BEI Blog
We have had a number of questions about recovering deleted email in Office 365 and wanted to clarify how it works.
Recovering Deleted Items
Summary – when using Office 365 you have 14 days to recover any items that are deleted from your deleted items in Outlook.
Details – when you delete an email in Outlook it is placed in your Deleted Items Folder. It stays there until you manually delete it or until it is deleted by rules or archiving. In Office 365 items that are then deleted from the Deleted Items Folder are placed in the Recoverable Items folder for an additional 14 days before being permanently removed. Users can recover these items using the Recover Deleted Items feature in Outlook Web App or Outlook. If a user has manually purged an item from the Recoverable Items folder, an administrator can recover the item within the same 14 day window, through a feature called Single Item Recovery.
Recovering Deleted Mailboxes
Summary – you can recover deleted mailboxes within 30 days of the date the mailbox was deleted, after that they are deleted permanently..
Details – When an Exchange Online mailbox is deleted, its contents are recoverable for 30 days. A recovered mailbox contains all of the data stored in it at the time it was deleted. After 30 days, the mailbox is not recoverable. Administrators can recover a deleted mailbox using the Exchange Control Panel.
May, 2012
FISMA Certification
FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) is the latest security certification for Office 365. FISMA is important to our customers because it creates a process for federal agencies to certify and accredit the security of their information management systems. Many BEI clients are government contractors who are required to meet specific standards for their internal networking and applications.
Office 365 Trust Center
You can learn about FISMA Certification and more at the Office 365 Trust Center.
Office 365 Data Center Tour
This video tour takes you through a tour of Microsoft Data Centers that support their online, cloud-based services.
Big Easy Rebate
The Big Easy Rebate is available to give you funds to help with your Office 365 migration or purchase other products or services.
Office 365 Trust Center
You can learn about FISMA Certification and more at the Office 365 Trust Center.
Office 365 Data Center Tour
This video tour takes you through a tour of Microsoft Data Centers that support their online, cloud-based services.
Big Easy Rebate
The Big Easy Rebate is available to give you funds to help with your Office 365 migration or purchase other products or services.
March, 2012:
Price Decrease
Microsoft has announced a price decrease of approximately 20% on most Office 365 services – making these great offerings even more attractive. The most significant – and in our opinion overdue – price decrease is on the SharePoint additional storage. Adding additional storage to SharePoint Online was $2.50/GB and is now $0.20/GB, making online file storage with SharePoint Online much more practical.
Pricing for the most popular Office 365 options is below:
- Exchange Online – $4/user/month
- E1 Suite (Exchange, Lync, SharePoint) – $8/user/month
- E3 Suite (Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, Office Pro Plus) – $20/user/month
The following links have pricing for all Office 365 Services and Office 365 Suites.
Big Easy Rebate
In addition, the Big Easy Rebate is available to give you funds to help with your Office 365 migration or purchase other products or services.
Kiosk Suites
Lastly, the Kiosk suites have been upgraded to include:
- Active Sync support for mobile devices
- 1 GB Email storage (was 500 MB)
- Support for Exchange Online Archiving (optional)
New Exchange Online users in March should have this support for their kiosk users. Existing users will start seeing these updates late-March/early-April.
February, 2012: With Office 365 we’re seeing first hand that cloud-based services evolve in a much different way than server-based software. When server-based products come out with new features there is a RELEASE, we need to download new software, install it, wait to see what it impacts – maybe even pay for it. With Office 365 new features pop up, sometimes without even an announcement. So far, this is mostly good news:
- You can now record Lync calls – click here for details. It is interesting to note that the reason this wasn’t here when Office 365 was first released was that recording calls is not legal in some countries, and Microsoft was not able to remove that feature on a country-by-country basis. Now, apparently, they are! This is nice as we know some users have missed this capability.
- Healthcare practices can now get a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for HIPAA that covers Office 365. From your Admin Console: Subscriptions – Manage – Optional Office 365 privacy and security contractual supplements, then select Office 365 HIPAA/HITECH Business Associate Agreement.
- RIM has launched BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 – still free, and now out of Beta testing.
- Charity Licensing is available for Office 365 – up to 60% off most of the services. You must be a 501(c) 3 to qualify – contact Ellen Jennings if you are interested.
- New “big name” clients on Office 365 include JetBlue, Patagonia, and the American Heart Association. You can read details about how these companies are using the service here.
Attend BEI’s Seminar on Moving your business to the cloud with Office 365 and learn more!
