited to try out a technical preview of the online versions of Microsoft Office Excel, Word and PowerPoint, also known as the Office Web Apps, integrated right inside their Windows Live SkyDrive experience. Over time, as the final version is released, the Office Web Apps will become available to all 500 million+ users of Hotmail, Messenger and other Windows Live services.

While the tech preview doesn’t have all the cool features that will be available in the final offering, it does show off the exciting potential of having online versions of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, and how you can easily access and work with your Office documents from anywhere with an Internet connection.

When those of you participating in the Tech Preview upload or create a new document, you’ll be able to view them much like you do today when using the full Office programs—without the loss of formatting or data and with the familiar Office 2007 ribbon. And it will be very easy to share your documents in password-protected folders and give permission to whoever you want to have access – just like with any other SkyDrive files.

Personally, I’m excited that, in the final release of the Office Web Apps, I’ll be able to access Office documents from any PC and then be able to share them, show them, edit them, and collaborate on them with people around the globe. I do a lot of presentations so it will be particularly helpful for giving presentations right from Internet Explorer (or Firefox or Safari). Because I’m kind of an Excel geek, I’ll be able to share my spreadsheets in all their glory – with conditional formatting, charts, and more. In the final release, I will also be able to share notes from OneNote in real-time with others.

Over the coming months here are some of things you can expect to be able to do in later versions of the Office Web Apps:

  

 

Why are we making Office Web Apps available as part of Windows Live?

We all use a lot of different services online – e-mail, social networks, photo sites, video sites, and so on. In many cases, we use more than one service for very similar purposes, using Facebook, MySpace , StudiVZ, Mixi or many others for social networking; Hotmail, Yahoo!, or Gmail for e-mail; Flickr, SkyDrive, FotoLog, or Photobucket for sharing photos.

That said, there are certain things we really just want one of. I really just want one place for storing contact info, one personal calendar I can share with my family, one primary mail service that also allows me to check all of my e-mail accounts, one place to get updates from all of my social networks, and one place to store, share, and manage my massive and ever-growing collection of photos, documents, music, and videos.

I can get all of that at Windows Live. And now, with the addition of Office Web Apps, I’ll soon be able to go to Windows Live to create, edit, share, and collaborate on Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote digital notebooks, and Excel spreadsheets – all in high fidelity and all online regardless of which PC I’m using and whether that PC has Office on it.

 

 

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