Working with Skype for Business
Office 365 help series – Skype for Business
Skype for Business - learning the basics
The Skype forBusiness webinar below introduces the key activities needed to get started with Skype for Business. From setting options to running a meeting, users will complete this video with the foundation needed to start using Skype for Business confidently.
The webinar covers the features listed below. If you want to skip to individual features, point the video progress bar to the bookmarks below.
- Skype for Business client (2:43)
- Instant Messaging (IM) (7:45)
- Schedule meetings (12:00)
- Meeting (15:56)
- Summary (20:15)
- External users, apps, and call monitor
- Quick resources (23:15)
Handy posters are available for download underneath the webinar to help you get Skype for business working on your desktop.
To help you make the most of Skype for Business with your mobile devices, click on the links below to download these useful guides:
Skype for Business – desktop
Download these .pdf Quick Start Guides to familiarize yourself with Skype for Business’ commonly used tasks. Each user guide has 4 pages of tips and tricks to optimize Skype for Business on your desktop. If you are new to Skype for Business, or you have just installed your Skype for Business client, please be sure to start with Quick Start Guide – Audio setup and calls.
To download a user guide, click on the graphic. Approximate downloads sizes are indicated with each manual.
Audio setup and calls
(download size approx 600KB)
Meetings
(download size approx 650KB)
Contacts, presence, and IM
(download size approx 670KB)
Sharing and collaboration
(download size approx 600KB)
Using Office 365’s Delve
Office 365 help series – Delve
Delve - Grouping & Sharing
Delve is a an Office 365 app that helps users find documents from a variety of locations in Office 365.
As users store more documents in Office 365, conventional search tools become more inefficient. Delve simultaneously searches multiple data locations and allows to group, share, and collaborate with others. In many ways, it is the front end of your data store. Watch the video for a quick tour and see the tutorial below for help on grouping and sharing documents in Delve.
Grouping and sharing documents with Delve
Create a board and add documents
After you get used to using Delve to search for documents for your own purposes, like perhaps invoices, you can use Delve’s grouping and sharing features to create “boards” which other people in your organization can browse. In the case of invoices, for instance, you can “pin” invoices you know others are interested in to a board which you can share with others.
You create boards directly from content cards in Delve.
Boards are open to everyone in your organization, and you can see, add documents to, or remove documents from any board in Delve. If a board has documents that you don’t have access to, those documents will not show up for you. If you create a board and add documents that only you or a few people have access to, no one else will see the documents, but they may see the board name.
On a card you want to add to the board, enter a board name in the box at the bottom of the card.
As you start typing, you will see the names of existing boards.
- To create a new board and add the card, type a board name that doesn’t already exist.
- To add the card to an existing board, type or select the name of that board.
When you add documents to a board, documents will show up for other users within a few minutes. Also, they will show up only for those people who have access to the documents.
Note: Not all content types can be added to boards. If Add to a board isn’t available on a card, you can’t add that content type to a board.
Add board to Favourites
You can keep track of boards by adding them to your favorites.
![750128eb-5fab-44a6-a996-cbb548da422b[1]](http://www.comstat.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/750128eb-5fab-44a6-a996-cbb548da422b1.jpg){kind=small}
Click Add to favorites at the top of a board.
- When you create a board, or add new content to one, the board is automatically added to your favorites.
- Click a board name on a content card to see board contents.
- If the card has been added to several boards, click on more on the card to see them all.
- Boards are also listed under options in the left menu.
- To add a document to your Favorites, click the star in the upper right corner of the card.
Share with others
To send a link to a board through email, click Send a link at the top of the board.
Type in the email address, change the message if you want, and send.
When you share a board, the people you share it with will only see the documents they have access to.
Sharing within Delve
To share a document with others from within Delve, click the Who can see this? icon on the content card, and then click Invite people.
When you open documents in Office Online, your colleagues can open them at the same time. That means you don’t have to wait for someone to finish adding information to a document before you can enter yours.
You can post documents to Yammer from Delve. You can also talk about the document on Yammer, or view existing conversations. Yammer conversations can be viewed by your colleagues both from Delve and from Yammer.
