I first worked with the Oxford Computer Group back when I was a Technical Specialist in Microsoft Ireland a few years back… they have operations in North America, the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, and Germany.

This Gold Certified Microsoft Partner has built a business out of Identity Management, and since Live@edu first launched and we offered Identity Lifecycle Manager as a platform through which on-premises user directories could be synchronized with the Live@edu service, Oxford has been there to offer our customers with their deployments.  Oxford wrote the original Passport Management Agent for MIIS/ILM which evolved to be the Hotmail MA for Live@edu.  They also wrote the original version of the Exchange Labs MA and have now installed it and GALSync 2010 (now renamed as Outlook Live Sync (OLSync) at more than 60 schools in North America and the European Union.

Readers should check out what they have to offer here: http://www.oxfordcomputergroup.com/OutlookLive.

Finally, you should also check out Oxford’s monthly webcasts on deploying ILM with Live@edu… check out the last one here: View Recording.

Thanks for reading!

Jonny

LiveID Accrual What….?

LiveID Accrual is the process that your Outlook Live R3 users have to go through the first time they login with the LiveID username and password you assign to them… re-enter password, secret question/answer, alternate email address…etc.  Essentially it is there so that users can easily do a self-service password reset if they have forgotten their password.

Some customers would rather not have to put their users through this process… and this was for a number of reasons:

• Customers wanted a better initial experience for their users… the Accrual Process confused some younger users
• Customers that had SSO deployed did not want to have their users log into their LiveID and run through the Accrual Process prior to being able to use SSO
• Some customers already have a self-service password reset service in place that sync’d an on-prem password with the LiveID service… a separate password reset service was confusing.
• etc

…and so now, I can announce, that the Accrual Process can be configured according to the matrix and guidance defined below.  At Educause last week, I mentioned this to a customer, and got a round of applause… :)  Who knew there was so much passion about this…?

An Accrual Bypass Tool is now available.  This tool allows customers on the Live@edu Organization Owned model to bypass the LiveID Accrual process prior to the completion of the R4 rollout.  Below is a Resolution Matrix and I have included the requirements and process for a customer to request the tool.  It should be noted that in removing Accrual, you are no longer the end user to our self-service tools… you are really just improving the initial experience… you may still want to direct students at https://account.live.com to set up self service password reset after they first log in… perhaps send a mail about this…

Resolution Matrix

Accrual Bypass Tool

Requirements

• Tenant is on the Outlook Live mail platform
• Tenant is on the Live@edu Organization model
• Customer must have valid SSO certificate

Process

• Customer opens ticket with support requesting to suppress accruals.
• Support confirms customer meets requirements above… If customer does not have valid SSO certificate, support will request cert creation and provide to customer.
• Support provides Accrual Bypass Tool and associated instructions to customer and will follow up to confirm the tool was used successfully.

So… to Accrue or not Accrue… that is the question.

Jonny

Anyone that enrolls a new Outlook Live domain today with Live@edu will go straight onto our shiny new R4 service… more on the new functionality on that in coming weeks…

We have some great new admin tools, premium OWA experience in the latest Firefox, Safari, and Chrome browsers, the reading pane can now be turned on and off (how often did that one come up in Outlook Live Answers?), and a new PowerShell commands that the Exchange team put in there to give me something to  blog about :)

Existing customer domains will start to get upgraded VERY soon now… so if you are an admin of an R3 domain, you should refer to Joey’s extensive blog post: Heads-Up- Managing Your Domain During the R3 to R4 Upgrade.  For those admins that are using CSV Parser to manage accounts, you should know that there is an updated script available now on http://connect.microsoft.com/

So… nothing stands still…!

Jonny

I had previously posted on how we are helping customers conform with Section 508… well, we have just released the Exchange 2010 VPAT on our Section 508 page.  Exchange 2010 is what Outlook Live is built on… in case you did not know that :)

Thanks for reading!

