How Do I Upgrade My Trial Office 365 Subscription to a Subscription Plan?

It is very cool, you get a 90 day trial for Office 365 to really test out the system and see what works, what doesn’t, and plan for your move to the service. 90 days, and you can even ask for extensions to make sure that this is the right solution for you. Not many services offer that even by a long shot. Microsoft wants you to make the right decision.

So, now that you’ve decided to go with Office 365, how can you keep all of your work and get properly licensed? It’s quite simple. Go to the Office 365 Admin Center

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Select Purchase Services from the left-side navigation

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You will see your current plan, listed as Currently in trial

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Click the handy Buy now link…

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And complete the process from there.

HOWEVER….. make sure you have your licensing trued up first. If you have licensed all 250 trial users you can have, and you only need 30… that first bill is going to be awfully painful.

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Northeast Best of SharePoint Conference 2014!

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Wondering what to do tomorrow? Miss out on the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas at the beginning of the month? Then have no fear. Tomorrow, hosted at the One Cambridge Center Microsoft Office, will be an all day, free event, giving you the best sessions you missed, or want to see again from the Microsoft SharePoint Conference. Details and registration information is below!

The Northeast SharePoint Community is presenting you with a local, free event that delivers SharePoint Conference content and presenters so you can learn what is new and exciting with SharePoint 2013!

Presenting some of the most well-received session leaders of the SharePoint community, Best of SPC 2014 is your source for the news on SharePoint 2013 and the hot topics from Vegas.

Choose from a variety of sessions, including: (See full list on registration page!)

  • Leverage What You Already Know About SharePoint as You Move Into 2013, with Scott Jamison (Jornata)
  • When Should We Use SharePoint Out-Of-The-Box, Add Third-Party Apps or Build Custom Solutions, with Richard Harbridge (Microsoft)
  • Overcoming Barriers to Achieve Social Business Success and Adoption, with Sue Hanley (Susan Hanley LLC)
  • The Strategy Behind Building a Successful Social Intranet, with Joel Oleson (ViewDo Labs)
  • SharePoint On-premises, in the Cloud, and Everything in Between, with Christian Buckley (Metalogix)
  • SharePoint Online Management and Control, with Chris Bortlik (Microsoft)
  • SkyDrive Pro and Mobility: Access Your Files While on the Go From Any Device and Platform, with Kieran Gupta (Microsoft)
  • Complex Problem Solving with the New HTML5 APIs, with Scott Hillier (Scott Hillier Technical Solutions, LLC)
  • Developing Future-focused, On-premises Solutions, with Bob German (BlueMetal Architects)

And don’t forget to join us afterwards for our SharePint at Champions just around the corner!

Make sure you catch the Keynote from the Microsoft SharePoint Engineering team! You will hear how their team participated in the development of SharePoint 2013/Online and the product roadmap and vision going forward!

If you have any questions, please contact: northeastbestofspc@microsoft.com

Agenda

When: Wednesday, March 26th, 2014

Registration: 8:30am

Keynote: 9:00am

Event Sessions: 9:30am – 4:30pm

SharePint at Champions: 4:30pm – 6:30pm

Where: Microsoft Corporation One Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142

REGISTER HERE!

March 2014 #CollabTalk TweetJam – Takeaways from #SPC14

Join me, and a host of other SharePoint experts on Thursday, March 27th at Noon EST for a TweetJam to discuss takeaways from the 2014 SharePoint Conference.

Below is a re-post from Christian Buckley’s blog:

imageFor an event that many believed would be lacking any real content, the SharePoint Conference earlier this month actually packed quite the punch – and many attendees have been saying it was one of the better conferences they’ve attended. I would have to agree. I went in with a number of questions, and goals for specific partner and Microsoft conversations, and the end result far surpassed my goals. You expect to drink from the networking fire hose at an event like this, but I think what caught many SharePoint experts off-guard was the increase in communication and openness coming from the product team around the roadmap.

In this installation of the monthly #CollabTalk tweetjam, our panelists and folks from the community will be sharing their key takeaways from #SPC14 in Las Vegas: what they expected, the hits and the misses, and where they think the SharePoint platform is going from here. The one-hour tweetjam will be held this Thursday, March 27th at 9am PDT / noon EDT.

