The output from this planning activity is confirmation as to whether Exchange Online can meet the customer’s requirements together with an appreciation of what the customer would want the service to enable. The important thing to emphasize is the flexibility of the implementation – the customer does not have to commit to services that they do not feel they need.

Look at the customer’s requirements for Office 365 services and identify those factors that will indicate a good match between the customer’s needs and what the cloud-based service offers. This planning activity ensures that you have reached agreement with the customer about the service mix and roadmap for adoption, even if you are simply making suggestions for a possible implementation plan.

Planning Service – Exchange Online

Exchange Online is the service that is most likely to interest potential customers. Microsoft Exchange Online is a hosted messaging solution that delivers the capabilities of Microsoft Exchange Server as a cloud-based service. It gives users single sign-on access to email, calendar, contacts, and tasks from PCs, the web, and mobile devices.

Customer Discovery
Many customers become interested in Office 365 simply because of the fact that it enables them to outsource their email to an Exchange-based service that offers significant functionality improvements over other cloud-based and on-premises email systems. When planning Exchange Online and determining whether it is the right choice for your customers, you should address the following factors and plan around your customer’s responses:

• Architecture: Email organizations, domains, trusts, multi-forest considerations.
• Current email system: Type, version, features, support, mail clients.
• Features: Email, calendar, contacts, tasks, public folders.
• User requirements: Access, device support, message handing, rule configuration.
• Usability: Integration with other services, authentication, ease of connection.
• Reliability: Uptime guarantees, mailbox and message protection.
• Security: Authentication, authorization, delegation, proxy addresses.
• Manageability: Administration, ease of access, policy enforcement, user and group management.
• Regulatory: Compliance and eDiscovery.

Exchange Planning Online Guide
Service Description
Latest Features

Planning Service – Lync Online

Organizations are increasingly waking up to the benefits of communication services that go beyond email. The success of Skype as a collaboration tool and IP telephony application for personal and business use has enhanced the visibility of instant messaging and presence monitoring as a way for teams and individuals to collaborate across the world.

Microsoft Lync Online is a hosted communications service that connects people anytime and from virtually anywhere by delivering the collaboration capabilities of Lync Server 2013 as a cloud-based service. It gives users access to presence monitoring, instant messaging, audio and video calling, rich online meetings, and extensive web conferencing capabilities.

Customer Discovery
Because instant messaging and presence monitoring systems such as Lync Online tend not to be seen as mission-critical applications, planning tends to be less intense than with email. However, there are many planning factors to review when identifying whether a customer wants to implement Lync Online and to what extent. When discussing Lync Online and the suitability of the service with customers, you should review the following areas:

• Clients: Lync 2013 client, Lync Basic client, web client, Windows Store App, Lync for Mac 2011, mobile clients.
• Devices: Mobiles, tablets, conferencing devices.
• Features: IM, presence, contacts, audio, video, high definition (HD) video, media.
• Federation: Included and excluded domains, public IM connectivity, federating with Lync on-premises, federating with Office Communications Server.
• Meetings: Invitations, URLs, conference rooms, features.
• Security: Compliance and archiving.
• Interoperability: Exchange and SharePoint.
• Management: Administration, policies, console access.

Lync Online Planning Guide
Service Description
Latest Features

Planning Service – SharePoint Online

Alongside email, document management and storage is another vital service that computer networks deliver to organizations. This facility was originally provided through file shares, which facilitated quick and simple access to all file types through a navigable folder structure. However, file shares are not well suited to a much more pertinent requirement for organizations, such as document management and team working.

Microsoft SharePoint Online enables an organization to create and manage custom team-focused and project-focused sites for document management and company-wide collaboration. It also improves group collaboration by providing organization-wide intranet portals to disseminate information and news across the company.

Customer Discovery
Documentation management systems do not enjoy the ubiquity of email, so when discussing the need for SharePoint online, you must prepare yourself for a range of possible reactions from total familiarity in organizations that have already deployed SharePoint on-premises to complete ignorance of the substantial benefits of this platform.

In many ways, SharePoint Online is easier to implement as a green field installation, because organizations that already have SharePoint Server installed on-premises may also be using enhancements that cannot readily be migrated to the online environment, such as full-trust code and other advanced customizations. In these situations, you may need to look at hybrid solutions. When planning SharePoint Online and whether it is the right choice for your customers, you should address the following factors and plan around your customers’ responses:

• Environment: Existing SharePoint deployment or third-party documentation management system.
• Scalability: Size, storage allocation, site collection limits, number of site collections, sub-site restrictions, external user numbers.
• Limitations: File upload, list and library limits, page limits, security limits, blocked file types.
• Developer support: Code trust levels, sandbox.
• External access: Security, delegation.
• Scalability: Creation, control, delegation.
• Mobile devices: Compatibility, features.
• SkyDrive Pro: Purpose, size limits.
• Hybrid: Integration with on-premises SharePoint.
• Management: Administration, policies, console access.

