Office 365 – Fix for SharePoint message “call us overprotective, but we need to verify your account before opening this document”

In yesterday’s blog post I mentioned that I was looking forward to being upgraded to the new Office 365 in the next 4 weeks.

I did encounter an issue however that I was not able to open files on SharePoint using the desktop version of Office 2013. I kept on getting the message: “call us overprotective, but we need to verify your account before opening this document”. This never succeeded and I couldn’t modify my file using Office 2013. The Office Web App version was working fine though.

After googling around a bit, I found out that this was a common issue for people that are planned to be migrated (pre-upgrade). The solution/workaround for this issue is described here:
Office 365 pre-upgrade users cannot open or synchronize SharePoint files after the Office 2013: March 12, 2013 update is installed

 

Office 365 – Full Office Web Apps have been added to my E1 account for free

Back in February I posted that as part of the new Office 365 service, changes would be made to the Office 365 plans.

These changes are in effect right now. In short this means that the E1 and K1 plans that previously were only able to read with the Web Apps have gotten the full Office Web Apps (view, edit, create). This replaces the old E2 and K2. So basically:

• Old E1/K1 have gotten E2/K2 functionality at the same low cost.
• Old E2/K2 customers will keep the same features, but at a lower cost (E1/K1).
• Old E2/K2 will be replaced by E1/K1 since they will then have the same functionality.

The new situation has become like this:

New Office 365 Enterprise Plans overview

PS: I love the Office 365 service and I’m looking forward to the new Office 365 features that will be added when Office 365 will start using the Office 2013 (Wave 15) versions of SharePoint, Outlook, Lync, Office Web Apps. I’ve gotten a mail that I’m planned to be upgraded within the next 4 weeks, so more about that soon. I’m especially curious if my SharePoint customizations will continue to work.

 

Microsoft – Resources to get more familiar with Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)

Nowadays more and more work, communication and collaboration involves multiple external parties. This can involve by example employees, customers, partners, suppliers, cloud providers/platforms/applications.

This means it is becoming increasingly important to have proper authentication and authorization methods in place for single sign on (SSO) so users can be more productive. Besides the ease-of-use It can also lead to better security.

Microsoft’s Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) will make this possible. For more information on ADFS, here are some resources. Keep in mind though that while some information may be outdated, it will give you a broad idea of the concept and the inner workings. The current version of ADFS in Windows Server 2012 is 2.1 , while Windows Server 2008 uses 2.0

• Active Directory Federation Services (TechNet)
• Active Directory Federation Services,Part 1: How Do They Really Work?
• Active Directory Federation Services,Part 2: Building Federated Identity Solutions
• Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 solution guide (including ForeFront UAG)
• Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 Deep Dive: Deploying a Highly Available Infrastructure
• AD FS 2.0 Step-by-Step and How To Guides
• AD FS with Office 365 Step by Step Install Guide
• ADFS 2.0 Setup Guide
• A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control (2nd Edition)
• Choosing Between Forefront TMG or Forefront UAG for Publishing Scenarios
• Cloud Security: The Practical Meaning of Security, Identity and Access Revealed!
• Complete walkthrough: Setting up a ADFS 2.0 Server on Windows Azure IaaS and Configuring it as an Identity Provider in Windows Azure ACS
• Demystified Series: Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) Part 1
• Demystified Series: Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) Part 2
• Deploying and Configuring ADFS 2.0
• Federated Identity in the Cloud [NZ 2010: SEC402]
• Federation and Federated Identity: Part 1 Active Directory Federation Services – How Do they Really Work?
• Federation and Federated Identity: Part 2 Building Federated Identity Solutions with Forefront Unified Access Gateway and ADFS v2
• Forefront UAG and ADFS: Better together
• Managing Identity in the Cloud with ADFS and Windows Azure – TechDays 2012
• MS Innovations Blog posts tagged with adfs
• Office 365 ADFS virtual lab
• Office 365 for SMB Jump Start (03) | Office 365 DirSync, Single Sign-On & ADFS
• Office 365 SSO: A Simplified Installation Guide
• Plan for and deploy AD FS for use with single sign-on
• Setting up Single Sign on with Office 365 using ADFS 2.0
• The Access Onion – Peeling away at Access Management, Identity Federation, PKI and SSO issues
• What’s new in Forefront UAG Service Pack 2 (also ADFS 2.0 changes)
• Windows Authentication, ADFS and the Access Control Service 
• Windows Server 2008 (R2) Active Directory Federation Services (TechNet)

PS: Microsoft is moving more and more towards claims based authentication. Examples include Windows Server 2012 Dynamic Access Control and also SharePoint 2013 that has switched to claims based authentication by default now.

If you have some other resources that might be useful, please let me know so I can add them as well.

