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Tag: Office 365

  • Microsoft Extends Office 365 Migration Service to SMBs

    Microsoft is now offering SMBs assistance with moving to Office 365 by extending onboarding and migration support to customers between 50 and 149 seats through its Microsoft FastTrack service.

    FastTrack was previously only available to customers with 150 seats or more.

    “Microsoft partners who serve SMBs say companies reach a breaking point with Google Apps around the 50-employee mark, the point at which a business typically starts to require centralized management capabilities, enterprise-grade security features, and integrated productivity and collaboration apps,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “That’s why the new SMB offer is designed to help businesses with 50+ seats deploy Office 365 faster and more seamlessly.”

    “Whether a business is currently using a cloud productivity solution other than Office 365 or hasn’t yet made the transition to the cloud – this is the best time for businesses to choose Office 365,” the spokesperson says.

    The company is also expanding the FY16 Adoption Offer to include Office 365 small business plans and adding payouts for customer deployments of 50–149 seats so partners will be eligible for a payout of $25 per seat for 50–149 seats.

    Microsoft discusses the services more here.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Rackspace Gets Office 365 Security And Storage Features

    Rackspace announced that it has added foiur new features to its “fanatical support for Office 365 to enhance storage, security, and cost savings.

    These include email archiving, Azure rights management, extra storage, and Exchange Online Kiosk.

    According to the company, Rackspace email archiving “Advances data protection by allowing customers to automatically archive Office 365 email data with unlimited retention and storage” while Azure rights management “increases data security with mailbox encryption and user rights.”

    The extra storage is an increase of the SharePoint storage limit from 10GB + 500 MB per subscribed user to unlimited storage capacity.

    Office 365 Exchange Online Kiosk is described as a “stand alone offering of an affordable, browser-based version of Exchange, optimal for customers who simply need to send and receive mail without the need for other productivity applications or Outlook access.”

    The company discusses the new integrations further in a blog post here.

    Image via Office 365 (Facebook)

  • Microsoft Adds New Office 365 Communication Features Via Skype for Business

    Microsoft Adds New Office 365 Communication Features Via Skype for Business

    Microsoft announced on Monday that it is giving Office 365-using organizations new communications services for voice, video, and meetings to replace their legacy systems with services built on the Skype for Business experience.

    New services include PSTN Conferencing, Skype Meeting Broadcast, Cloud PBX, and PSTN Calling.

    “PSTN Conferencing provides the flexibility to dial in to a meeting from a traditional phone, in addition to the existing ability to join a meeting with a single click on your PC or mobile device,” says Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice-president for Microsoft Office. “Skype Meeting Broadcast makes it easier than ever to produce large virtual meetings for up to 10,000 meeting attendees, who can join from virtually any browser or device (see it in action). Now Skype for Business truly is a single platform for every type of meeting.”

    “Cloud PBX enables companies to eliminate separate PBX systems and transition to the cloud with Office 365 as the central location to manage users for communication and with PSTN Calling, Office 365 customers can also subscribe to Microsoft managed calling plans and phone numbers, starting in the U.S. with more markets coming later,” he adds.

    The company also announced new security and analytics functionality for Office 365.

    With Delve Analytics, users can access dashboards for insights on time and relationships, and with Power BI, they can visualize and analyze data. A new Customer Lockbox features lets customers get new approval rights, transparency, and control over cloud data.

    There is also advanced eDiscovery, which uses machine learning, predictive coding, and text analytics to reduce costs and issues with sorting through large quantities of data.

    Finally, there’s now advanced threat protection to protect against unknown malware/viruses.

    More on all of the above and more here.

    Image via Microsoft (YouTube)

  • Microsoft Launches Office Insider Program

    Microsoft Launches Office Insider Program

    Microsoft announced on Friday the launch of a new program called Office Insider. This gives Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 University subscribers the ability to opt in to pre-release builds of Office 2016 for Windows.

    The program was announced alongside new features for PowerPoint, which are exclusive to Office 365 subscribers. These, the company said, are the first in a series of planned Office 365 updates which it will be rolling out soon.

    “As an Insider, you get first-hand access to the latest innovations, putting you on the inside track for all things Office,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Microsoft Office team. “And when you become an Office Insider, you are joining a community of like-minded power users. With your partnership, we can ensure a high quality Office experience for millions of Office users worldwide.”