Saving Office 365 & Dropbox
Office 365 users can link to Dropbox accounts to browse, open and edit Word, Excel, and other MS Office file types with Office Online. Users can also create new files in Office Online and save them directly to their Dropbox account using Windows, Apple iOS and, and Android devices.
The same integration is available from Dropbox in a web browser. Users can access Office Online directly from the file you are viewing.
This article explains:
- Document security and privileges in OneDrive for Business and Dropbox
- Configuring Office 2016 to connect to Dropbox
- Configuring Office Online to connect to Dropbox
- Tips for using Dropbox with Office Online
Document Security and privileges in OneDrive for Business and Dropbox
This article explains how users can save files to Office 365’s OneDrive/Sharepoint and also to Dropbox. Synchronising Dropbox and OneDrive is not considered here. Migrating large file stores from Dropbox to OneDrive may not be practical for some users. Also, users might want to separate personal files from their employer’s Office 365 services. For users who need to maintain individual OneDrive and Dropbox storage, Office 365 business users can start in Office Online, or from Dropbox, to manage documents in Dropbox using Office 365.
Configuring Office 2016 to connect to Dropbox
Dropbox users use the Dropbox synch tool for Windows can pin the local dropbox file store in Office 2016’s file location “favourites”. Pinning the Dropbox folder to file locations in Office 2016 saves users from manually browsing to Dropbox when saving files.
Configuring Office Online to connect to Dropbox
To use a Dropbox account with Word, Excel, or PowerPoint Online, add it to your places list. Once it is saved as a storage location you can open, create, edit, and save files to Dropbox. You can still use a OneDrive account.
- From OfficeOnline.com, open Word, Excel, or PowerPoint Online.
- Under Open from OneDrive, click Add a place.
- Click Dropbox. You’ll see Open from Dropbox appear in your places list.
Tips for using Dropbox with Office Online
- Whenever you select Open from Dropbox to open a file from your Dropbox account, the file will be saved to Dropbox.
- To create a new file in Dropbox once you’ve added Dropbox to your places list, choose New in Dropbox. (Dropbox will already be selected if it’s the last place you used.)
- To open Dropbox files you have recently worked on, select them in your Recent list.
- To edit files in a Dropbox for Business account using Office Online, you need an Office 365 account that includes Office applications (the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). If you are not already signed into your Office 365 account, you will be prompted to sign in before you use your files.
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Add-Dropbox-and-Google-94afd730
Webmail goes offline
For business users who want to send and receive email with the simplicity that comes with Windows Live (formerly Hotmail) and GMail, but without the dreary advertising, Office 365’s Outlook Web Access (OWA) comes with simplicity, no ads, and the same tools available to the corporate world that makes OWA a serious alternative to Outlook for Desktop.
Mentioning Outlook stirs memories of an awkward email client that is too complicated to use and impossible to back up. Nor is there a shortage of clients who have worn out two buttons in Outlook – check mail, and send: Many users are only interested in email; calendars, tasks, contacts, etc. are just bloat. If any of this sounds familiar to you, you are not in the alone, and something that many people have hoped for which provides an advertising-free webmail service for commercial use is available to Office 365 users – Outlook Web Access, or OWA.
OWA is the portal for Microsoft’s Office 365. OWA is a web version of Outlook for Desktop which provides to Exchange Email, a service providing 50 GB of email per user account which can be synced across 5 devices – including sent items, which you will never see with POP accounts. Calendars, contacts, and more are all there too, albeit ring-fenced from email. although they are bound to be there. OWA is Microsoft Exchange. Importantly, whereas Google users expose their email to data mining, Exchange email is a secure content system that restricts access to “your eyes only”. Among other reasons, this privacy feature is why Exchange email is used almost overwhelmingly in commerce.
Perhaps the niftiest trick in Microsoft’s web based email client is the facility to run their email in “offline” mode.