If you’re new to the tweetjam model, it’s fairly simple: using Twitter and a shared hash tag, a panel WP_20140305_012discusses a series of questions over the course of the hour, with other members of the community jumping in and joining the conversation in real-time. You can follow along with the tweetjam on Twitter by following the #CollabTalk hash tag, or you can go to http://twubs.com/CollabTalk to watch live or browse through comments. Following the event, I will publish the full conversation using Storify, and wrap things up with a summary blog.

The questions we’ll be discussing this month include:

  • In your opinion, what was the biggest news out of the conference?
  • What was the best session you attended, and why?
  • What was the most underrated topic at SPC?
  • Based on SPC, what is your take on the current on prem vs hybrid vs cloud messaging?
  • How much has/will what you’ve learned at SPC change your strategy for 2014?
  • What was the most interesting takeaway from the exhibit hall?
  • What SharePoint events are you most looking forward to in 2014, and why?

Joining our panel for this event are the following experts:

  • Geoff Varosky (@gvaro), cofounder Boston Area SPUG, managing consultant at Jornata
  • Chris Beckett (@teknirvana), SharePoint MCM, founder and principal at Obeflow
  • Kanwal Khipple (@kkhipple), SharePoint MVP and consultant
  • Jason Himmelstein (@sharepointlhorn), SharePoint MVP and senior technical director of SharePoint at Atrion
  • Jeff Willinger (@jwillie), director of collaboration at Rightpoint
  • Michael Hinckley (@michealhinckley), senior program manager at Tangram Resources
  • Nick Kellett (@nickkellett), SharePoint MVP and cto of StoneShare
  • Ruven Gotz (@ruveng), SharePoint MVP and director of collaboration, Canada OU Lead, at Avanade
  • Adam Levithan (@collabadam), senior consultant, collaboration and enterprise social, at Portal Solutions
  • Dan Barker (@barkingd), global product manager and evangelist at Dell Software
  • Marc Anderson (@sympmarc), SharePoint MVP and consultant at Sympraxis Consulting
  • with myself moderating (@buckleyplanet), chief evangelist at Metalogix and SharePoint MVP

As you can see, a great lineup of people who are not shy to share their opinions, with many more planning to join in real-time. If you’re never participated in a tweetjam, the content may fly past at a furious pace, but you’ll always get great insights into the topic. Please join us, and share your opinions and experiences. Hope to see you online on Thursday the 27th!

– See more at: http://www.buckleyplanet.com/2014/03/march-2014-tweetjamtakeaways-from-spc14.html#sthash.XJHHjowV.dpuf

Boston Office 365 Users Group coming in May!

With Microsoft’s focus on Office 365, and it being the largest product in history for them (surpassing SharePoint on-premises licensing), a few great minds here in the Boston area started talking a few months ago, about creating an Office 365 users group (not just covering SharePoint Online, but Lync, Exchange, Yammer, and whatever else gets tossed out onto the buffet line that is Office 365!).

Well, we have done just that, and are having our inaugural meeting on Thursday, May 22nd, at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center (N.E.R.D.) from 6pm to 8pm. We will have Chris Bortlik, a Microsoft Office 365 Technology Specialist, kicking us off with his session “Introduction to Office 365”. See below for an abstract and bio for the session.

We will be having regular monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month, so stay tuned for more as we build out our schedule of great speakers and topics going forward!

Our website is up (work in progress), but please sign up for our mailing list to be notified about future meetings and information about the group! http://www.bostono365usergroup.com/

Abstract

Office 365 is the fastest growing product in Microsoft’s history. Come to this session to learn what Office 365 is and how your organization can get started leveraging it today. During this talk we will cover the following topics:

  • Office 365 functional overview, focusing on Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Yammer, Lync Online, Office Online, mobile applications, and Office 365 ProPlus
  • Office 365 architecture fundamentals, including identity management, authentication options, browser, and device requirements
  • Office 365 admin center
  • Office 365 service descriptions
  • Staying up to date with Office 365 service announcements and updates
  • Office 365 FastTrack deployment model
  • Key Office 365 training links and resources