    “If you are a commercial Office 365 subscriber and would like to get early access to new features, you can opt in to Office 365 First Release,” he added. “Mac customers, stay tuned for more shortly on Office Insider for Mac.”

    You can find the program and get more details here.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Microsoft PowerPoint Gets New ‘Game Changing’ Tools

    Microsoft PowerPoint Gets New ‘Game Changing’ Tools

    Microsoft announced on Friday that it is giving PowerPoint some new “game changing” tools that make it easier to build “designer grade” layouts and transitions.

    The PowerPoint update is just the first in a series of planned upgrades for Office 365 subscribers. The new tools include PowerPoint Designer and Morph, which automate the creation of slides and presentations and utilize a cloud-based recommendation engine and smart animation technology.

    “PowerPoint Designer allows anyone to create high quality professional slides within seconds,” explains Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Office team. “Just drop an image into your presentation and Designer provides you with several design ideas. Select your favorite and you’re done! This allows you to spend less time figuring out how to produce high quality designs and more time preparing for that key moment—your presentation.”

    “This all works thanks to a powerful combination of automated design and smart image analysis,” he adds. “PowerPoint Designer was built in collaboration with professional graphic designers, who helped develop over 12,000 creative blueprints. Designer applies cloud intelligence to analyze and identify the most compelling portion of your images to determine which blueprints work best with your content. For example, if the visual contains a natural scene, Designer can zoom, crop and frame it. But if the image contains a chart, it focuses in on the relevant region to ensure the important data is highlighted. Designer then selects from the 12,000+ blueprints to provide multiple layout options to help you make the most of your image. The end result is a high quality and customized presentation—in seconds.”

    The Morph feature creates “cinematic motion” by animating between slides. It can even animate 3-D shapes or be applied at the word and character levels. That includes text-wrapping.

    For more on how to use Morph, read this.

    PowerPoint Designer and Morph are both premium features and are only available to Office 365 subscribers.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Microsoft Makes Office 365, Yammer Improvements

    Microsoft Makes Office 365, Yammer Improvements

    This week, Microsoft has been talking up its approach to modern collaboration and “the rise of dynamic teams“.

    “Over the last decade, the way people work has had incredible influence on productivity solutions,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “The need for seamless teamwork and a collective knowledge base across the company continues to drive new experiences for collaboration; people must be able to access, share and discover information in real time.”

    Building on this, the company announced some things it’s doing to improve Yammer.

    “Yammer is evolving in intelligent and integrated ways,” the spokesperson says.

    First of all, Microsoft is integrating the Yammer experience more deeply within Office 365, making it a part of Office 365 Groups. It’s also adding Yammer signals part of the Office Graph.

    “Through this deeper integration, teams can seamlessly move between Yammer conversations, meetings in Skype for Business, Outlook email, files in OneDrive and content discovery in Delve,” Microsoft’s Juliet Wei says in a blog post. “Next, we’re making Yammer itself a better place for teams to work by using our algorithmic feed to surface the teams and conversations you should know about, so you can stay on top of all your projects from the feed and engage more deeply within groups. And, because we know that teams themselves often span across organizations, we’re making it possible for extended teams to stay in sync and do more together.”

    Wei also announced a new external messaging feature in Yammer, which enables users to add extended team members from outside their organizations to conversations. These might include partners, vendors, or customers.

    She explains, “To include an external participant, simply add their email address to a Yammer conversation in your network, and they’ll be able to see and respond to this conversation from their own Yammer network or email inbox. Your data stays secure because outside participants only access the conversations they have been added to and not the rest of the information in your network. With 40 percent or more of the U.S. workforce expected to be made up of contingent or independent workers by 2020, companies need to empower the formation of dynamic teams. External messaging is an important step in that direction.”

    The company also announced that Office 365 Video is now available to Office 365 business customers worldwide. There’s a native iPhone app and new browser capabilities.

    More on this here.

    Image via MIcrosoft

  • Microsoft Launches Office 365 Video

    Microsoft announced the launch of Office 365 Video, which gives businesses and organizations a destination for posting, sharing, and discovering relevant video content.

    The company names onboarding new employees, distributing a message from the CEO, and community contributions as examples of where this might come in handy.

    “With a beautiful user interface and intuitive content management options, Office 365 Video is designed to meet the requirements of IT and win the hearts and minds of users,” says product manager Mark Kashman. “Powered by Azure Media Services—the same service used during the Olympics (6,000 plus hours of video in 18 days)—Office 365 Video benefits from adaptive smooth streaming technology optimizing video playback for the device it’s being viewed on. It, too, leverages Yammer and the Office Graph to deliver a social, personalized experience within Office 365.”

    To upload a video, you can drag and drop video files into the web interface or upload them from a mobile device.

    “Videos are easily searchable via enterprise search, with a dedicated search experience in the video portal already scoped to show only video results,” says Kashman. “All uploaded videos are discoverable in Office Delve (similar to documents, videos are automatically fed into the Office Graph).”

    Everything in the video portal is encrypted.

    Microsoft is working on a variety of features for the offering, which will be available in the near future. You can read up on those here.

    The product is rolling out to Office 365 First Release customers at first, and will come to all customers by early next year.

    Image via YouTube

  • Microsoft Intros New Small Business Office 365 Plans

    Microsoft announced today that it will release three new Office 365 plans on October 1st, aimed at meeting varying needs of small and midsized businesses, ranging from 1 to 250 employees.

    The first is called Office 365 Business. This includes Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Publisher, and a terabyte of OneDrive for Business cloud storage.

    The second is Office 365 Business Essentials. This one provides business class email and calendars, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, cloud storage, file storage, etc.

    The third is Office 365 Business Premium, which includes everything from both of the other plans.

    Microsoft lists the following as benefits of the new plans:

    New Choice: The Office 365 Business plan ($8.25/user/month) makes it simple to get just the familiar, full Office apps at a great price – always up to date and available on all your devices including your PC, Mac, iPad and smartphone. The included 1TB of cloud storage makes it easy to access and edit your important files from anywhere.

    New Value: Business Premium includes Midsize Business’ services at the Small Business Premium price of $12.50 user/month. Business Essentials matches Small Business on price ($5/user/month) with improved features and additional services like Yammer and Active Directory support. The higher seat limit of 300 means even more businesses can take advantage of the great value these plans provide.

    New Flexibility: As you grow and your technology needs change, you can move your company (or just specific users) to an Enterprise plan, a different Business plan, or even add solutions like Project, Visio, Dynamics CRM Online and more.

    The new plans will replace the current ones – Small Business, Small Business Premium, and Midsize Business. The enterprise plans will stay the same.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Microsoft Adds Yammer Conversations To OneDrive, SharePoint Online Files

    Microsoft is rolling out new enterprise social experiences across Office 365, as announced at the SharePoint Conference earlier this year. First, they’re launching Yammer conversation capabilities in Office apps.

    “Instead of going back and forth with email attachments for feedback on a document, new Yammer document conversations allow people to share ideas, questions, images and videos directly alongside their content,” a spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews. “Through the embedded Yammer feed, editing and reviewing becomes more contextual so people can focus on creativity without ever leaving the application they’re working in.”

    Document Conversations supports over 30 file types including .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf, .png, .gif, .mp4, and .avi.Yammer threads are only visible in files stored in a SharePoint Online document library or OneDrive for Business in Office 365, so you won’t see it in Office desktop or when the document is sent as a mail attachment.

    “This is one of the many ways Office 365 is changing the way people work so they can get more done,” the spokesperson adds. “Also coming this year, the Yammer Groups experience will extend transparency across the suite, machine learning in the Office Graph and new Codename Oslo application will connect people to what’s most relevant, while Codename Clutter and enhanced file sharing with OneDrive for Business will evolve email as we know it.”

    You can’t start conversations in a Yammer external network, though Microsoft says it’s looking at ways to extend collaboration around content “beyond your firewall”.

    Image via YouTube

  • Microsoft And Salesforce Launch Strategic Cloud Partnership

    Microsoft And Salesforce Launch Strategic Cloud Partnership

    Microsoft and Salesforce just announced a strategic partnership, which will see the two creating new solutions that connect Salesforce’s CRM apps and platform to Microsoft Office and Windows.

    The company announced two specific products: Salesforce1 for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 and Salesforce for Office 365. The former will let customers access Salesforce “and run their business” from their Windows device. A preview will be available this fall followed by general availability in 2015.

    With the latter, businesses will be able to access and collaborate on Office content from within Salesforce and on Salesforce1 using Office Mobile, Office for iPad and Office 365. They’ll be able to use OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online as storage options for Salesforce, and use Salesforce and Outlook together with a new Salesforce App for Outlook. Finally, businesses will be able to connect Salesforce data to Excel and Power BI for Office 365.

    “We are excited to partner with salesforce.com and help customers thrive in a mobile and cloud-first world,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Working together we’ll deliver new solutions that connect the customer insights of Salesforce to the cloud productivity of Office 365, the cloud platform of Azure and the mobility of Windows, so our customers can do more.”

    “Today is about putting the customer first,” said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “Together with Microsoft, we are building bridges that allow customers to be more productive.”

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Microsoft Office 365 Personal Makes Productivity Even More Affordable

    Microsoft Office 365 Personal Makes Productivity Even More Affordable

    Microsoft Office used to be software that either came with your PC or you had to spend hundreds of dollars just for the base software. Microsoft dumped this sales model a few years ago with the introduction of Office 365 – a subscription service that gave consumers all the perks of Microsoft Office at a fraction of the cost. Some would argue, however, that Office 365 was still too expensive, especially for those who were only going to use it on one PC. Microsoft finally listened and announced Office 365 Personal last month for those consumers.

    After unveiling Office 365 Personal last month, Microsoft today announced that the new Office 365 subscription tier is now available. For only $6.99 per month, single users can gain access to all of Office 365 on one PC or Mac. The subscription will let users install it onto one tablet as well. On top of that, Microsoft will give subscribers 20GB of OneDrive storage. If you’d rather save a bit of money, you can pay $69.99 upfront for a year subscription.

    Before Office 365 Personal, there was only one Office 365 subscription plan for consumers. The original plan has now been renamed Office 365 Home, but nothing else has changed. For $9.99 a month, subscribers can still install Office on up to five PCs or Macs as well as use Office on five tablets. Those five users also get 20GB of OneDrive storage each.

    Because Microsoft believes in synergy, both Office 365 Personal and Office 365 Home also come with 60 minutes of Skype calling per month. The minutes can be used to call people in over 60 countries so those in the international business scene will definitely want to take advantage of this particular perk.

    If you want to directly compare plans, check out the graph below:

    Microsoft Office 365 Personal Makes Productivity Even More Affordable

    If Office 365 Personal sounds good to you, you can check it out alongside the other plans here.

    Image via GoDaddy/YouTube

  • Microsoft Announces Office 365 Personal

    Microsoft Announces Office 365 Personal

    In 2011, Microsoft introduced Office 365 as a subscription service that nets you all the benefits of Microsoft Office for a monthly or annual fee. The only problem with Microsoft’s plan was that Office 365 was designed around families so you were paying for more than one license even if you were the only one using it. Microsoft has finally realized that people without families want to use Office as well and have introduced a new subscription tier just for them.

    Microsoft announced this morning that Office 365 Personal is for the Office aficionados that lead lonely lives. No more will have you to pay for multiple licenses as an affordable $6.99/month fee will hook you up with a single Office 365 license that can be installed on one computer and one tablet. If you don’t like the idea of paying a monthly fee, you can also pony up the annual fee of $69.99 and be done with it.

    Despite this new focus on the individual, Office 365 Home Premium will stick around. It will get a name change though. The software will now be called Office 365 Home once Personal launches to better illustrate what each one is for. Personal is for single use whereas Home is for those who want to install Office on multiple computers. The price will remain the same.

    Outside of the price, Microsoft says that Office 365 Personal and Home will both offer the same benefits. Both subscriptions will net you an hour of Skype calling per month, 20GB of additional OneDrive storage and invisible updates to Office.

    There’s no date yet for when Office 365 Personal will be made available, but it should be soon.

    Image via GoDaddy/YouTube

  • Microsoft Launches OneDrive For Business, New Office 365 Platform Updates

    Microsoft announced new updates to the Office 365 platform and the launch of OneDrive for Business the SharePoint conference on Monday.

    “As a developer, you have new scenarios to create contextual solutions that span Office 365 from the web, mobile apps and Office,” Microsoft’s Arpan Shah says in a blog post. “You have new robust APIs and tool improvements to make building solutions easier than ever before. And your solutions have the potential to reach a vast number of Office 365 users across businesses, government organizations, and schools, who spend hours every day using Office.”

    “Productivity apps should be available everywhere and anywhere users want them,” Shah adds. “The average information worker spends hours each day in the Office user experience across Office apps, web browsers, and mobile devices. We’re committed to enabling developers to easily and securely build solutions that integrate across the entire Office 365 user experience, including core productivity, mail, social collaboration, and communication powered by Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Yammer, and Lync.”

    More on the specifics here.

    OneDrive for Business is the new brand for what was once know as SkyDrive Pro – Microsoft’s personalized online storage solution for companies’ employees.

    The launch follows rebranding last month of Microsoft’s Office web apps as Office Online and of SkyDrive as OneDrive.

    More on OneDrive for Business here.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Office 365 Message Encryption Is Now Available

    Encryption has been on everyone’s minds since it was revealed that the NSA combs through Internet data going into and out of the U.S. Major Internet companies have moved towards encrypting their users’ data and Microsoft is now doing the same for Office 365 users.

    Microsoft announced this afternoon that Office 365 Message Encryption is now live and will be rolling out to users. The service will allow you to send encrypted email messages to anyone through your Office 365 account. To use it, your organization will have had to licensed Office 365 Enterprise E3 or E4. If not, you can also purchase a subscription to Windows Azure Rights Management to gain access.

    According to Microsoft, this new message encryption service is based on its previous Exchange Hosted Encryption service. The new service features a number of new features that warrant the subscription cost.

    You’ll want to watch the below video to learn how Office 365 Message Encryption works. You’ll also see how you can set it up for yourself or your organization:

    If you need more help in setting up Office 365 Message Encryption, you’ll want to check out Microsoft’s documentation. It will cover in detail “the requirements and steps needed to enable Office 365 Message Encryption” on your network.

    Microsoft will also be discussing the new program at the Microsoft Exchange Conference in Austin, TX on March 31.

    Image via Microsoft

  • DocuSign Brings eSignature To Office 365

    DocuSign Brings eSignature To Office 365

    Microsoft Office has always been an important part of Microsoft’s overall strategy, but Office 365 is seemingly now the most important aspect of Microsoft’s core enterprise business. The company has been busy securing partnerships that add useful applications to Office 365 with this week’s addition being no exception.

    Microsoft announced today that it has entered into a “long-term strategic partnership” with DocuSign to offer the latter’s eSignature apps across all of Office 365. What this means is that Office 365 will now be able to submit and digitally sign documents without having to leave Office. It’s a win for DocuSign as its product will be used in more places and it’s a win for Microsoft as it keeps users inside the Office ecosystem.

    “Leading partners like DocuSign are building apps on the Office platform to help our customers get more value directly from their most highly used applications,” said John Case, vice president of Marketing, Microsoft Office. “This partnership with DocuSign helps our customers keep transactions digital and manage eSignatures seamlessly from within Office 365, where they already communicate, collaborate and create.”

    Here’s a list of benefits users will experience thanks to this partnership:

  • Easy administration and use. Office 365 and SharePoint administrators will be able to add DocuSign Apps for all users directly from their administration consoles.
  • Single sign-on. DocuSign has adopted Windows Azure Active Directory to provide single sign-on capabilities with Office 365 credentials, providing a seamless path to manage accounts.
  • Secured storage. DocuSigned documents are automatically stored in Microsoft OneDrive for Business for full control.
  • Office Store availability. Individuals can use self-service to access the apps and Word templates directly from the Office Store.
  • Continued innovation. DocuSign and Microsoft will continue to collaborate to bring new innovations to customers on the Office 365 platform.

    • “We’re excited about the momentum behind Office 365 and customers making the transition from their traditional Office applications to all-new scenarios enabled by cloud services,” said Keith Krach, chairman and CEO, DocuSign. “We believe Office 365 customers of all sizes will appreciate the seamless availability of DocuSign integrated into the applications they use every day. The combination of Microsoft and DocuSign further helps organizations keep business digital, and leverages the power of the cloud to help them focus on business results.”

    If you want to see DocuSign’s contributions to Office 365 in action, you’ll get your chance at either SharePoint 2014 Conference or DocuSign Momentum.

    Image via DocuSign/YouTube

  • Microsoft Makes Office More Accessible For The Blind

    Microsoft Office is one of the most used pieces of software on the planet. It stands to reason then that some of the people using it may be blind or vision impaired. While there are screen reading tools available to make their lives easier, Microsoft is now making them easier to obtain.

    Microsoft announced today that it has partnered with GW Micro to offer its Window-Eyes screen reading software for free to customers who are either blind or vision impaired. The offer is open to customers who have purchased and installed either Microsoft Office 2010 or Office 2013. Those who have Office 2013 through Office 365 are also included.

    Microsoft says that this latest partnership helps to make its products even more accessible to more people:

    At Microsoft we are committed to provide everyone access to our technology. A fundamental consideration during product design, development and testing of Office is the level of accessibility of our applications. The Office team works closely with a variety of groups to improve the accessibility of our software including standards bodies, regulators, advocacy groups and an ecosystem of assistive technology (AT) vendors including the Narrator team in Microsoft. Our goal of this work is to provide our customers with solutions that give them choice, meets a variety of accessibility needs and is delivered at an affordable price.

    By partnering with GW Micro we are able to improve access to the Office suite including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook. Whether people want to use Office at home, school or work they now have more flexibility and an improved opportunity to take advantage of our latest software innovations.

    If you want to learn more about Window-Eyes or access the free download, hit up the official Web site.

    Image via GoDaddy/YouTube

  • Microsoft, GoDaddy Team Up To Offer Office 365 To Small Businesses

    If you own a small business, you’re going to need some productivity software for your employees. If you use GoDaddy as your Web host, you won’t have to look far.

    Microsoft and GoDaddy announced today that the two are teaming up to offer Office 365 as GoDaddy’s “exclusive core business-class email and productivity service.” The agreement will see Office 365 integrated seamlessly into GoDaddy’s other enterprise offerings, including “professional email connected to their domain names, cloud storage and a full suite of Microsoft productivity solutions.”

    “Combining our small-business expertise together with Microsoft’s productivity offerings opens new doors for small businesses to easily get the tools they need to get more done in their day,” said Steven Aldrich, senior vice president of Business Applications, GoDaddy. “We’ve created a simple way to attach Office 365 to a domain name, helping small-business owners look professional and work anywhere, making the business of running their business easier.”

    The partnership is good for GoDaddy, but it’s even better for Microsoft. The company that built Windows is looking for more revenue streams as the PC market is slowly being taken over by the likes of Android and iOS. Office is arguably the company’s most well known product and its usage in enterprise environments is a given. By integrating Office 365 into GoDaddy’s own enterprise services, Microsoft can now target even more enterprise customers.

    “We’re excited that GoDaddy has chosen to exclusively offer Office 365 to its small-business customers, giving them easy and supported access to productivity tools being used by some of the most successful businesses in the world,” said John Case, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office. “GoDaddy’s relationship with small businesses combined with Office 365, the fastest-growing Microsoft product in history, will help bring the benefits of Office 365 and modern cloud services to even more companies, whether they’re seeking to modernize how they do business or simply starting up.”

    So, how much is this going to cost you? GoDaddy is offering what it calls Email Essentials, which includes 5GB of email storage, the ability to sync email, calendar and contacts across device and 2GB of SkyDrive cloud storage, for $3.99 per user per month.

    To actually get access to Office Web apps, including Word and Excel, you’re going to have to pony up $8.99 per user per month, but you also get 25GB of cloud storage and 50GB of email storage.

    If your employees need the desktop versions of Microsoft Office, you can opt to pay $12.49 a month to get access to everything in the previous tier plus access to the Office for desktop and Office 365 for mobile. It should be noted that this tier only allows you to install Microsoft Office on up to five PCs or Macs.

    Image via GoDaddy/YouTube

  • Office 365 Student Advantage Now Available Globally

    Microsoft has been doing everything in its power to get students using Office 365 – the company’s cloud-based productivity software. The company has offered free trials, discounts and is now even giving away free subscriptions to students at qualifying universities.

    Microsoft announced today that its Student Advantage program is now available to universities around the globe. In short, Student Advantage is a program that lets universities that license Office 365 for its faculty and staff give away free subscriptions to Office 365 ProPlus to its students.

    It’s obvious that Microsoft is doing this to get more people using its software, but there’s a hint of altruism in the company’s latest promotion. Microsoft says that most hiring managers these days are looking for college students with 20 essential skills and the third on that list of skills is proficiency with Microsoft Office. By offering Office 365 to students for free, Microsoft hopes that universities will be able to better equip students to meet the needs of the modern workplace.

    Microsoft has put together a little infographic to display all the benefits students receive by using Office 365 and Student Advantage:

    Office 365 Student Advantage Now Available Globally

    To learn more about Student Advantage and Office 365, check out the promotion’s landing page.

    [Image: Office 365 Education]

  • Microsoft Announces Office 365 For Nonprofits

    Are you a nonprofit looking for an easy way to help your organization collaborate on the Web? You could always use Google Apps for Nonprofits, but Microsoft thinks you might like its service more.

