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offic365 Site Collection Tree View

Office 365 for SharePoint hosting

I decided to take a look at Office 365 to let Microsoft host SharePoint for us, but it turns that Office 365 wants to do a lot more thanjust SharePoint hosting for you.

Here is our current collaboration/document management setup

  • We host our own SharePoint server on a dedicated server which is probably an overkill as far as the hardware goes, but it nice to have.
  • We let Google apps handle our email. Google docs are ok, but I prefer SharePoint for document and list management.
  • Our main public website uses a simple solution of DreamWeaver + SVN

The initial setup process for Office 365 is very simple. My initial impression of the admin page was really good.

Office365 main admin

I did not move email hosting to Office 365 as it was not my intention and Google seems to be working just fine, plus Android in it integration is great.

I was a bit disappointed with the way SharePoint was set up. It seem like you get one site collection and you are forced to have a top level site with a custom publishing master page. Collaboration and document management are supposed to take place at the sub sites.

  • http://pilothouse.sharepoint.com – main site collection setup with a custom publishing master page. The intention here is that you would move your public website here. <a href="http://www.sharepointrating.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/offic365-tree-view.png"><img src="http://www.sharepointrating.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/offic365-tree-view-1024x510.png" alt="offic365 Site Collection Tree View" title="offic365 Site Collection Tree View" width="1024" height="510" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-180" /></a>
  • http://pilothouse.sharepoint.com/teamsite – sub site with a team site template
    offic365 Site Collection Tree View

I believe that Office 365 would be better off just focusing on internal collaboration and document management instead of trying to build a so so external site on SharePoint. After looking around this setup I decided that I like the flexibility that we currently have with our SharePoint setup and will not be moving anything to Office 365 just yet. Also, I don’t have a Windows 7 phone to see how well the integration works; I assume for some organizations it will be important.

Overall, I never felt that the publishing feature was how you start selling SharePoint ot a business that has not used SharePoint before, but ti certainly seems a strategy for Office 365. We’ll see if they change it soon.

We recently updated our sharepoint training dates. Click here to see the schedule.

Microsoft is Killing Kin

I am not surprised. I have a friend that works on Kin team and he told that they got the marketing and training of Verizon reps all wrong. They missed their sales targets considerably. Also this shows how difficult the entry into this consumer phone market is at this time. That’s why Microsoft’s best bet is the enterprise.

Microsoft marketing in general should really take some lessons from Apple. For example, SharePoint materials/main website could be so much simpler. I know that SharePoint offers a lot and it’s difficult to describe everything. That’s why it’s better to describe less.

Also, I recently saw a leaked presentation on Windows 8 and it was fifteen slides long. Do you really need 15 slides to describe something that can be done in at most five?

  • Fast start up time
  • Facial recognition/automatic login
  • Ability to use external Displays (TVs) easily
  • USB 3.0 support
  • Fast switch between accounts

I promise that my next post is going to be technical. :)