by Steve Galloway | Dec 16, 2014
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.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 24, 2014
Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync enables users of desktop and mobile devices to access email, calendar, contacts, and tasks from their organization’s Microsoft Exchange server.
Microsoft Exchange is the de facto standard in public sector and corporate IT and is the email backbone of Microsoft’s Office 365 Office suite. Given Exchange’s dominance in premium email services, Exchange ActiveSync is licensed to all major mobile devices manufacturers, although there may be minor variations in subsets of the application used by Windows Phone, Apple, and Android.
The major advantage this brings to users is that it decentralises reliance on a “primary” workstation from which emails etc. have to be co-ordinated. ActiveSync cordinates all devices to a centralised server so that each device has access to all information equally.
Network administrators can limit availability of data to user devices, which is useful in industries where data sensitivity, or in cases where devices are lost or stolen. This usually depends on in-house organisational competency, or in the case of small businesses, access to “delegated” administrators – Microsoft approved third party engineers. ComStat is an authorised delegated network administrator.
ActiveSync is a protocol. In the past, POP3 and IMAP protocols have been widely adopted by manufacturers and users. As modern technology becomes more widely adopted however, POP3’s limitations particularly make it an awkward protocol for users who want to mirror email, contact, and calendaring information between multiple devices. As small business adopts Microsoft’s Office 365 applications, technologies like POP3 which cannot synchronise data between devices “organically” are losing their popularity.
Microsoft Exchange supports POP3, IMAP, MAPI, all of which are widely recognized email distribution protocols. In its native environment, however, MS Exchange performs optimally with ActiveSync. Office 365 users can connect up to 5 devices to their account services.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 21, 2014
Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is a cloud-based email filtering service that helps protect Exchange users against spam and malware. EOP includes tools to safeguard organizations from messaging-policy violations. EOP runs within Microsoft data centres as a bundled provision for licensed Office 365 and Exchange users reducing problematic customer bandwidth risks, protecting email before delivery to all user devices, and simplifying the management of on-premise messaging environments and alleviating inherent costs that come with maintaining conventional on-premises hardware and software.
Microsoft Exchange EOP Features:
- Eliminates threats before they reach your business firewall with multi-layered, real-time anti-spam and multi-engine anti-malware protection.
- No extra hardware or software installation – EOP is a bundled service and runs from data centre, managing email before it is delivered to user devices.
- Protects your company’s IP reputation by using separate outbound delivery pools for high-risk email.
- Provides 5 financially backed SLAs, including protection from 100% of known viruses and 99% of spam.
- Active content, connection, and flexible policy-based filtering enables compliance with corporate policies and public sector/IT departmental governance.
- Leverages a globally load-balanced network of data centres helps to ensure a 99.999% network uptime.
- Managed and administered from the Exchange Administration Centre with a single web-based interface.
- Near real-time reporting and message trace capabilities provide insight into email environments by retrieving the status of any message that Exchange Online Protection processes.
- Available to non-Exchange users.
by Steve Galloway | Oct 19, 2014
Office 365’s low cost points and deceptive ease of use masks a multi-billion dollar global investment in fibre optics, hardware, and corporate class software tools which makes Microsoft’s Office products the dominant solution of choice for corporates and governments, and a compelling offering for small and medium business. It is not so much a matter of adulation for Microsoft than a matter of fact that the rest of Microsoft’s competition combined does not match its dominance in business email and productivity apps. So, what does Microsoft do with everyone’s data? Let’s take a look at a Microsoft data centre.
Microsoft’s Senior Operations Program Manager, Alistair Speirs, said in June 2014 that one reason clients decided to “onboard” their services from their own premises installations was nothing simpler than their concern that adding more appliances to their server room left a real risk that the floor could collapse on the staff underneath. Why IT departments are moving to Microsoft’s cloud services are not clear cut, then, however customers are relying on Microsoft’s provisioning for critical data management.
Alistair used this anecdote to explain Microsoft’s approach to building their system from the ground up. If it is already on the ground, it is hard for anything to fall through it. So much is common sense, and Office 365’s architecture really is rooted to the ground.
The data centres and server farms are built modularly: they are designed for ease of access and uniformity in all respects. Power and power supply back-up services are “failover”, so that redundant equipment is already operational in the event of break down, and faulty units are simply swapped out and rotated so that repairs can be handled elsewhere.
Modularity plays an important role in the server arrays, too. Microsoft takes delivery of completely configured server racks from hardware vendors. If more disk space is needed, engineers do not install more drives. Instead, the facility is “stamped out” and another module, or ITPAK is installed. Here, engineers lowers an air handling unit on top of a pre-assembled rack at a facility in Quincy, eastern Washington.
When fully assembled, these installations are called “ITPACs”. ITPACs are built from four components: an IT load, an evaporated cooling unit, an air handling unit, and a mixing unit. The evaporative cooling unit has a mesh screen where water can slowly drip through to keep a consistent amount of humidity. Air will naturally blow through the evaporated cooling unit. The IT load sucks that air through, and the air handling unit provides a pressure difference between the outside pressure and inside pressure of the data centre. Air gets naturally pulled through the evaporative cooling units to cool the servers without having to be powered by fans. The air handling unit pulls air out and pushes some of it back to the mixer. That is how engineers control temperature. The attraction of this model is that air conditioning is no longer a consideration and Microsoft’s server farms and data centres live outside. Below is their Quincy data center in Eastern Washington where the climate similar to Madrid. Once concrete is laid, it takes about four hours to install, and needs only three connections: the ping, the pipe, and the power. It is remotely monitored, all operating from this unit. Microsoft’s installation incorporates some nifty tricks to mitigate energy consumption further and keep end users costs down. In this installation one building block comprises about 25,000 servers.
Inside the data centre, the uniformity of hardware is unmistakable. Access to hardware is restricted by “rack” and on need to know authorisation. For instance, non Office 365 engineers from Microsoft’s own corporate installations would not access these kinds of facilities.
Lastly, in addition to uniform hardware and components, seemingly peripheral issues like co-ordination of cabling colour and cabling runs follow strict protocols, all in the interest of avoiding what engineers call configuration drift:
Microsoft’s data centre in Quincy, is part of a global network that comprises a core of 10 – 100 data centres at time of writing, with subsidiary “Edge Nodes” and other “Metro Solutions” to provide a mechanism for delivering content to last mile user end points within its Office 365 wide area network.
