by Steve Galloway | Dec 5, 2015
This article explains the difference between Skype, Skype for Business, and how to link an existing Skype account to a Microsoft Account to communicate with the combined “Skype” user base.
Microsoft bought Skype $8.5bn in 2011, and its success at embedding Skype in its Office 365 and consumer products mean legacy users from the pre 2011 takeover have some housekeeping to do.
Skype and Skype for Business are separate products. Skype for Business users enjoy premium services which delivers telephony and meetings direct to Outlook. Microsoft recently completed a project enabling Skype for Business users to communicate with Skype users who use the consumer “as-is” offering.
Skype with “Skype” user names need to link their Skype accounts with either a new or existing Skype account to be visible to the combined Skype/Skype for Business Community.
Linking an existing Skype account to a Microsoft account might seem like a pointless task. However, Office 365 users increasingly turn to Skype for Business to conduct their telephony, and with Office 365’s newly released Cloud PBX service, which threatens to stand conventional office telephone systems on their head, it pays to bring your legacy Skype account and its credentials into Skype’s new “Directory”.
Even if you are minded to keep your existing Skype credentials, bear in mind that Skype is a Microsoft product, and in the same way that iTunes is little use without an Apple ID, Skype users who rely on existing old Skype credentials will eventually have to adopt Microsoft accounts to maintain Skype accounts in any event.
How to link a Skype account to a Microsoft account
Linking your Skype and Microsoft accounts means you can use the same sign-in details for Skype that you use for all of your Microsoft devices and services. Plus, if you forget your password it’s easier to recover it.
You can only link one Skype account with one Microsoft account, so if you have more than one you need to choose which ones to link.
To link your accounts:
- Start Skype, type your Microsoft account email address and password and then click Sign in.
- Click Yes to confirm that you already have a Skype account.
- Enter your Skype Name and password, then click the arrow.
- Your Microsoft and Skype accounts are now linked. Next time you sign in, just use your Microsoft account email address and password.
If you have more than one Skype or Microsoft account and you have linked the wrong ones, you can easily unlink them, and then link the Skype and Microsoft accounts you want.
If you do not already have a Microsoft Account, there is an option to create a new one. You can read more about what Microsoft Accounts provide more broadly here.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 1, 2015
Office 365 help series – Updating credit/debit cards
Updating Office 365 credit/debit card details
This article explains how to edit or change the credit/debit card details used for paying for Office 365 subscriptions.
Office 365 subscriptions are paid direct to Microsoft on a monthly or annual basis by credit/debit card. Occasionally, card information needs to be updated, for instance when a card is nearing its expiry date. Sometimes new card information needs to be lodged with Microsoft if a card has been replaced.
Click open the sections below to find out how to manage your Office 365 payment arrangements with Microsoft.
1 - Log into Office 365
Information about your Office 365 account is kept in the “Billing” section your Office 365 admin center dashboard. In Billing, you can keep track of Office 365 licenses, payment history, and payment information which includes your active credit/debit card details.
Follow the steps below to find your way to the Office 365 Admin Center dashboard. If you use Outlook Web Access (OWA) to manage your email, and you already know how to login to services, you can go straight to the second image. If you do not know your password, you will need to contact us to help you reset your password.
Sign in to Office 365
Log into your dashboard my pointing your web browser to either:
- https://portal.office.com
- http://mail.office365.com
The landing page will look similar to the screenshot below. Enter your email address and password and click Sign In
Open the Office 365 Admin Center
Click open the pull down the tile menu at the top left of the page (see below) and click open Admin. If you have logged into Outlook Web Access (OWA) you will land on your email inbox, but the same tile menu is at the top left of your screen. If you have logged in using the portal.office.com, the page will look more like the example below. The example shows a fully featured Office 365 account. The tile menu will look different depending on the services you are subscribed to, however you will still have an Admin tile.
Click open the next section to learn how to navigate to your Billing section.
2 - Navigating Office 365 Admin Center
The Office 365 Admin Center manages all your services in one dashboard. Information about your account with Microsoft is handled under Billing.
Click on Billing, and then click on Subscriptions to manage your credit/debit card information. Go to the next section for guidance on changing your credit/debit card details.
3 - Update Credit/Debit Card Details
The Billing > Subscriptions page summarizes information at a glance about your account with Microsoft, including the licenses you are subscribed to, payment frequency, status, and forthcoming payments.
To modify your card details, click “Change payment details” and click “Edit” on the right hand sidebar which subsequently opens.