 

Office 365 / Sharepoint online – Add search to your public site

In the past I’ve created a post to get my public site to become a SharePoint 2010 style team site. The only thing I’d been missing since was a way to allow public/anonymous users to use the search (when trying to perform a search you would have to logon).This also meant that filters in the lists I created weren’t working

Because of the unsupported customizing I did on the SharePoint site, I thought this just wasn’t possible.

Thankfully however, a visitor of my blog (Denis) came across my post “Provide anonymous access to sharepoint lists on Office 365 (Sharepoint online)” and shared this blog post to enable search for an Office 365 / SharePoint Online public site.

So now my website http://www.bjornhouben.com and all the content inside it, including the lists is completely searchable.

Thanks again Denis.

 

Office 365 – E1 and K1 plans getting full Office Web Apps (view, edit, create), replacing E2 and K2 at lower cost

As part of the new Office 365 service, changes will be made to the Office 365 plans. In short this means that the E1 and K1 plans will get full Office Web Apps (view, edit, create) replacing E2 and K2:

• Current E1/K1 will get E2/K2 functionality at the same low cost.
• Current E2/K2 customers will keep the same features, but at a lower cost (E1/K1).
• E2/K2 will be replaced by E1/K1 since they will then have the same functionality.

The new situation will become like this:

New Office 365 Enterprise Plans overview

PS: Besides the lower prices I’m also looking forward to the new Office 365 features that will be added when Office 365 will start using the Office 2013 (Wave 15) versions of SharePoint, Outlook, Lync, Office Web Apps. More about that soon.

 

Free exam – 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses

Microsoft is offering free exam vouchers for 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2013/01/15/we-re-giving-away-2-000-free-administering-office-365-for-small-businesses-exam-74-324-vouchers-here-s-how-to-get-yours.aspx

The supply is limited, so don’t wait too long.

Also be sure to take a look at : Jump start videos for the new exam 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses.

[edit 25-01]

Another code can be found here: http://www.digitalwpc.com/GetInvolved/MSPartnerPerspectives/TrainingSpotlight/Pages/Training-Spotlight-Small-Business-Competency-Announcements.aspx?mtag=mpntraining_tw_SBCompAnnouncements#fbid=gbfFqtdRaxn

[edit 25-01]

 

Preparation guide for 70-688 Managing and Maintaining Windows 8

Last week I got a beta exam invite for exam “70-688 Managing and Maintaining Windows 8″ (in beta it is 71-688). As with most beta exams lately, you only have max two weeks to prepare and there are no books available yet that you can use to study. Therefore I start with looking at what skills are being measured and if there are preparation guides available. From there on I start looking for relevant learning resources for each subject and adding them to the skills that are being measured for easy future reference.

I hope it is useful for you as well.

 

Office 2013 including Exchange, Lync and Sharepoint has been released to manufacturing (RTM)

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, Microsoft is working hard to get new and better versions of their software released as soon as possible.

Last week Microsoft announced that the Office 2013 suite reached released to manufacturing (RTM) including:

• Office 2013 for workstations (Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, OneNote, Project, Visio)
• Server software (Exchange 2013, Sharepoint 2013, Project 2013, Lync 2013, Visio 2013)
• Cloud versions of the above mentioned software (Office 365).

The availability is dependent on the platform and your licensing type. More information about this can be found here:
http://blogs.office.com/b/office-news/archive/2012/10/11/office-reaches-rtm.aspx

I have to admit I didn’t expect them to reach RTM status already. I also hope that beta exams won’t be released anytime soon, because then I won’t have enough time to properly prepare

 

Office 365 / Sharepoint online – Workaround to add RSS feed web part to public website

When I tried to include a RSS feeds web part to my public sharepoint site just the way I had done many times on intenal sharepoint sites, I found out that the RSS viewer web part was not available.

After searching the internet I found out why this was the case and I also found a workaround using a custom solution/webpart.

Even though it is possible to use RSS feeds this way on my public sharepoint site, it is not what I expected. In my opinion an RSS feed web part is such a fundamental part of websites nowadays that it should be available by default in Office 365 / Sharepoint online.

I hope that this will be corrected in the upcoming release of sharepoint (2013) for Office 365, but the preview still doesn’t provide this capability unfortunately:

 

Office 365 / Sharepoint online – Change public site to look like a sharepoint 2010 site

When you first create a public site collection in Office 365 / Sharepoint online you get a default website that looks like this:

I personally prefer the Sharepoint 2010 site look:

To change the layout, follow the instructions in this blog post:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint__cloud/archive/2011/12/22/change-sharepoint-online-public-site-to-look-like-a-sharepoint-2010-site.aspx

Please check my website http://www.bjornhouben.com to see what it can look like after some minor customizations.