New capabilities coming to BPOS in the near future

 

Microsoft will be bringing some nice new capabilities to BPOS in the near future. According to the MS Online Services Team Blog these capabilities will be in preview later this year.

Office Web Apps Updates
  • Word Web App
  • Excel Web App
  • PowerPoint Web App
  • OneNote Web App
Exchange Online Updates
  • Voice mail with Unified Messaging
  • Integrated archiving
  • Retention policies and legal hold
  • Transport rules
  • Multi-mailbox search
  • Conversation View
  • MailTips
  • Enhanced Web-based administration
  • Role-Based Access Control
  • Remote PowerShell (yeah!!)
  • Free/busy between cloud and on-premises
  • Cross-premises management
  • Native migration tools
SharePoint Online Updates
  • Portal site templates
  • Extranet access
  • Anonymous Access
  • Multi-Lingual UI
  • Office 2010 integration
  • Tagging, Rating, Tag Cloud
  • Activity Feed, Social Networking, Note Board
  • Improved Wikis & Blogs
  • Content publishing
  • Navigation controls
  • Cross site-collection search
  • Phonetic search
  • People search
  • Visio Services
  • Excel Services
  • Sandboxed Solutions
  • Improved workflows
  • Improved SharePoint Designer 2010
  • Access Services
  • Better controls of FQDNs
Office Communications Online Updates
  • P2P A/V across firewall
  • File transfer across firewall
  • Presence with pictures
  • Federation
  • IM with Windows Live

Additional features will be available based on Communications Server “14” as part of ongoing service updates.

Platform Updates
  • Free/Busy co-existence
  • Single Sign On (again yeah!!)
  • Identity federation
  • Redesigned admin interface
  • More administration and access control

original post: here

BPOS March Release Update

The Microsoft Online Services Service Update for March 2010 is currently being deployed into production data centers and is scheduled to be available to all customers in the next few weeks. Updates to the deployment status will be posted to the comments section of this blog post.

Upgrades and Enhancements

The following features and capabilities are included in this Service Update:

25GB Mailboxes for Exchange Online

All users with a Business Productivity Online Suite or Exchange Online Standard User Subscription License (USL) will now be allocated 25 GB of mailbox storage, a significant increase from the previously allotted 5 GB of mailbox storage. This expansion means that a BPOS customer with 10 users (Standard USLs) will now have 250 GB of total storage (10 users x 25 GB) instead of 50 GB (10 users x 5 GB).

While mailbox allocations for all existing users will increase to 25 GB, mailbox sizes will not change. In other words, an administrator will need to update an existing user’s mailbox size to 25 GB in order to allocate increased storage to that user. For example, an existing user whose mailbox size was set to 1 GB by the administrator will continue to have a 1 GB mailbox size after this update unless the administrator changes that user’s mailbox size. The maximum mailbox size is still 25 GB.

Exchange Online Deskless Worker USL storage allocation will remain at 500 MB.

Because the new default allocation for a user is also the maximum amount of storage allowed for an Exchange Online mailbox, the Exchange Online Extra Storage SKU will no longer be available for purchase. Customers who have purchased the Exchange Online Extra Storage SKU will no longer be billed for extra storage.

Increased SharePoint Site Collection Maximum

With this Service Update, organizations will be able to create as many as 100 site collections in SharePoint Online. Previously, organizations were limited to a maximum of 20 SharePoint Online site collections.

Improved Domain Management Experience

Microsoft Online Services is introducing a new domain management experience that utilizes Web services to automatically configure domain records hosted by eNom, streamlining the domain configuration process. Previously, this process required a number of manual configuration steps.

Now a customer can provide their eNom domain hosting credentials in the new Domain Configuration Wizard in the Microsoft Online Administration Center, and the domain will automatically be configured to work with Microsoft Online Services. Or customers can choose to bypass the Wizard and configure their domain manually, depending on personal preference.

At the end of the Wizard configuration process, customers will receive a report of the domain records that existed prior to domain configuration, along with the additional domain records after domain configuration.