Wednesday, March 14 noon – 2 pm
Seasons 52 Tysons Corner Center
REGISTER NOW
We’re seeing lots of interest in Office 365, Microsoft’s suite of online services that includes secure, anywhere access to email and calendars, Office Web Apps, web conferencing, and file sharing. The Kiosk plans are designed for staff who are not sitting at a desk all day – they may be on a factory floor, at client offices, in a retail environment or anywhere that they just tend to be a “lighter” user of the online applications.
We’ve heard a rumor (not official but we think quite reliable) that later this spring Microsoft will add the following features to the Kiosk plans:
- add ActiveSync support for mobile devices
- expand the mailbox size to 1 GB (from 500 MB previously)
- offer Exchange Online Archiving (important to many financial organizations)
And all this for just $2/person/month (Exchange Online Kiosk) or $4/person/month (Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Kiosk.) For more details on Microsoft’s Office 365 Kiosk Offerings click here and select “Kiosk Worker Plans.”
Office 2010 Professional Plus (PP) for Office 365 is part of the Microsoft Office 365 Online Services offering. Therefore, it is acquired as a subscription service as part of the Microsoft Office 365 Online Services offering and has different use rights than Microsoft Office acquired as a software product under a desktop application license.
Microsoft Office 2010 PP for Office 365 is licensed on a “per-user” basis. Users must assign each Microsoft Office license to a single named user before using the software. Each user that is assigned a license may then install and use one copy of Microsoft Office per device, on up to FIVE devices. These devices can be anywhere, on a company managed device or a personal device or on a third-party device.
If you compare this with buying Office 2010 under one of Microsoft’s desktop application licenses you see that the most devices you can install it on at no cost is two (i.e. can install on a 2nd portable device). So right away the Office 2010 PP for Office 365 offers a nice advantage for people who utilize multiple computers.
Note: the pricing of Office 365 Office Professional Plus is also attractive. At $12/user/month, this compares with Office Professional Plus Volume Licensing of about $500 (for Open License with no upgrades) and about $900 (Open Value, which includes upgrades for 3 years.)
The RIM Cloud BES ” Blackberry Business Cloud Services from RIM” is available as of October 1 in the Office 365 admin portal. The offering is a Beta version, so there is no SLA supported for the service. There has not been a formal announcement of this offering as yet, but you can configure it and our understanding is that it will be functional as of October 1. There has been a more limited Beta test going on for sometime now.. We will provide more information when it is available.
Office 365 is Microsoft’s latest suite of Cloud-based services. It builds upon the foundation of BPOS but takes it to a new level with new versions of Exchange and Outlook and the addition of Microsoft Office. At BEI we’re very excited about additional administrative capabilities – this means we can do more to customize and control Office 365 without having to request assistance from Microsoft. Take a look at the Office 365 services and the Office 365 suites to get an idea of how Office 365 might fit into your environment. You can even trial Office 365 FREE for 30 days. This free trial is for the E3 suite, which includes:
- Exchange Plan 2
- SharePoint Plan 2
- Lync Plan 2
- Office Web Apps
- Office Pro Plus
Questions or just want to know more? Contact Ellen Jennings 703-528-8300
x125 or jenningse@beinetworks.com.
There has been quite a bit of confusion around the support of Blackberries and Microsoft Exchange Online. We’re going to try to clarify the situation here!
BPOS Exchange Online, the service that Microsoft has been selling and supporting since 2008, provides free BES service. Microsoft does this by hosting a BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server).
Office 365 will NOT include BES support until early 2012 or so. This is because the plan is to use RIM’s online BES service that is currently being tested and is expected to be available in early 2012 (rather than Microsoft hosting a BES).
So if you want to use Exchange Online and need BES service, be aware that you must sign up for Exchange Online and the BES service during June 2011 – we expect Office 365 will be generally available toward the end of June, and once Office 365 is generally available BPOS Exchange Online will not be offered to new accounts. (Generally available just means sold as a standard service, no longer in the testing period.)
BlackBerry users can use BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) with Exchange Online and Office 365 if they only need email. This service is free but will not sync contacts, calendar, tasks, etc.
If you are currently using BPOS Exchange Online and think there is ANY POSSIBILITY that you may want to add and BES users you should purchase one seat (cost = $0) right now. You will then be able to add users any time later. But, if you do not have any BES accounts you won’t be able to add them once Office 365 is generally available.
Questions? Call or email Ellen Jennings at 703-528-8300 x125 or jenningse@beinetworks.com.
