Product Insights: Exchange Online in Office 365

While Exchange Online looks good and better than anything else out there, where do we stand with Exchange policies and Windows Phone 7? Is it still the same story of incomplete Exchange policy support on WP7 or is there something to look forward to with full Exchange policy support?

Looks like a very compelling offering. Is this the sort of thing that will be competitively priced for single users?

When will this be ready? I am very excited about hosted exchange, but it seems like you keep pushing the launch back.

Thanks for the question Techieg: I believe you are referring to Active Sync policies in BPOS compared to Office 365. With Office 365 you will have the capability to set ALL the Active Sync policies right from within the admin console, and there are even user-level settings where you can wipe devices if they are lost or stolen.

Loz: This focuses more on the Enterprise level, but the main functionality will be available in our Small Business offer at $6 per user per month. Check out office365.com for more info, and for technical information on Exchange Online in Office 365 see our services descriptions here: http://bit.ly/iaxtxq

@George: We are still in limited beta at the moment. We are still in testing to make sure we can incorporate all the feedback we are getting into the final product. Our customers are going to run their businesses on this service, so we can't release until we fully understand things like scalability and performance in a controlled environment. Limiting the beta ensures we can do both. As we feel we reached that point where we are comfortable, we will continue to scale.

In Office 365 for small business, how can companies use Exchange Online to generate multiple custom emails (example: you@yourcompany.com)  for employees without dispensing a user licence?  My company deals with a lot of small businesses who are concerned that this may result in additional costs that they are not prepared to pay for.

If you want some early insight into the beta of Office 365 Exchange Online, then check-out 21apps CEO and SharePoint MVP Andrew Woodward's great post with screen shots and our early impressions here:

www.21apps.com/.../exchange-overview

@Ous - I think you mean Distribution Lists where you can have an email address such as info@yourdomain.com and have multiple employees as a member of this group so that emails sent to the group cna be received by every member. That is free and does not require any license as is currently implemented on BPOS. For user email addresses, they have to be created per licensed user and each user can have more ahtn one email address as is currently implemented on BPOS. If its different on Office365 I'm sure Allen can detail any differences.

@Allen - That is good to hear that ALL Activesync policies are supported. I understand that from the Exchange Online admin end ALL the policies are supported even though WP7 itself currently does not. When will WP7 itself support it ALL Activesync policies since it currently does not (a good example is on-device data encryption and alphanumeric passwords, etc)?

@Techieg: Thanks for the clarification. This is a "when is WP7 getting updated to the same level as it was with Windows Mobile 6.5" question. I know the mobile team is working on that, but I don't have any idea when that is coming down the pipe. I have one myself, and the only one that presents a problem is the lack of ability to rea DRM'd email. Right now, WP7 & Exchange Online does enforce password protection, although just numeric only. Here is a great wikipedia article that shows which features are implemented across different mobile devices. Implementation of Exchange ActiveSync features varies across devices, and WP7 has not implemented as many features as windows mobile 6.5 (yet!)

en.wikipedia.org/.../Comparison_of_Exchange_ActiveSync_Clients

@Ous: Yes, in Office 365, you can use the Distribution List approach described above.  You can also assign multiple email addresses to a user (joe@contoso.com, joe@contosotravel.com. joseph.user@contosotravel.com, etc) and that user will be able to receive email at all of those addresses.  If users need to send mail from multiple addresses, you can create a shared mailbox for each address (using PowerShell), and give one or more users permission to “Send As” those identities.  In Office 365, none of these approaches (distribution lists, multiple SMTP addresses for receiving mail, and shared mailboxes) require an additional subscription. Its all free!

Thank you @Allen and @Techieg for the clarification.  I am looking forward to all the great features Office 365 has to offer.

Will it be possible to co-exist Office 365 Exchange while keeping the main web/application server with another hoster?

Scenario: Small business, already has a website and domain name to keep (www.mysmallcompany.com)

I just want to take the Exchange from Office 365 Small Business (to have something like myname@mysmallcompany.com), but keep the main server hosted with my exisiting provider (so just change the MX entries of the domain name).

I ask because some other Exchange hosters force you to use their dummy domain (myname@standarddomain.com) für small organisation plans. I could not find details in the documents here on the website.

Another scenario:

A company has a website and through this website they need to send email's to their customers. The servers which send info to smtp servers do not have static IPs since they are cloud based. Will Exchange Online provide smtp services for non-static IPs? The users of the company would also have personal accounts.

@Oliver - I will suggest moving to a host that will not "force" anything on you. In any case, BPOS and Office365 only need you to point your MX records to them while you keep everything else elsewhere. But why not properly strategize by planning to move your domain, website, email, collaboration, etc to Office365 when you will be paying for the lot anyway and quit paying another bill elsewhere. Just a thought.

Hello,

Can you please tell me if I can use powershell to set delegate for mailbox in Office 365? if yes, then what command(s) should I use?

I can set the mailbox's folder permission for an user, let say user A to access my mailbox folders, but user A didn't show up in my mailbox's delegate list.

Many thanks!