One of my colleagues in Microsoft UK just sent me a rather humorous video that suggests what happens to all of those USB sticks that students lose around the world every day. 

Pretty funny… I talk about this kind of thing to customers all of the time as well…

• The dog ate my USB stick.
• I left it stuck in to a library PC
• Someone stole it
• Someone stood on it at a party
• …

One key benefit of using our Live Services is the amount of storage we provide… it adds up to a LOT.  In the video we talk about Office Live Workspace… but there are others as well:

That’s One Hundred and Fifty Five GIGABYTES… and I am sure that there are more to be had if you look at PhotoSynth and more…

Jonny

Something my colleague described at the “most anticipated 267KB [he] has seen in quite a while'”… ILM support for Outlook Live is now with us.  Webcasts by the Exchange team are planned, and I will do my best to blog on a few choice hints and tips here as well as these come up.

GalSync 2010 can be obtained from the Outlook Live connection on http://connect.microsoft.com.

Enjoy!

Jonny

Many, many customers that I have been dealing with over the last year have been awaiting the launch of ILM support for Outlook Live.  Well the wait is now almost over… more on this soon.

In the meantime, feel free to immerse yourself in the extensive documentation we have just released to the web: http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/dd575560.aspx.

I get a feeling that this will generate a lot of chatter…

Enjoy!

Jonny

As I have noted before, the great thing about hosted cloud services is that users and admins do not have to wait for major version upgrades to obtain new features.

A new feature that has just landed in the Exchange Control Panel is an Import Users feature that allows an admin to stage a CSV file of new user mailboxes on our servers for processing instead of tying up a local desktop or server.  Below is a nice pic of this in all of its shiny new glory :)

Currently this feature is for new imports only… but I am told that functionality will be expanded to include other operations soon.  In the meantime, please read all about this here: http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/ms.exch.ecp.csvimportlearnmore.aspx?v=14.0.482.25&r=ia&l=1, and if you are an admin, please try it out and let us know what you think over on http://outlookliveanswers.com.

One point to note, is that for updates/deletes, and to work with MailContacts and MailUsers, you will still need to use CSV_Parser.ps1.  You should also note that the CSV file format with the new Import Users feature is slightly different to the one that CSV_Parser requires… so don’t make the same mistake I did and try using one of your existing CSV files with it.

Enjoy!

Jonny

That’s a lot of letters and numbers up there in the title… isn’t it great that you can write stuff like that and folks still know what you mean?

Anyway, what are we talking about here?

Some of the early users of WinRMv2 and PowerShellv2 on Windows Server and Vista machines may now be upgrading their OS’s to Service Pack 2.  In doing so, Powershell connectivity to Outlook Live may stop working, depending on what iteration of the bits you originally used.  If you do upgrade to SP2 and PowerShell stops working, you will need to reinstall WinRM/PowerShell.

Simply follow the links here to get the latest builds: http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/cc952756.aspx 

Hope that helps.

Jonny

We are pleased to announce the release of Outlook Live Answers.  This forum and blog site provides Live@edu Outlook Live administrators and end-users with a friendly “Q&A” forum to quickly find answers to their questions and for administrators to get dynamic information about their Outlook Live service.

The site complements our help.outlook.com product documentation and will extend and replace our chalktalk DL. Instead of dispersing information in DLs, use of the forum by you and your student, faculty, and alumni end users will enable us to build a knowledge base that is available 24 hours a day.  There is also an administrator section, so you can continue to connect with your peers on administrative issues just as you do today on chalktalk. 

One particular exciting feature is a new Status and Alert system used to notify Outlook Live customers of service issues.   This update, located at http://outlookliveanswers.com/servicestatus.aspx, replaces the manual external blog approach we have previously used and allows us deliver targeted service information about your specific account

How does it work?

The Outlook live answers site provides end-users with a “Q&A” interface into the forums:

As you start typing, we look for answers in the forums. If you want to ask a question, just click the “Ask” link. Users can share solutions by clicking on “Share” to find unanswered forum threads where they can share their knowledge with the community!           

The Status and Alert System provides you with information on your account.  To use it, simply sign in to Outlook Live Answers with your Live@edu LiveID and if there is an issue, you will see an alert notification at the top of the home page as well as more detailed information on the dedicated Service Status page.  By signing in with your Live@edu Admin LiveID, you will see additional details that aren’t relevant to your end users.

.

How to participate

Visit our site at www.outlookliveanswers.com sign in with your LiveID, create a site account name (this will be used as your display name) and explore! If you are your school’s Live@edu administrator, then please sign in using your Live@edu Admin LiveID to take full advantage of the Status and Alerts system.  Also, don’t forget to visit the specific forums section for Outlook Live administrators where you can post questions exactly as you ask them today using the chalktalk DL.

We’ll keep the chalktalk DL alive for a short period of time to enable the transition, and send reminders regarding the new site regularly.