Microsoft Online Services is planning to add domain auto-configuration for other domain registrars in future releases.

File Attachments to Service Requests

Customers can now attach files to service requests, providing greater visibility to technical support engineers and significantly streamlining the troubleshooting process.

The maximum size for an individual file attachment is 5MB, and the maximum size for all files attached to a service request is 20MB. As many as 20 files can be attached per ticket.

Support for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

The Mac Sign-In application now supports Mac OS X Snow Leopard. No update or changes are required for your users to take advantage of this enhanced support for Mac OS X.

Enhancements to Live Meeting Usage Report

Deleted users in the Usage Report available to administrators will now have "_Deleted" appended to the user, allowing administrators to distinguish between active and deleted users in the Usage Report.

Enhancements to Live Meeting Recording Publication Process

A number of improvements have been made to the process to publish Live Meeting recordings, including:

  • Synchronized audio and content display in recordings
  • Enhanced audio quality in WMV recordings
  • Improved fidelity of WMV recordings
  • Improved application sharing to accurately display application-sharing content versus appearing as black screen or torn image
  • Publish WMV recordings including application sharing with widescreen content accurately
  • Include slide transitions that follow application sharing accurately in WMV recordings
  • Incorporate internal manual publishing tool functionality into standard recording publishing process
    Original source: here

Enhancements and certifications announced that raises security and privacy for BPOS

Microsoft announced @ the 8th annual MS US Public Sector CIO Summit some important enhancements and certifications that raises the  security and privacy for BPOS. Below a summary of the changes announced:

  • BPOS meets a wide variety of industry standards and certifications, including International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001, Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 Type I and Type II, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Title 21 CFR Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, and Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) compliance. Today, more than 500 state and local governments use Microsoft Online Services in the United States, including 48 of 50 states. These range from the largest entities with tens of thousands of seats to the smallest of municipalities.
  • BPOS Federal is launching today for U.S. federal government agencies, related government contractors and others that require the highest levels of security features and protocols. The new offering includes all the certifications and security features of the Business Productivity Online Suite and more. The service is housed on separate, dedicated infrastructure in secured facilities. Physical access to those systems is limited by biometric access controls to a small number of individuals who, in compliance with International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), must be citizens of the United States who have undergone rigorous background checks, including fingerprinting.
    The above was announced by Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Online. More information and a video can be found here.

 

BPOS: Announcing Updates to Hosted Blackberry Service

From the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog.

Microsoft Online Services is now a BlackBerry® certified partner and BlackBerry Alliance Elite Member. For the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, licenses and support are now a part of the Microsoft Online Services Hosted BlackBerry service, which customers buy directly from Microsoft. Previously, customers had to purchase and provide their own licenses and support agreement, purchased through a third party, in order to use the Hosted BlackBerry service.

The Hosted BlackBerry service from Microsoft Online Services offers the most commonly requested BlackBerry capabilities, including wireless access to e-mail, calendar, tasks and contacts with global address list (GAL) integration, and device management such as device wipe and password reset. Details about the Hosted Blackberry Service can be found in the Microsoft Online Services Mobility Solutions Description, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. The document includes a full solution description and service pricing.

To learn more or to request a Hosted BlackBerry service agreement, contact your Microsoft representative or a Microsoft Online Services partner. If you do not have a Microsoft partner or representative, you may request the Hosted BlackBerry service agreement through Microsoft Online Services Customer Service.

For additional details please about the Microsoft Online Services mobility offerings, visit www.microsoft.com/online/mobility.

Disabling End-User Notifications in the Sign-In Application

You can configure the End-User Notification whenever a new version of the Microsoft Online Sign-In application is released. This is useful if you want to control whether you want your end-users to receive a notification or not.

For example: a End-User who has no rights to install anything on his computer doesn’t want to be bothered by any new version release. You can disable this notifications by use of Group Policy’s (preferred by myself) or by editing the registry (in theory the GPO does the same off course :-) ).

Here is a description how to do this: Microsoft Online Services Team Blog – Disabling End-User Notifications in the Sign-In Application

kudos to the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog