SAAS Talk

- by Brett Hill of Adviaya, Inc for Microsoft

One of SharePoint Online’s most useful features is the ability to check in and check out documents. This feature works automatically with Microsoft Office so you can open a document stored in a document library on SharePoint Online, check out the document, work on it offline, then check it back in. Others will see the document is checked out (as shown with the green arrow attached to the word document as shown below) and have the option to download a read-only version.

Even with these safeguards, it is possible to overwrite a checked in version of a document with older version. SharePoint Online has a solution for this – Document Version Control.

Enabling Document Version Control:

Document Libraries in SharePoint Online support version control at multiple levels. The SharePoint Site administrator has to enable versioning in document library settings, as it is not enabled by default. It’s very easy to enable as follows:

i. Go to the document library.

In this screenshot I have clicked on Shared Document link to navigate to the Shared Documents library.

ii. In the document library, click on ‘Settings’ in the document library menu, and select ‘Document Library Settings’ option, as shown in this screenshot below.

iii. In the document library customization page (‘Customize Shared Document’ in the screenshot below), select ‘Versioning Settings’, under the ‘General Settings’ sections.

iv. The version settings page will open as shown in the screenshot below.

Before configuring the settings, understand that SharePoint versioning has built into it the notion of publishing drafts and major versions. Drafts may or may not be visible to others browsing the site – that’s controlled by you with these settings. Major versions are considered “published” versions are visible to others by default.

Require content approval – Before you publish a major version, you can elect to have it approved. This is a great feature for tightly controlled documents that you need to insure are reviewed before they published.

Document Version History – this is what turns on the version history feature

· No versioning- this is the default setting. 

· Create major versions – A major version is basically the document that is ‘published’ on the library. With this option selected, all the versions of the document are considered to be “published” versions. Only whole number versions are created and retained in this case.

· Create major and minor (draft) versions – When you select this option, you have the option of indicating of the version you are checking in is a major or minor updated. Minor versions are marked with a fractional number in the second octet.

· Optionally limit the number of versions to retain – You can use this option to limit the number of versions of a document retained by the document library. These limits can be established at both the major and minor version levels. This can be useful to control how much disk space your site consumes.

Draft Item Security – you can hide draft documents from view easily with this setting.

Require Check Out – You should enable this setting to force version updates.

Once set, when you check in a document, a user will see :

In addition, now when you right click on the document, you will see additional options.

So you can now select the Version History and view any version you want.

Very nice!

If you ever had to untangle the mess that happens when you have multiple version of a document floating around, you’ll quickly recognize the value in the version control features built into SharePoint Online.

See ya in the cloud,

Brett

From the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog

Written by: Kayvaan Ghassemieh

Today, we kick off our Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington DC. Among the many cool announcements happening this week, we are excited to be sharing more information about some amazing new capabilities coming to BPOS in the near future. We want to make sure that you, our customers, have this information early enough to get ready and make the most of the new stuff that’s coming.

New Stuff!

Some of the new capabilities you’ll see in this next update include unified messaging and voice mail with Exchange, enterprise social networking with SharePoint, and Office Web Apps as well as platform-level capabilities such as single sign-on (the #1 most-requested feature!), identity federation, Powershell scripting and much much more. The list below includes some of the features and capabilities that are coming to BPOS. We’ll have more detail on these in the coming months.

With the launch of Exchange, SharePoint and Office 2010 earlier this year, we began the work to update BPOS with the new capabilities that these products deliver. We started with our largest customers in dedicated cloud environments, and many of them are now fully deployed on the 2010 wave of products. Now, we are beginning the work to update the broad base of BPOS customers.

In this next update, we are making huge strides bringing decades of on-premises innovation to the cloud, and we get very close to parity with our server solutions. We expect a preview of these capabilities to be available later this year, with most customers deploying over the course of the following year and beyond, if they so choose.

I don’t have details to share on how the new capabilities will be packaged and priced, but I do know we’ll continue to offer the best bang for your cloud buck.

Getting Ready

Customers should take the following steps to start preparing for the next major service update:

1. Make sure you receive the latest communications!

• Make sure that contact details for both the “Account Owner” and “Service Administrator” are up-to-date in Microsoft Online Customer Portal and that these email accounts spec are monitored regularly.
• Make sure that the domain “@microsoftonline.com” is marked as safe, to prevent the possibility of communications from Microsoft Online Services being blocked or filtered.
• Stay tuned for email communications as well as communications in the Microsoft Online Administration Center , the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog and the Deploying BPOS page for more information and guidance from Microsoft coming this fall.

2. Determine if you need to upgrade any client software

• The free Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit can assist customers in inventorying client software in their local environment:
• Consider upgrading any client applications as is practical.

3. Decide how you want to leverage new identity and sign-on options.

• Understand the two different identity scenarios that the next major service update of BPOS will offer: federated identity using ADFS (single sign-on for end users) or a managed identity scenario (end users have separate credentials for BPOS).

For now, let me know if you have any questions in the blog comments. Thanks for your business, and I hope you are as excited as I am about the awesome things coming to the next generation of BPOS!

Best,
Kayvaan

New Capabilities

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
• 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
• Identity federation
• Redesigned admin interface
• More administration and access control

System Requirements

Operating System

• Windows *
  • Windows XP SP3 with RPC over HTTP patch
  • Windows Vista SP2
  • Windows 7
• Mac
  • OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
  • 10.5 (Leopard)
  • 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

Office Client **

• Office 2007 SP2 or Office 2010
• Office 2008 for Mac & Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition
• .NET 2.0 or later
• Microsoft Communicator “14”
• Mac Messenger 9

Browser

• Administration Center and My Company Portal
  • Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP
  • Internet Explorer 7 or higher for Windows Vista and Windows 7
  • Firefox 3.x
  • Safari 4.x
• Outlook Web App
  • Internet Explorer 7 or later
  • Firefox 3 or later
  • Safari 3 or later on Macintosh OS X 10.5
  • Chrome 3 or later
• Outlook Web App Light ***
  • Internet Explorer 5.5 or later
  • Firefox 2 or later
  • Safari 3 or later
  • Opera

* Windows XP Home and Windows Media Center edition are supported but will not support federated identity.

** Office client is not required for customers who choose browser-only access. We are currently investigating Office 2003 support and will publish a list of supported capabilities in the future. Office Communicator ‘14’ will be generally available later this year.

*** OWA Light is designed to optimize the OWA experience for slower connections and alternative Web browsers. For more information about the differences between OWA Premium and OWA Light, see TechNet: Client Features in Outlook Web Access.

WPC 2010 – Worldwide Partner Conference – July 11-15, 2010.

WPC 2010 – Worldwide Partner Conference – July 11-15, 2010.

Apple recently released the iPhone4 and an update to the iPhone operating system (iOS4), which is available for download for older iPhone devices. Devices running iOS4 require a configuration patch to continue using ActiveSync with Exchange Online.

Here are a couple of videos that will show you the Windows Mobile 7 smart phones coming out in December that will work with your Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) Microsoft Online Services subscription. Of particular interest is the SharePoint integration in the first video. 

Microsoft Office in the Office hub on Windows Phone 7 (click here) 

Windows Mobile 7 Dell Lightning Phone See video here.

This document describes the Microsoft® Online Services networking infrastructure components and security features that support delivery of all Online Services for the enterprise that use the Internet for transport. These include all of the offerings that are part of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (Exchange Online, Office Live Meeting, etc), Dynamics, CRM Online, and many others. The document is intended for network engineers and system integrators who work with Microsoft Online Services customers. (Dedicated offerings are covered in a separate downloadable document, Microsoft Online Dedicated Service Descriptions and Service Level Agreements).

The components and features that are described include:

• Enterprise network architecture for Microsoft Online Services
• Microsoft’s Internet connectivity
• Network security Microsoft is constantly investing in new technologies, expansion, and innovation of its network infrastructure.

This document is updated regularly to reflect changes that are deployed to the network to support Microsoft Online Services.

Download @ source : Microsoft Online Services – Enterprise Network Services Overview