    Microsoft announced this morning that it’s launching Office 365 for Nonprofits – a new program within the company’s Technology for Good program that aims to donate copies of Office 365 to nonprofits. The program is open to nonprofits and NGOs in 41 countries and will be rolled out to 90 by July 2014. Microsoft also notes that there is no cap on the number of employees who can use Office 365 for Nonprofits so organizations with thousands of employees around the world are still eligible.

    “Office 365 has been vital to the work we do, which by its nature is cross-organizational and spans the globe,” said Erik Arnold, chief information officer of PATH, an international nonprofit that transforms global health through innovation. “For example, now our Malaria Vaccine Initiative team can collaborate across geographies, accessing their files no matter where they are in the world. Office 365 is the ideal solution for our technology needs. Our whole staff has found value in the many features that help them efficiently stay connected to each other and their work, such as calendar overlays, desktop sharing, and group video conferencing.”

    To promote the new program, Microsoft put together a short video featuring nonprofits using Office 365 for Nonprofit:

    If the above video has convinced you to use Office 365 for Nonprofits, you’ll first want to know that Office 365 is not free software. Microsoft can help make it free for your organization, however, through a software donation. You can apply for a donation here. While you wait on your confirmation, you can try out the Office 365 for Nonprofits free trial right now.

    [Image: Microsoft]

  • Microsoft Just Doubled The Size Of Exchange Online Mailboxes

    Microsoft announced that it is doubling the size of user mailboxes in all Exchange Online and Office 365 service plans. Inbox sizes are going from 2 5GB to 50 GB.

    Better yet, users won’t have to pay any more for the additional storage.

    “With this increase even the most active email users don’t have to worry about mailbox size limitations-we’ve got you covered!” writes Exchange product manager Stephen Brown in a blog post. “There’s no price increase associated with this change. Our doubling of your mailbox storage is simply part of our promise to continuously deliver value to our Office 365 customers.”

    He continues, “This increase to a 50 GB mailbox per user benefits Exchange Online and Office 365 service plans, including: Exchange Online Plan 1, Office 365 Small Business, Midsize Business, Enterprise E1, Government G1, and Education A1. If you have one of our premium service plans (Exchange Online Plan 2, Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4, Government G3 and G4, Education A3 and A4), you already enjoy unlimited email storage through your personal archive, but now your default primary mailbox size is increasing to 50 GB. Kiosk user mailboxes are doubling in size, too-from 1 GB to 2 GB.”

    Microsoft is also increasing the size of other mailboxes. Shared mailboxes and Resources mailboxes are increasing to 10 GB, which is more than twice what they were.

    Microsoft Mailbox Sizes

    Users won’t need to do anything special to get the storage increase. It will just happen automatically. Roll-out has already begun, and will continue into November.

    Image: Microsoft

  • Microsoft Office Now Available On Android

    Microsoft Office Now Available On Android

    In June, Microsoft finally released Office Mobile for iOS after months of rumors and speculation. What about Android though? Microsoft has heard your cries, and have decided to finally bring Office to Google’s mobile OS.

    Microsoft released Office Mobile for Office 365 on the Play Store this morning for all those Android users that can’t bring themselves to use Google Docs on Drive. As the name implies, you must have an Office 365 subscription to use the app. The app is also only available to those running Android 4.0 or later.

    If you fit within the small demographic above, you can look forward to the following features:

    Access documents from virtually anywhere:

  • Cloud – With your phone, you can access Office
    documents that are stored on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, or SharePoint.
  • Recent Documents – Office Mobile is cloud-connected. The documents you’ve recently viewed on your computer are readily available on your phone in the recent documents panel.
  • Email Attachments – You can view and edit Office documents attached to email messages.

    • Office documents look stunning:

  • Great-Looking Documents – Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents look great on your phone, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt Graphics, and shapes.
  • Optimized for phone – Word, Excel and PowerPoint have been optimized for the small screen of your phone.
  • Resume Reading – When opening a Word document from SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro on your phone, it automatically resumes at the place where you left off reading, even if you last viewed the document on your PC or tablet.
  • Presentation Views – The Slide Navigator view in PowerPoint lets you browse slides faster, while speaker notes help you practice your presentation.

    • If you find yourself salivating over the prospect of editing a spreadsheet on your Android device, you can grab it here.