- If you have a brand new card, click “add a card” to replace your old card.
- If your new card uses the same account number, you may only need to change the expiry date. In this case, click “edit existing card” and make the changes.
- Click “Save“.
This completes the process for updating an existing credit/debit card or setting up a new card.
by Steve Galloway | Oct 31, 2015
Mobile Device Management
Mobile Device Management (MDM) is an Office 365 service for securing and managing users’ mobile devices like iPhones, iPads, Androids, and Windows phones. Using MDM Office 365 administrators can
- view an inventory of all enrolled devices that connect to an organization
- create and manage device security policies
- remotely wipe a device
- view detailed device and management reports. Click open the steps below to activate and set up Mobile Device Management for Office 365.
1 - Activate MDM in Office 365
To manage mobile devices for Office 365 licensed users in your organization, you first need to activate the service in the Office 365 admin center.
Sign in to Office 365 with your work or school account.
Go to the Office 365 admin center.
Select Mobile Management.
Select “Let’s get started” to kick off the activation process
It may take some time for the service to be provisioned. When it’s done, you’ll see the new Mobile Device Management for Office 365 page.
2 - Set up Mobile Device Management for Office 365
When the service is ready, complete the required steps to finish setup. You may need to click Manage settings on the Mobile Device Management for Office 365 page to see the following settings.
Configure an APNs Certificate for iOS devices
To manage iOS devices like iPad and iPhones, you need to create and install an APNs certificate in Office 365.
To do this,
1 – Next to Create an APNs Certificate for an iOS device, select Set up.
2 – Select Download your CSR file and save the Certificate signing request to a file location on your computer that you’ll remember.
3 – Select Next.
4 – Create an APN certificate.
- Select Apple APNS Portal to open the Apple Push Certificates Portal.
- Sign in with an Apple ID.
IMPORTANT – Use a company Apple ID associated with an email account that will remain with your organization even if the user who manages the account leaves. Save this ID because you will need to use the same ID when it is time to renew the certificate.
- Select Create a Certificate and accept the Terms of Use.
- Browse to the Certificate signing request you downloaded to your computer from Office 365 and select Upload.
- Download the APN certificate created by the Apple Push Certificate Portal to your computer.
TIP – if you are having trouble downloading the certificate, refresh your browser.
5 – Go back to Office 365 and select Next to get to the Upload APNS certificate page.
6 – Browse to the APN certificate you downloaded from the Apple Push Certificates Portal.
7 – Select Finish.
Go back to Office 365 admin center > Mobile Management > Manage settings to complete setup.
Configure domains for MDM
If you do not have a custom domain associated with Office 365, you can skip this section. Otherwise, you’ll need to add DNS records for the domain at your DNS host. If you have added the records already, you are ready to proceed. After you add these records, Office 365 users in your organization who sign in with their mobile device with an email address that uses your custom domain can then be redirected to enroll in MDM for Office 365.
Find your domain registrar in the list provided in Create DNS records for Office 365 when you manage your DNS records and select the registrar name to go to step-by-step help for creating DNS records. Use those instructions to add the following two records:
After you add the two records, go back to Office 365 admin center > Mobile Device Management > Manage settings to complete setup.
Set up multi-factor authentication
If you don’t see multi-factor authentication (MFA) under Recommended steps you can skip this section. If this option is listed, we recommend you turn on MFA in the Azure AD portal to increase the security of the Mobile Device Management for Office 365 enrollment process. It is turned off by default.
MFA helps secure the sign in to Office 365 for mobile device enrollment by requiring a second form of authentication. Users are required to acknowledge a phone call, text message, or app notification on their mobile device after correctly entering their work account password. They can only enroll their device after this second form of authentication is completed. After users’ devices are enrolled in Mobile Device Management for Office 365, users can access Office 365 resources with just their work account.
Next to Set up multi-factor authentication, select Set up. To learn how to turn on MFA in the Azure AD portal, see Set up multi-factor authentication.
When you’re done, go back to Office 365 admin center > Mobile Management > Manage settings to complete setup.
Manage device security policies
Before you can start to manage mobile devices in your organization, you need to create a device security policy to enforce users to enroll their devices. This is covered in Step 3.
3 - Configure device security policies
Office 365 global administrators can create and deploy mobile device management policies to protect Office 365 organizational data. For example, to help prevent data loss if a user loses their device, you can create a policy to lock devices after 5 minutes of inactivity and have devices wiped after 3 sign-in failures.
