Office 365 Password Expiration Policy

by | Oct 23, 2018

This topic applies to Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Business Essentials or Office 365 Business Premium.

User passwords expire on a regular basis in Office 365. Global and delegated admins can make the user’s password expire after a certain number of days or set the password to never expire. Admins can also change the number of days before users are notified of password expiration.

  1. Sign in to Office 365 with your work or school account.
  2. Go to the Office 365 admin center.
  3. Go to Service settings > Passwords.
  4. If you don’t want users to have to change passwords, select Passwords never expire. If you select this option, users won’t get any reminders anymore to change their passwords.
  5. If you want user passwords to expire, type the number of days before the password should expire. Choose a number of days from 14 to 730.
  6. Type the number of days before users are notified that their password will expire, and then click Save. Choose a number of days from 1 to 30.

See Microsoft Office 365 Support page

 

Working with Skype for Business

by | Jun 27, 2016

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)

audio setup and calls

Meetings

(download size approx 650KB)

meetings

Contacts, presence, and IM

(download size approx 670KB)

contacts and presence

Sharing and collaboration

(download size approx 600KB)

sharing

Outlook, Sharepoint, and Harmon.ie

by | Mar 31, 2016

Office 365 help series – Outlook, Sharepoint, and Harmon.ie

1. About Harmon.ie

Emails are increasingly used as documents of record for project management, task management, and work orders. Emails are stored separately from other kinds of documents, however, and are difficult to search and manage as users’ and organizations’ email volumes grow. These videos here explain how modern tools like Harmon.ie combine emails with other document types in a unified location to help individual users and teams access email and documents together. The last section demonstrates Harmon.ie’s features.

2. Connect to Harmon.ie
Harmon.ie is a third party tool that runs in Outlook desktop to help users distribute files to Sharepoint and OneDrive within the Outlook Desktop. Using Harmon.ie, users can:

  • navigate Office 365 Sharepoint sites
  • navigate Onedrive
  • find files
  • link files to emails
  • upload files, and download files.
This save users having to navigate their Office 365 portal to perform these tasks. Watch this video to learn how to link Harmon.ie to a Sharepoint site. You can find your Sharepoint site in your site settings.
Finding Onedrive/Sharepoint Content

Once Harmon.ie is added to Outlook for Desktop you add a SharePoint “site” to Harmon.ie to find manage files saved in OneDrive or SharePoint. Most small business users rely on OneDrive to store their documents. OneDrive is an app which sits within Sharepoint, so users add their Office 365 Sharepoint site to Outlook, which in turn includes their OneDrive location.

Here is a an overview of Harmon.ie desktop for Outlook. For more detail, click here.

harmon_ie desktop

Connect Outlook Desktop to Office 365

by | Mar 27, 2016

Office 365 help series – Outlook for Desktop

Outlook for Desktop

This video below explains how to connect desktop versions of Outlook to Office 365’s Exchange Online email service.  Business Premium and Enterprise users can download the Office 2016 App suite from the Office 365 portal.

For guidance on using the browser based web app, Outlook Web App (OWA), click here.

This tutorial uses Outlook 2016 for desktop. The method is the same for Outlook 2013 and 2010, although navigating to Outlook’s settings might differ from one version to another.

Establishing an Outlook email account, or “profile”, will also connect you to other services like Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks. Most of the features available in Outlook for desktop are available in Outlook Web Access (OWA). The advantage of using Outlook for Desktop are:

  • more tools for composition and editing
  • local copies of email, calendars, and tasks
  • tools for connecting to local file stores using Outlook’s desktop
  • tools for connecting to OneDrive and Sharepoint

OWA is still an important feature. For instance, use OWA settings to change passwords.

Click on the “best practice” video tutorial below to find out how to connect workstations and laptops to Office 365, GMail, and other tasks.

Change Office 365/email password

by | Mar 27, 2016

Office 365 help series – Changing passwords using OWA

Password security

It is good practice to change email passwords occasionally. Sometimes, ComStat may ask you to change passwords if we suspect that a third party has compromised your account. If you have forgotten your password, we can force a password change.

Users are responsible for their passwords at all times. If we force a password change, users should log in to their email accounts and overwrite forced password changes with passwords of their own. Good passwords include:

  • 8-15 characters
  • Capital letters
  • Numbers
  • Special characters

Email passwords cannot be changed using your desktop version of Outlook. To change your email account password, login to your Office 365 online control panel with your email address and existing password with a web browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome.

There is more than one way to change passwords in Office 365. For instance, users can log into http://portal.office365.com and locate settings from the portal home page. Users are familiar with Outlook Web Access, so the tutorial here should be a convenient method.

Read this article first before you begin. Click open each step below to understand the steps you need to follow. If you need to contact us to force a password for you, get in touch with your usual network administrator or contact us using the information on our contact page.

Office 365 Home Page

Using your web browser, login to Office 365’s control panel at http://mail.office365.com.  Login with your email address and existing password. Your Office 365 home page looks like this:

 

Open OWA settings

Click open the settings icon on the right side of the toolbar at the top right corner of your screen. The seettings icon looks like a cog.select office 365 settings

Change password

Follow the 3 steps in the illustration below:

  • Click open Office 365 settings
  • Click on Password
  • Change your password and click submit in the last screen

screenshots for changing your password

Remember, you need to know your old password to create your new password, so you may have to ask us to force a password change for you. Also, changing your password will mean you need to update settings on any devices that connect to your Office 365 account, including desktops, laptops, tablets, or mobile phones. Lastly, you may be asked to authenticate your password change by verifying your mobile phone number and inputting a short code which your server will text you, so your mobile phone should be available.

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