Wait a minute. Read that one more time. Offline? Managing email with your web browser – offline? Did Hotmail ever do that? No. Nobody else did, either. That is why everybody needed Outlook for Desktop, or Outlook Express, or Eudora or Thunderbird. In case you still do not believe the proposition, the illustration above shows how offline mode is not more than two clicks away.
Offline email management is a trump card. Do not expect to see an entire mailbox in offline mode, more like a few day’s worth of traffic, but enough to keep you with something to do on the road. It is one feature of many “gimme’s” Microsoft deploys from time to time to keep the corporate world so attached to Exchange.
The great thing about OWA is that if you only want to run email, the browser interface does just that, and beautifully so on iPads. OWA connects directly to Exchange 2013, though, so all the tools that high end users need like shared address books, distribution groups, rules, instant messaging, administrator tools like mail policies and even in-line archiving, are there if you want them too.
You might be disappointed that this does not mean the end of Outlook for desktops. Outlook still has a place, and if anything has upped the ante as a portal not only for email, but for user access to Office 365 to document folders and Sharepoint mind boggling services ..but that is for another few articles.
For a thirty trial of Microsoft Exchange and OWA, contact Steve Galloway on 07834 461 266 or Fred Dreiling on 07919 340 570. No credit card required for trial services.
One Drive & Mobile Device Management
Office 365 has upgraded OneDrive for Business to enable security tools for business owners and network admistrators to manage access to data stored on OneDrive for Business from mobile devices. In the event of loss or theft of mobile devices subscribed to users’ Office 365 services, data can now be protected from unauthorised access using PIN lock numbers, jailbreak detection, and even “selective wipe” utilities.
OneDrive for Business (ODB) provides 1TB of storage per business license. The service, included as standard in Office 365 business licensing, enables users to access stored content with connected devices in addition to their conventionally secured office workstations. Users who have Internet access at home, for instance, can access files on ODB that previously they might have had to copy to a memory stick at work or even to return to their office for.
Cloud services like ODB obviate the need for file duplication from office equipment, which increases the risk of sensitive data being compromised by loss or theft of memory sticks or other devices.
ODB is attractive to business users who face increasing needs for more storage backup, together with the risk and cost of maintaining data. By housing data on OneDrive for Business (ODB), business owners need less “on-premise” hardware. However, providing remote access to business files by tablets, mobile phones, home computers and other devices poses security risks to the integrity of business information which may include customers’ private information.
Mobile Device Management (MDM) for Office 365 was launched on March 1st. MDM is already used to manage access to Office 365’s Exchange email services on mobile devices.
MDM allows business owners and network administrators to manage ODB data across a diverse range of phones and tablets, including Apple’s iOS, Android, Windows, and Windows Phone devices, according to Microsoft’s Omar Shahine.
“You can set up security policies to ensure that only mobile devices managed by your company can access OneDrive for Business files,” Omar said. “You can also set and manage security policies such as device-level PIN lock and jailbreak detection to help prevent unauthorized users from accessing ODB files on a device when it is lost or stolen. Finally, you can easily remove ODB company data from an employee’s device with selective wipe capabilities.”
Device-level PIN locks are established in Office 365 admin and require the end user to input a PIN number to access Office 365 data, including email services running under an Office 365 license.
Selective Wipe is a utility available in Office 365 admin to allow for either restriction or deletion of email and/or ODB data distributed under an Office 365 license from an end user’s device.
Jailbreak Detection is a utility available in Office 365 to prevent distribution of data to mobile devices that have been modified by “jailbreak”, or unauthorised modifications to device operating systems.
For help with security policies for your users’ devices, please call us or drop us a line using our contact form.
Using Outlook Web App (OWA)
Office 365 help series – Outlook Web App
About OWA
Microsoft Outlook Web App (OWA) is a browser-based email client. OWA lets you access Your Office 365 Exchange Server mailbox from almost any browser. OWA is also available as an app for Android and iOS.
Not all Office subscriptions include desktop versions of Microsoft’s desktop versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. All business licenses (except Hosted Exchange) include online versions of these apps, however. OWA is perhaps the most widely used Office app, and its popularity can be pointed to its simplicity and reliability.