In the Compliance Center, go to Devices to create device security policies and access rules.
For step by step instructions on how to create a new policy, see Create and deploy mobile device management policies for Office 365.
TIPS
- When you create a new policy, you might want to set the policy to allow access and report policy violation where a user’s device isn’t compliant with the policy. This way you can see how many mobile devices would be impacted by the policy without blocking your organization’s access to Office 365.
- Before deploying a new policy to everyone in your organization, we recommend you test it on the devices used by a small number of users.
- Before deploying policies, let your organization know the potential impacts of enrolling a device in MDM for Office 365. Depending on how you set up the policies, non-compliant devices could be blocked access to Office 365 and data including installed applications, photos and personal information on an enrolled device could be deleted if the device is wiped. For more information, see Wipe a mobile device in Office 365.
4 - Enrolling users in MDM
After you’ve deployed a mobile device management policy, each licensed Office 365 user in your organization that the device policy applies to will receive an enrollment message the next time they sign into Office 365 from their mobile device. They must complete the enrollment and activation steps before they can access Office 365 email and documents. See Enroll your mobile device for work or school.
IMPORTANT If a user’s preferred language is not supported by the enrollment process, users may receive enrollment notification and steps on their mobile devices in another language. Not all languages supported in Office 365 are currently supported for the enrollment process on mobile devices.
Users with Android or iOS devices are required to install the Company Portal app as part of the enrollment process.
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5 - Manage devices
Go to Office 365 admin center > Mobile Management to view device properties, access reports, and wipe devices.
by Steve Galloway | Sep 12, 2015
The simplest way to set up a network multifunction printer to send captured scans by email is by using SMTP client submission. It allows your printer to log in to an Office 365 mailbox and send mail just like Outlook Desktop does. Emails from your printer are then delivered to your hosted mailboxes or external recipients. This way avoids some of the problems associated with the other configuration options available which is covered here.
Print services: SMTP submission
If your printer has settings for an email address/username and password for the send to email feature, then there is a good chance that it can send using SMTP client submission. The settings needed for SMTP client submission to connect to Office 365 are:
Office 365 Printer Settings
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Limitations
Unless your printer is advanced enough to store multiple mailboxes login credentials, you can only send mail from one mailbox for this option. Also, Office 365 imposes a limit of 30 messages sent per minute for each mailbox.
Other configuration options
We have recently updated the comprehensive configuration document that details the three configuration options for setting up your printer. If the settings above to not work, you should visit the article for its more detailed explanations covering Microsoft’s 3 recommended process for printers/scanners/multifunction devices:
by Steve Galloway | Aug 27, 2015
Files can be saved directly to Office 365 OneDrive accounts. This article explains how to save files to OneDrive, open files stored OneDrive using Apps like Word, and how to restore a OneDrive for Business file location if it does not appear in Office Apps or in Windows Explorer.
Save a document to OneDrive
To save a document you are working on, open the options panel on the left of the screen, click Save As, and select OneDrive – YourCompanyName. For example, in this screenshot the company name is Contoso.
Note that there is also an option to save to OneDrive – Personal. This option is available to users who have Hotmail, Outlook.com, Live, or other personal Microsoft accounts. OneDrive for Business provides a more fully featured facility, including service levels, rights management, and more, If you have a OneDrive for Business facility, you should file business documents in OneDrive for Business.
Open a document using an Office App
To open documents from OneDrive for Business, click open the Office App you want to use, for instance Word, and open the options panel on the left of the screen:
OneDrive does not exist in File Locations
If you do not see OneDrive – YourCompanyName, in the list of available file locations, open an Office App – for example Word or Excel – and create a new document. Then, opening the options menu on the left side of the screen and click Add a Place > Office 365 SharePoint. Then, sign in to Office 365 with your account. You will need your Office 365 account name (your email address) and your password.
OneDrive for Business vs Sharepoint
There are some considerations when saving files to OneDrive. For instance, Office 365’s Sharepoint stores documents including emails in “team sites” for shared access. Sharepoint can also be used for managing business documents. Use the guidelines below to decide how to manage your documents using Office 365.
Save documents to OneDrive for Business when…
- You do not plan to share them.
- Documents you place in OneDrive for Business are private by default, unless you place them in the Shared with Everyone folder. This makes OneDrive for Business your best option for draft documents or personal documents that no one else needs to see.
- You plan to share them, but they have a limited scope or lifecycle.