Bio

Chris Bortlik works at Microsoft as an Office 365 technology architect. He works with Enterprise customers and partners in the Northeast in a technical role focused on SharePoint, Office, Exchange, Lync, Yammer, and other parts of Office 365. Chris is an “Insider” within Microsoft and works closely with the Office 365 product team. He holds the SharePoint MCITP and MCTS certifications. Chris speaks frequently at Microsoft events (including the SharePoint Conference); is a contributing author of the "Essential SharePoint 2010" book; and a coauthor of the “Essential SharePoint 2013” book. Chris also blogs regularly on TechNet: http://blogs.technet.com/cbortlik  Prior to joining Microsoft in 2008, Chris was a customer for 14 years working in technical IT architect, development, and management roles – primarily leading .NET and SharePoint related projects. You can follow Chris on Twitter @cbortlik

Boston Area SharePoint Users Group February 12th, 2014 Meeting

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The Boston Area SharePoint Users Group (BASPUG) was founded to bring together like minds to network and share their experiences, triumphs, and tribulations around Microsoft SharePoint, to provide a community platform for Boston area SharePoint users, administrators, developers, architects, of all experience levels, even brand new to SharePoint, to share their knowledge with the community. We meet on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA.

Joel Oleson will be presenting "Your Yammer Enterprise Social Journey"
Session Abstract

So much to think about. In this session we’ll break it down. SharePoint 2013, Yammer and Office 365 product families bring new capabilities for content sharing, finding, organizing, and authoring. They also create new challenges. The move to the cloud and the integration of SharePoint and Yammer—the enterprise social network—have made this release very profound and disruptive to the business. In this session, we’ll dig into planning and strategy for social architectures around both business process and the technologies to help ensure compliance and success. Social enterprise technology is transformative and will lead to more agile business when used correctly but disaster and chaos when not used properly.

About Joel…

Blogger, traveller, and top social media influencer, Joel has built communities all over the world and travelled to over 140 countries since 2008, including keynotes on all continents. Joel is director of technical evangelism at ViewDo Labs, a social analytics platform. He was the first SharePoint administrator ever and spent seven years at Microsoft, including a few years on the SharePoint team. This past year, as a 13-year SharePoint veteran, he was awarded top SharePoint blog and #1 influencer in the community by Forbes study. Joel is co-founder of many community efforts—SPYam Yammer community (4500 members strong) and Sharing The Point (a community building and training group designed to help underserved countries). You can find his popular technical bog at http://www.collabshow.com and his travel blog at http://travelingepic.com and on Twitter: @joeloleson

MEETING SPONSOR – ViewDo Labs

ViewDo Labs offers a federated view of what’s happening with Yammer, SharePoint, Chatter, and other ESNs — across the enterprise, and around the world – so companies can increase adoption while lowering the risks of collaboration. Through our technology, we help organizations fuel innovation, better leverage their business data and intellectual property.

SUSTENANCE

Food and beverages will be provided at the meeting free of charge from our meeting sponsor. Food arrives at about 5:45. We generally have pizza (with and without meat), as well a salad, water, and sodas.

RAFFLE PRIZES

We will be handing out raffle tickets at the BASPUG meetings.

LOCATION

We will be meeting at Robert Half Technology, 125 High Street, 20th Floor, Boston MA 02110.

LINKED IN
Join our group on LinkedIn today to connect with the rest of the BASPUG members, and spread the word!

FACEBOOK
We are also on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Boston-Area-SharePoint-User-Group/113652405354617

TWITTER
Follow news about the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group on twitter by following us@BASPUG, and by using the hashtag #BASPUG

WEB
Visit the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group website athttp://www.bostonsharepointug.org

ORGANIZERS
Event meetings are organized by Geoff Varosky of Jornata, Eugene Rosenfeld of Black Blade Associates, Dan Diachenko of UnoSquare, and Talbott Crowell of Third Millenium

Determining if You Are Using Office 365 After the Service Upgrade

Office 365 is continually being updated (based on their 90 day release schedule). Since Microsoft deploys updates in a phased manner, it can be difficult to tell if your tenant has been upgraded or not. To answer that question, Microsoft has put together a great reference on determining if you are running the latest Office 365 version. Below is a quick summary of the changes you can look for.

To read the full article, click here.

Additional References

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