OWA is more than an email client. It provides functionality for calendars, contacts, and tasks. It works with both desktop and online versions of Office. Although OWA is a webmail client, it can even cache email for work in offline mode. Find out more about OWA in this 15 minute Microsoft webinar.
To open a client to follow along with, point your favourite web browser to mail.office365.com.
Connect Outlook 2007 to Office 365
This article explains how to connect Outlook 2007 to Exchange Online email services on Office 365. Business Premium and Enterprise users should download Office 2013 App suite from the Office 365 portal. . Outlook 2007 can be connected to Exchange Online, however its architecture was not designed with any anticipation of Microsoft’s Cloud computing services in mind. Outlook 2010 was the first release of Outlook that included considerations for Office 365.
In this respect, Outlook 2007 is not an ideal solution for business users. Outlook 2007 users who do not want to purchase Outlook 2013 for desktop, or do not have access to Outlook 2013 App via their Office 365 subscriptions, should consider using Outlook Web Access (OWA). OWA is a fully specified browser-based alternative to desktop Outlook solutions, and we have experience of companies using OWA as their principle email client to save licensing costs.
Connect Outlook 2007 to Exchange Online
NOTE: Outlook 2007 supports only one Exchange connection per Outlook profile. If Outloo returns an error when you try to add a second Exchange connection to an Outlook 2007 profile, you may need to create a new profile before you can use an Exchange connection with Outlook 2007. For information, see “What else do I need to know?” later in this article.
- Open Outlook 2007. If the Outlook 2007 Startup wizard displays automatically, on the first page of the wizard, click Next. Then, on the E-mail Accounts page of the wizard, click Next again to set up an email account. If the Outlook 2007 Startup wizard does not appear, navigate to the Tools menu and click Account Settings. In the Account Settings dialog box, on the E-mail tab, click New.
- On the Auto Account Setup page, Outlook may try to automatically fill in the Your Name and E-mail Address settings based on how you are logged on to your computer. If the settings are filled in and they are correct, click Next so that Outlook can establish your settings. If the settings in the Auto Account Setup page are not filled in or are inaccurate or wrong, do the following:
- If the settings on the Auto Account Setup page aren’t filled in for you, type the correct settings based on the information that was provided to you by the person who manages your email account.
- If the name in the Your Name box is not correct, you may need to reset the options on the Auto Account Setup page before you can edit your name. To reset the options, select and then clear the check box next to Manually configure server settings or additional server types.
After you click Next on the Auto Account Setup page of the wizard, Outlook will perform an online search to find your email server settings.Outlook 2007 will display a message that asks you to allow a website to automatically set up your account. Outlook must connect to that website periodically to make sure your account is up to date. If you don’t want to see this message every time Autodiscover runs, select Don’t ask me about this website again, and then click Allow.
Outlook 2007 will continue setting up your account. You will be asked for your user name and password before Outlook 2007 can connect to your account. Make sure you enter your full email address (for example, tony@contoso.com) as your user name. You may be prompted to enter your user name and password several times before you connect.
- If Outlook is able to set up your account, you will see the following text: Your email account is successfully configured to use Microsoft Exchange. Click Finish.
- If Outlook is not able to set up your account, see “What else do I need to know?” later in this topic.
What else do I need to know?
- If your email account is the type that requires registration, you need to register it the first time you sign in to Outlook Web App. You won’t be able to connect to your email account using Outlook if you haven’t registered your account through Outlook Web App. After you sign in to your account, sign out. Then try to connect using Outlook. For more information about how to sign in to your account using Outlook Web App, see Sign in to Outlook Web App.
- If Auto Account Setup can’t successfully connect you to your account, do one or more of the following:
- Wait a few minutes and try again.
- If you need to connect to your email account immediately, use a Web browser or an email program that supports POP or IMAP to connect to your account using Outlook Web App. For information about how to connect using a Web browser, see Sign in to Outlook Web App. For information about how to connect using a POP or IMAP email program, see Use IMAP or POP email programs.