- You may sometimes work on documents that are not related to an ongoing project, which are important mostly to you, but that you still want to share. For example, perhaps you are writing an article to appear in a blog, and you want to ask colleagues to review and edit it before you post it. In this case, you expect people to use the document once and then be done with it. People do not need any additional context information, or need to know where you are keeping the document. All they need is a link to the document and editing permission.
- You cannot identify an existing team site where your document belongs, and you do not think the purpose of the document warrants creating a new one.
Save documents to a team site library when…
- You want team members to recognize the document as being relevant to an ongoing project.
- You want to spread ownership and permissions across a wider collection of people. If a document is important to the success of a project, it is a good idea for there to be people other than yourself who can control what happens on the site.
- You want permissions to be granted on a site basis, instead of on individual documents. If people have access to the team site, then they have access to documents stored in the site.
- Other project-related documents are already saved to the team site library, and others expect to find it there.
- You want to create a check-in workflow that assigns the document to someone else.
by Steve Galloway | Jun 5, 2015
Update your email account settings when your email account password changes, your mail server or the security settings change, or when you want to customize settings, such as how your name is displayed to other people.
The settings you can change vary by account type. For example, if you’re using an Exchange account, only the Exchange server admin can change your name as it appears to other people. To manage an email account:
1. Click File > Account Settings > Account Settings.
2. Select the email account you want to change, and then click Change.
Update your email account password
If you want to change the password used to access your mail server, follow the instructions provided by your email account provider. After your password for the mail server changes, then change the password saved in Outlook.
Under Logon Information, in the Password box, type your password.
If you don’t want to be prompted to enter your email account password each time you send and receive messages, select the Remember password check box.
If you select the Remember password check box, your account is accessible to anyone who has access to your Windows computer account.
Update your email address
Occasionally, your email address might change. For example, anne@contoso.com might become anne1@contoso.com. You can update the server setting in your account settings.
1. Under User Information, in the Email Address box, type your email address.
2. Click More Settings.
3. On the General tab, under Other User Information, if you specified an email address in the Reply email address box, make sure it’s still correct. If you leave Reply email address blank, when people reply to your email, the address you entered in step 1 is used.
With an Exchange account, only your Exchange admin can update your email address.
Update your email server
Sometimes the server you connect to in order to receive and send email might change.
For example, your ISP notifies you the outgoing mail server is changing from outgoing.example.com to smtp.example.com. You can update the server setting in the account settings. Your email provider can give you the correct server names.
- Under Server Information, in the Incoming mail server and Outgoing mail server boxes, type the server names. The name can be the same for both, but usually is different.
Change the way your name is displayed to other people
- Under User Information, in the Your Name box, type your name the way you want it to appear to other people.
With an Exchange account, only your Exchange admin can update your name.
Additional settings
- Click More Settings, and then you can change the following (options vary by account type):
- On the General tab, under Mail Account, type the name you want to show in the Folder Pane and the From box (if you have added multiple email accounts).
- If you are using an IMAP email account, you can control when items are deleted. Under Purge Options, check or uncheck Purge items when switching folders while online.
- On the Folders tab, you can choose where mail you send from this account is saved.
- On the Outgoing Server tab, you can specify whether your outgoing SMTP mail server requires authentication. This is almost always required if your ISP allows you to send email messages through your ISP email account when you are not directly connected to the ISP network. For example, if you want to send an email message with your home ISP email account and you are away from home connected to your work network, you usually must select this option.
- On the Connection tab, you can configure how Outlook connects to the mail server.
- If you are instructed by your ISP or email admin to change the port numbers or encryption method used by your email server, you can make the change on the Advanced tab.
Exchange accounts have these options:
- On the General tab, under Mail Account, type the name you want to show in the Folder Pane and the From box (if you have added multiple email accounts).
- On the Advanced tab, you can specify additional Exchange mailboxes to open. This can be used if another person has given you access to some of his or her Exchange folders or someone has granted you Delegate Access permissions.
- To reduce the size of your offline Outlook Data File (.ost), on the Advanced tab, click Outlook Data File Settings, and then click Compact Now.
- Security settings can be changed on the Security tab. Don’t change these settings unless instructed to do so by your Exchange admin.
- When you’re away from the office, Outlook Anywhere enables you to connect Outlook to your Exchange account from any Internet location without a using a virtual private network (VPN) connection. To turn on Outlook Anywhere, on the Connection tab, under Outlook Anywhere, check Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP, and then click Exchange Proxy Settings. Your Exchange admin must enable this feature and provide you the proxy settings
