by Steve Galloway | Nov 28, 2014
Standalone Exchange licenses provide connectivity to users’ email accounts via mobile-enabled ActiveSync devices. Whereas Office 365 licenses provide up to 5 instances of Office 2013 apps, standalone Exchange does not provide Outlook for desktop or Office 2013 licenses for mobile devices. That is to say, while users can connect mobile phones, laptops, or tablets to their Exchange accounts via browsers or ActiveSync, Microsoft does not provide Office 2013 licenses for Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 28, 2014
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.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 28, 2014
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.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 25, 2014
Microsoft Exchange Online can route outbound mail through an on-premises server or a hosted service (sometimes called “smart hosting”). This enables organizations to deliver email to business partners through private networks, use data loss prevention (DLP) appliances, and perform custom post-processing of outbound email. Exchange Online also supports Address Rewrite, in which outbound email is routed through an on-premises gateway that modifies the addresses. This feature enables organizations to hide sub-domains, make email from a multi-domain organization appear as a single domain, or make partner-relayed email appear as if it were sent from inside the organization. Administrators configure custom email routing within the Exchange admin center (EAC).
by Steve Galloway | Nov 25, 2014
Office 365 Message Encryption is an easy-to-use service that lets email users send encrypted messages to people inside or outside their organization. Designated recipients can easily view their encrypted messages and return encrypted replies. Regardless of the destination email service—whether it’s Outlook.com, Yahoo, Gmail, or another service—email users can send confidential business communications with an added level of protection against unauthorized access.
There are many scenarios in which email message encryption might be required, including:
- A bank employee sending credit card statements to customers
- An insurance company representative providing policy details to customers
- A mortgage broker requesting financial information from a customer for a loan application
- A health care provider sending health care information to patients
- An attorney sending confidential information to a customer or another attorney
- A consultant sending a contract to a customer
Exchange Online and Exchange Online Protection (EOP) administrators set up Office 365 Message Encryption by defining encryption rules. ComStat engineers can help customers with subscribed support service customize encrypted messages with organizational text and logo, presenting a company brand that’s familiar to message recipients.
Additionally, Exchange provides advanced services for high level encryption services like certificated TLS etc. The diagram below showing the workflow through which Office 365 Message Encryption protects encrypted emails from being read by unauthorized users, while allowing straightforward access by authorized recipients.