- If you know the name of the person who manages your mailbox (sometimes called an email administrator), contact them and report the error you’re getting when you try to connect with Outlook.
- Outlook 2007 supports only one Exchange email account per Outlook profile. If you try to add a second Exchange connection while Outlook is running, you may get the following error. You cannot add a Microsoft Exchange account to this profile while Outlook is running. Exit Outlook and use the Mail icon in the Control Panel to add a Microsoft Exchange account.
- If you already have an Exchange connection in your Outlook profile, you may need to delete the current profile or create a new profile before you can follow the steps in this topic. For more information about Outlook profiles, see Add or remove an email account at the Microsoft Office Online Web site.
Mobile device management for Office 365
Microsoft is expanding its built-in mobile device management (MDM) features built for Office 365.
Small businesses tend to adopt a BYOD (bring your own device) policy to mobile devices when granting email and in-house business information to its employees. However, as this article explains, giving employees wider access to business IT networks poses serious data protection and security risks.
The new tools enable network administrators to selectively restrict senstitive business information so that in the event of, for instance, a temporary loss emails and Word docs can be wiped from a mobile device while leaving an end user’s personal data and apps in place.
Large businesses use applications like Microsoft Intune to automate deployments and management of large mobile device fleets. Office 365 includes provisions for basic device management in its business and enterprise Office 365 services. In early 2015, these tools are being expanded to include:
- configurable security policies on devices that connect to Office 365 to ensure that Office 365 business email and documents are synchronized only on phones and tablets that are managed by your company. For instance, whereas employees could potentially connect multiple devices including home PCs to services, Office 365 administrators can manage which devices a user can authenticate.
- configurable security policies such as device level pin lock and jailbreak detection on devices to help prevent unauthorized users from accessing corporate email and data when a device is misplaced, lost or stolen.
- remove Office 365 corporate data from authenticated devices when an employee leaves an organization, while leaving their personal data, photos and apps intact.
MDM for Office 365 is built directly into the productivity apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, etc., and mobile device policies can be managed with MDM within the Office 365 administration portal using the Office 365 user interface and wizard-based workflows. MDM generates ueful management reports detailing information about connected devices, including automated Wi-Fi, VPN and email profiles. Intune also provides bulk tools for pre-configuring large scale application delpoyment and can provide users with a self-service portal where they can enroll their own devices and install corporate apps.
Exchange – shared mailboxes
Shared mailboxes make it easy for a specific group of people to monitor and send email from a common account, like public email addresses (for example, info@companyname.com or contact@companyname.com). When a person in the group replies to a message sent to the shared mailbox, the email appears to be from the shared mailbox, not from the individual user.
Shared mailboxes are a great way to handle customer email queries because several people in your organization can share the responsibility of monitoring the mailbox and responding to queries. Your customer queries get quicker answers and related emails are stored in one mailbox. The mailbox delivers to users’ OWA and Outlook desktop clients. However, shared email accounts do not forward to mobile devices. The reason is that shared accounts are aimed at departmental use so that the first available person with office resources can deal with incoming mail.
A shared mailbox does not have its own user name and password. You cannot log into a shared mailbox directly using Outlook or Outlook Web App. You must first be granted permissions to the shared mailbox, and then you access it using Outlook or Outlook Web App. You don’t need to assign licenses to shared mailboxes, except when they are over their storage quota of 10 gigabytes (GB). If your shared mailbox goes over its quota of 10GB and you don’t assign it a license, after one month the shared mailbox will be locked. You can avoid having to assign the license by using archiving to avoid going over your quota.
Exchange – connected mailboxes
Exchange’s “Connected Account”s feature enables Exchange Online users to connect up to 5 external email accounts (like GMail, Yahoo, Live/Hotmail) to their internal email account in Exchange Online, and then use Outlook Web App to interact with all their messages in one place. Connected Accounts automatically synchronize upon sign-in to Outlook Web App; users can also manually synchronize the accounts from Outlook Web App. Administrators can enable and disable this feature for specific users or all users through the Exchange Admin Center.
