More Office 365 Answers

By Clint Patterson, Director of Communications, Microsoft Office Division

More great questions. More answers that we hope are great too.

I saw several questions today on Office desktop apps, so the first five really focus on the options there, including some 'splaining around Microsoft Access. The rest cover ground from domains to voice.

I also want to point folks to some great resources for Office 365. The Office 365 website is more than pretty pictures (but it has those too). It includes a detailed QA, and some great product detail. In addition, there is Office 365 transition center for great information and discussion on transitioning to Office 365 from BPOS.

In addition, if you have a Microsoft partner, they are a great resource and I encourage you to reach out to them. If you don't have a partner, you can find one here.

We are seeing an overwhelming response to beta. If you have already signed up, stay tuned for an e-mail in a couple weeks to let you know next steps. Because the beta is limited, everyone won't be in the first round of testing, but we'll expand over time. So if you haven't signed up, do it now to reserve your place in line.

1) If I have Office 365, do I need Office desktop apps?

The Office 365 experience is always best with Office desktop apps. With Office 365, you can get Office desktop apps in a flexible, pay-as-you-go, per user service model. This really provides the best experience of Office on the PC, mobile phone, and browser.

If you already have Office desktop apps (2007 SP2 or later on PC; 2008 or later on Mac), you can use those with Office 365. But, even if you already have a compatible version, you may want to get Office desktop apps with Office 365 for a few reasons:

• They are automatically updated with the latest stuff (prepare to be envied).
• You get Office Professional Plus - which is chock full of desktop productivity power (see below).
• It's what the cool kids will be doing.

2) Does Office 365 for small businesses include Office Professional Plus desktop applications?

No. It does not include Office desktop apps as part of the core $6 offering. Office 365 for small businesses includes:

• Office Web Apps for web productivity applications
• Exchange Online for e-mail, mobile access, calendar, discovery, anti-virus and anti-spam
• SharePoint Online for Microsoft Office Access services, team sites and an easy-to-build public website
• Lync Online for instant messaging and virtual meetings
• Community support
• Simplified setup and management

You can, however, add Office Professional Plus desktop apps to Office 365 for small business. See the next question.

3) How do I get Office Professional Plus desktop applications as part of Office 365?

There are two main options:

• Select a plan that includes Office Professional Plus. There are two of them to choose from, and the price starts at $24 and includes a boat load of other capabilities. Read more on the Office 365 fact sheet.
• Add Office Professional Plus desktop apps to almost any other Office 365 plan, including Office 365 for small businesses, for $12 per user per month for an annual subscription; $15 if you pay month to month.

4) What applications are available as a part of Office Professional Plus? "you need to do some 'splaining about support for Microsoft Access!"

Office Professional Plus includes the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Access, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace and Lync.

You get a full copy of Access and can run your applications on it locally. You can also sync it with your public web site using Access Services. Imagine you store your inventory in Access and want that to show up on your web site. You can sync the database to SharePoint Online, make few adjustments using the site designer, and voila, your inventory shows up on your web site. You choose what appears publically. For more information about Access, here's a video from the product team.

5) How is the Office Professional Plus license provided with Office 365? Is this click-to-run?

(Click-to-run is technology that allows you to use software that is running on another computer via an Internet connection.)

This is not click-to-run. It runs locally for the best performance, but it is downloaded from, licensed by and updated via the cloud with Office 365. So you get the flexibility of a service model. For example, an administrator can go to the admin console in Office 365 and give me a license to Office Professional Plus. I download Office Professional Plus and run it, and it gets updated regularly via the cloud. If the admin decides I no longer get a license, she can go to the same admin console and give my license to you, and my Office Professional Plus will go into "reduced functionality mode". Meaning, I can view my content, but I can't edit, create, print or save. I am now sad and envious of your productivity power.

6) How can we get full voice support with Office 365?

Today, you can already make PC-to-PC VoIP calls with BPOS. At launch, Lync Online will add audio/video federation (pc-to-pc calls across companies) and online meetings (multi-party Lync audio/video/web conferencing sessions. We plan to make voice calling capabilities (i.e. Lync to PSTN calling) available via Lync Online in the future, so stay tuned to more details on that down the road.

With Office 365 for enterprises, customers can choose an offer that includes rights to Lync Server for full enterprise voice support on-premises. Lync Server will integrate with Exchange Online for voice mail and presence information. More details and recommended configurations for how to deploy Lync Server working with Office 365 are in the works. You can read up on Lync Server capabilities on the Lync web site.

7) Where is Office 365 data stored?

Data is stored in geo-redundant data centers nearest to the customer's headquarters. We have industry-leading data centers in the US, Ireland, Japan, Holland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other locations. Not all data center locations are disclosed to ensure privacy and security. You can read more about our data centers and even see some video footage of them at the Microsoft Global Foundation Services (the data center people) web site.

8) How is Office 365 data protected?

We take our responsibility to safeguard customer data very seriously, whether the customer is using our cloud service or our desktop and server software. Many of our security practices are not public or are shared with customers only confidentially to ensure that we can continue to provide the highest levels of security.

Our services are built to adhere to strict privacy standards as described in our security white paper "Microsoft's Privacy Guidelines for Developing Software Products and Services." This set of standards helps ensure that protections are incorporated into our products and services. We also have a pretty in-depth Trustworthy Computing Privacy web site that you can check out for more questions.

After 20 years working with businesses, we understand the gravity of this topic, but we do more than understand - we put the resources behind it to ensure our customers can rest easy.

9) My small business has a few general purpose email addresses (e.g. info@ sales@ etc). How is this handled with Office 365 for small business?

With Exchange Online, you can create e-mail aliases (for example sales@contoso.com) using the public groups feature without expending a license. You can then determine who in your organizations can access e-mail to these aliases.

You also have the option of creating a shared mailbox for the alias, so that any employee could respond as sales@contoso.com. This approach requires a bit more legwork (running a few commands in Remote PowerShell).

10) Can I transfer a domain name to Office 365, so our e-mail addresses are person@mycompany.com?

Yes. You will be able to easily add your custom domain and use it for your Office 365 e-mail and/or public web site.

Keep your questions coming, and we will keep answering them!

Cheers,

Clint