Even though the website http://office.microsoft.com provides a comparison of the different Office 365 plans, it is not always entirely clear which features are available or what the restrictions are.
Luckily, Jasper Osgaard created a great blog post comparing the different plans in more detail without having to go through tons of documentation:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/lystavlen/archive/2013/03/30/office-365-comparing-p-m-and-e-plans.aspx
About 3 weeks before the upgrade took place, I received e-mails informing me about the upcoming update. It included the plan date and also mentioned I could postpone the update. As the date of the upgrade approached I also received mails with information of new features and what had to be done.
The upgrade itself took place on the date that was communicated to me and when it was done I got a mail informing me that the upgrade had been completed. When I logged on to the Office 365 admin center (https://portal.microsoftonline.com/) I immediately found this to be a big improvement. It also showed me some alerts containing links to information about changes and tasks that still needed to be performed like upgrading SharePoint sites.
I didn’t expect any big issues, but I was a bit worried if my SharePoint customizations would keep working correctly:
It is possible to leave the SharePoint site the way it is (at least with this upgrade), but you can also upgrade it and take advantage of the new options. If you are considering upgrading the SharePoint site, you can perform a health check and you can also request an upgrade evaluation copy of the site collection before you actually upgrade.
Probably because of my customizations, the Site Collection Health Check found some problems related to Customized Files that could result in unexpected visuals or behavior.
For now, everything seems to be working fine though on my upgrade evaluation copy of the site collection, so I’ll probably upgrade my site collection soon. If you want to, you can take a look at both the pre-upgrade SharePoint site and the post-upgrade SharePoint site. The evaluation post-upgrade version will only be available until the 23rd of June.
What I did notice, is that the interface of the services have improved and have also been changed to better suit for touch devices. By example the white space between navigation items seems to have increased and everything is a bit bigger.
After the upgrade, I also had to restart some Office 2013 apps once.
Of course the upgrade to Wave 15 provides many more advantages, but in this post I only wanted to share my service upgrade experience without really changing anything. All in all, I think the upgrade experience went very well.
The PowerShell Summit took place in North America in April and many of the prominent PowerShell people were there. And from what I read there were a lot of great presentations.
The PowerShell Summit 2013 North America conference schedule can be found here. Thanks to Don Jones and PowerShell.org (most of) these sessions are available for download: http://powershell.org/wp/2013/04/22/summit-downloads/
Videos are available here:
http://powershell.org/wp/2013/05/07/powershell-summit-videos/
So even if you weren’t able to attend, you can still learn from their presentations. Or if you did attend, you can review them again.
The recordings for “Using Microsoft VDI to Enable New Workstyles Jump Start” are available now on Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA).
These Jump Starts are a great way to quickly get up-to-date about a subject. Also there’s a great team of people working behind the scenes to answer questions and provide more detailed resources. Other attendees often also share their experiences and provide valuable insights. So be sure to check out the Q&A log as well.
As most people working with Microsoft products, I was not able to attend the Microsoft Management Summit 2013 unfortunately.
These sessions have been recorded though and are available now at Channel 9 and a great overview of sessions can be found here. This means you can watch them wherever and whenever it is convenient for you.
You can also use this great PowerShell script created by Stefan Stranger to download the MMS 2013 videos.
Enjoy.
Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) is hosting the “Windows Azure for IT Professionals Jump Start” at May 16th. Information and registration is available on the website: https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/liveevents/Windows-Azure-for-IT-Professionals?CR_CC=200206715
I’ve attended a couple of Jump Starts and I think it’s a great way to quickly get up-to-date about a subject. Also there’s a great team of people working behind the scenes to answer questions and provide more detailed resources. Other attendees often also share their experiences and provide valuable insights.
Also it’s only been a couple of weeks since Windows Azure IaaS is live in production backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and ready for your production applications. Therefore it is a great time to start learning more about it.
I hope to see you there.
After the great first Dutch PowerShell UserGroup (DuPSUG) meeting last November, the 2nd meeting will be held on the 6th of June in Hilversum at InterAccess. At http://www.dupsug.com you can find more information about the event including a schedule and a registration form.
I really liked the previous meeting, so I’m going to attend this time as well. I hope to see you there.
PS: The number of attendees is limited, so don’t wait too long.
blog.bjornhouben.com 