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

 

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 Keep in mind though that while some information may be outdated, it will give you a broad idea of the concept and the inner workings.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 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.

 

Jump start videos for the new exam 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses.

Office 365 has been available for quite some time and there have also been two exams available:
70-321 Deploying Office 365
70-323 Administering Office 365
These exams focussed on larger enterprises and features corresponding with this use. More information about these exams can be found in my previous blog post. Keep in mind however that Office 365 is an ever evolving service and that things might have been changed since I wrote this blog post. Even Microsoft has retired and replaced some of their learning content.

Recently a third exam became available that focusses on smaller businesses 74-324 Administering Office 365 for Small Businesses. At the end of August a Jump Start event was held and now the recordings of this event have been made available on Technet Video.

I hope this is useful to you and that it will help you leverage Office 365 better.

 

Provide anonymous access to sharepoint lists on Office 365 (Sharepoint online)

Office 365 introduction

Office 365 basically provides you with collaboration services consisting of the following components:

• E-mail (Exchange online)
• Instant messaging (Lync online)
• Internal and external websites (Sharepoint online)
• Office (either locally installed or through web apps).

I really like this service offering because of the following reasons:

• All services (and servers) are hosted by Microsoft. This means you don’t have to invest in servers, software. You also don’t have to do the initial setup nor do you have to maintain the servers, operating system and software. This all helps you to be able to focus on your core business.
• You pay monthly fees, which are predictable.
• Since you are using a cloud based service, the functionality is continuously being improved and newer versions are being provided at no additional cost. Currently Office 2013 Preview is available for testing only on Office 365, but when it is released it will probably also find its way to the current Office 365 users.

But don’t take my word for it, just try it for yourself and see if and how you can benefit from it.

Configuring anonymous access to sharepoint lists on Office 365 (Sharepoint online) 

Even though I like Office 365, it is far from perfect. For example, one of the reasons for me to get and Office 365 subscription was because (I thought) it would let me easily share website links, applications, scripts using sharepoints lists to the internet.

In reality however, the public facing sharepoint site was very limited and did not provide an easy way to do this. Another option was to create these lists on my “internal” sharepoint site and then provide access to people by inviting them by e-mail. This would however limit my audience / knowledge sharing potential.

After searching for people with similar issues, I came across a workaround that would help me accomplish my goals: http://anonymous365.codeplex.com

Steps to configure a sharepoint list on my public facing sharepoint site that is accessible for anonymous users:

1. Download the anonymous365 sharepoint solution from http://anonymous365.codeplex.com
2. Go to the “Site Settings” of your public facing site using by example :
   http://bjornhouben-web.sharepoint.com/_layouts/settings.aspx
3. Go to the “Galleries” section and go to “Solutions“.
4. Click under the “Name” colume and in the ribbon interface under the “Solutions” tab choose “Upload Solution“.
5. Browse to the previously downloaded anonymous365 sharepoint solution : “Wsp365.Anonymous.wsp” and press “OK“.
6. Check the checkbox of the uploaded “Wsp365.Anonymous.wsp” and in the ribbon interface under the “Solutions” tab choose “Activate“.
7. The go to the “All Site Content” of your public facing site using by example:
   http://bjornhouben-web.sharepoint.com/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx
8. Press “Create“
9. Choose the list type you want, enter a name and press “Create“.
10. Then in the ribbon interface under “List Tools” and “List” press the button “Anonymous Access“
11. Choose what access you want to give anonymous users for this specific list and press “OK”.

PS: You can also use a list to share files using the attachments.

Closing thoughts

I hope this explanation was helpful and I love to get feedback. Because the groundwork is done now, I can focus on the actual knowledge sharing by populating the lists with content. So you can expect some major updates soon on both my blog posts and the lists below:

• Applications
• Links
• Scripts
• Study resources

 

Office 365 beta exams experience

Exam experience

Today I took the Office 365 beta exams:
70-321 Deploying Office 365
70-323 Administering Office 365

In my opinion the 70-323 was pretty tough, while the 70-321 was a lot easier. I expected it to be the other way around though. Now unfortunately I have to wait for the results (normally within 8 weeks).

Quick exam reminders I studied before the exams

1. Deployment phase
   1. Office 365 Deployment Phases
   2. Office 365 Deployment Schedule
2. Plan phase
   1. Key activities
   2. Office 365 Enterprise License Plans
   3. Office 365 Administration roles
   4. Exchange Hybrid Solution Infrastructure overview picture
   5. High Level Tasks For Exchange Hybrid Deployment
3. Prepare phase
   1. Key activities
   2. Update schema for Exchange 2010 :
      cd c:\exchangeserver2010sp1 and then setup /preparead
   3. Office 365 ports, ips and urls
   4. Exchange Hybrid Deployment Domain and Host Names Worksheet
   5. Configure SSO with ADFS:
      Connect-MsolService –Credential $cred
      Set-MsolAdfscontext -Computer <AD FS 2.0 primary server>
      New-MsolFederatedDomain –DomainName <domain>
   6. Configure dirsync (separate server and when less than
      50.000 objects SQL 2008 Express will do).
   7. Mail migration types and explanation E-mail migration overview (virtual labs)
4. Migrate phase
   1. Key activities
   2. Post-deployment services testing plan

Resources used as preparation

• Blog’in I.T: Office 365 Exam Revision Notes
• Prepare for Office 365 for education
• Transition center
• Exam 70-321 info
• Exam 70-323 info
• Office 365 Trial 30 days
• Office 365 User Tour
• Office 365 Admin Tour
• Free eBook: Microsoft Office 365: Connect and Collaborate Virtually Anywhere, Anytime
• Office 365 Guides for professionals and small businesses
• Office 365 jumpstart
• Office 365 Techcenter
• Office 365 Edge
• Office 365 Youtube channel
• Office 365 Blog
• Office 365 Community
• Office 365: Collaboration in the Cloud
• Office 365 requirements
• Office 365 Deployment Guide For Enterprises
• Office 365 for enterprise service descriptions
• Office 365 Deployment
• Office Professional Plus for Office 365
• Office 365 Help
• Office 365 Powershell commands
• Other ways to get started with Office 365 for professionals and small businesses
• Other ways to get started with Office 365 for Enterprise
• Service Updates for Office 365
• MOSDAL (Microsoft Online Services Diagnostics and Logging) Support Toolkit
• Office 365 Tools and Diagnostics Wiki
• Security and compliance in Office 365
• Troubleshooting Exchange ActiveSync in Exchange Online for Office 365
• Transitioning SharePoint Online from Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) to Office 365