Jonny

One of the great things about choosing Microsoft as a platform provider is the strength and depth of our partner ecosystem; a great example is SADA Systems, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that has just launched a range of services for Live@edu customers.  I had blogged a while ago on what we thought some of the services opportunities for partners were… and I am delighted to now see what SADA offers.

These guys have really gone to town… they have launched services lines covering things like:

• Basic Live@edu service provisioning.
• ILM/GalSync deployment for AD… and… non-AD environments.
• An in-house provisioning/sync solution that can run in a customer’s infrastructure, or in SADA’s cloud.
• SSO services deployed on-prem and in SADA’s cloud.
• migration services.
• Helpdesk services.
• Service management.
• Training…

What a list!  I am especially excited at the support for ILM in non-AD environments… there is a lot of OpenLDAP out there in “Edu-land”, amongst other things, so a solution that works with that is in demand.  The SADA cloud-hosted provisioning and SSO options will also make a lot of sense I think for those customers that want a comprehensive cloud-based solution that does not require a local hardware investment.

I look forward to working with the SADA Systems team to build some fantastic success stories.  Go and check them out for yourself…

I am also open to hearing from other SI and ISV partners about unique services they offer… so keep those ideas coming :)

Jonny

So this week I will be at Educause 2009 in Denver, Colorado, spending time with the Higher Education technology community and spreading the word about what Microsoft is doing with Software Plus Services for connected learning communities… if any of my readers are at the event, please come by our stand for a chat as we have some great info to share.

Our Worldwide VP for education, Anthony Salcito, and fellow blogger, has posted on the BIG announcements we are making.  I wanted to add some of my own perspective on the Live@edu related stories here as someone that has spent a lot of my career working with the education sector.

Live@edu momentum:

“In the past four months more than 5,000 schools have enrolled with Live@edu, joining the thousands of other institutions in more than 100 countries already providing Live@edu to tens of millions of students worldwide.”

Wow… those are some big numbers, yet we are still really only scratching the surface.  I have seen some massive pushes for new technologies in my time with education… widespread adoption of the internet in the 1990’s, then wireless networking on campuses, then an explosion in personal laptops, then the adoption of social networking… and now the drive towards moving key enterprise workloads into the cloud.  I often tell customers that I have never before witnessed such a voracious appetite for a set of offerings.

To me, the tipping point here appears to have come about through a combination of the desire in education institutions to save money given our economic situation (you have less…) combined with an increased focus on the student: preparing them for a highly competitive workforce by offering the most compelling tools (…now do more).  I guess that our success with Live@edu lies in the fact that we are an IT company that has been offering enterprise email solutions for around 13 years now and hosting email as a consumer service for almost as long.  This pedigree is something we take great pride in… and with that the innovation continues…

New collaboration opportunities:

This is the BIG one!

“We are also announcing new SharePoint Online-based collaboration and productivity services will be added to the Live@edu suite next year”

The key to anyone’s success these days is an ability to work well in teams.  Collaborative working has been part of the classroom/study group/etc for as long as anyone has known.  An exceptionally popular product that we have offered to make online team working a reality for almost a decade now is SharePoint.  In conjunction with the Live@edu program, we will be bringing a solution to market for students, based on SharePoint Online, for free.  So what does that mean?  Well, lets look at some possibilities:

• Work with a class group on a research assignment – documents, background research, project plans can all be stored online and worked on from anywhere.
• Office Web Apps support means that a user can access Office files on almost any machine to simply view the content, or to make essential modifications.
• Microsoft Office integration ensures they get a rich, integrated experience with SharePoint Online and the Office Web Apps, if required… and of course offline access to files.

From an IT Admin’s perspective we will be providing the controls you expect to manage this online environment and keep your users safe and secure.

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I hope you agree that this is an exciting roadmap development for Live@edu? Continued innovation in our online services for the benefit of the world’s students and educational institutions is an exciting thing… I love the reaction I get from customers when I explore the possibilities, and I certainly hope you get the same buzz from working with us to deliver them.

More to come!

Jonny