SharePoint Online Planning Guide
Service Description
Latest Features

Planning Service – Office 365 ProPlus

Microsoft Office is the most popular desktop productivity suite in the world, not all Office customers have upgraded to the latest release. Office 365 ProPlus simplifies this upgrade process and provides additional applications that fully complement all the services in Office 365.

Office 365 ProPlus is a subscription service that provides users with the latest version of the Office desktop applications that they are already familiar with, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Office 365 ProPlus is included in most Office 365 plans, but is also available as an individual service.

Even though Office 365 ProPlus is a cloud-based service, these Office applications do not run in the cloud. Instead, users can download Office 365 ProPlus from the Office 365 portal and install it on their local computers. Microsoft uses Click-to-Run technology to make the download and installation of Office 365 ProPlus fast and simple.

Customer Discovery
Because Microsoft Office is such a widely-used productivity tool, you need to ensure that upgrading to the latest version will not cause disruption. However, the use of side-by-side installations with Click-to-Run technology significantly mitigates against this type of issue. When identifying if Office 365 ProPlus is suitable for your customers, you need to discuss the following areas:

• Features: Changes in Office 365 ProPlus, integration of SharePoint and Skydrive.
• Applications: Installation mix, training, support.
• Version: 32-or 64-bit, application compatibility.
• Installation: From Office 365, batch file, group policy, systems management, Windows Intune, deployment tool.
• Compliance and archiving: Spreadsheet inquire, spreadsheet compare, database compare.
• Security: Information Rights Management (IRM).
• Desktop Virtualization: Remote Desktop Infrastructure (RDI) only.
• Support: Roaming settings, telemetry, group policy.

Office 365 Pro Plus Planning Guide
Service Description
Overview & Compare Versions

Planning Service – Additional Services

Exchange Online Protection
Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is a cloud-based email filtering service that helps protect customers’ organizations against spam and malware, and includes features to safeguard organizations and users from messaging-policy violations. EOP can simplify the management of customers’ messaging environments and alleviate many of the burdens that come with maintaining on-premises hardware and software.

EOP Service Description

Office Web Apps
Microsoft Office Web Apps enable users to open Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents in a supported web browser. Office Web Apps make it easier to work and share Office files from anywhere with an Internet connection, from almost any device. All Microsoft Office 365 customers can view, create, and edit files with Office Web Apps.

Office Web Apps Service Description

Project Online
Project Online provides equivalent functionality to an on-premises installation of Microsoft Project Server 2013, enabling organizations to carry out portfolio, program, and project management around the world. Project Online can also be supplied with Microsoft Project Pro for Office 365, which supports users who need full project management capabilities on the desktop and want to participate online from virtually anywhere on almost any device.

Project Online Service Description

Stay tuned for the upcoming articles…

The first planning decision you need to make with a customer is the number of users to be part of the pilot. The standard Office 365 E3 trial tenant account provides 25 users for 30 days.

Factors you need to consider in your planning for pilot user numbers include:

• What is the total potential number of Office 365 information worker users within the organization?
• How many departments are there and what is their size and function?
• What percentage of information workers are middle and senior management?
• What is the level of technical leadership within the company?
• Who are the key influencers in the adoption process?
• What is the current user management process?

Planning – Pre-Pilot User Selection

Make sure you understand that the pre-pilot users are generally IT pro types who want to be first to try out the new environment and to upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus. However, this is a very different user base from the full pilot users.

With larger organizations and on your initial pilots, you will probably want to deploy some pre-pilot users. For larger pilot engagements, it can be useful to initially roll out Office 365 to a small subset of users, to help identify issues before including a wider user community.

Pre-pilot user selection uses significantly different criteria from pilot users—here you are not interested in a representative sample. You should select pre-pilot users with some degree of technical knowledge, because you may not have the support facilities set up to assist users who have little or no technical background. Characteristics of an ideal pre-pilot user include:

• Technically literate
• Sense of adventure
• Analytical personality
• Anxious to try Office 365
• Not working on a critical path project
• Happy to put up with minor configuration glitches

An example of a pre-pilot user might be the network manager or the IT director. Members of the IT department are also typically early adopters, but also consider the pilot sponsor and the customer’s in-house IT trainer, if they have one.

Planning – Pilot User Selection

Selecting pilot users can be difficult for the consultant/partner to achieve—all that they may be able to do is to let the customer know the sort of people they are looking for. Try to get the customer to see the importance of a good pilot, even if the ultimate decision is not to go with Office 365 at this point.

When selecting pilot users in conjunction with your customer, they should ideally be:

• Full-time employees
• Trained information workers.
• Representative of the overall function of the company.
• A mix of age, experience, and seniority within the department they work for.
• Prepared to provide feedback on the pilot.

The point of these selection criteria is to help ensure you get a good mix of people from within the company, but exclude those who are unlikely to contribute to the success of the pilot. Overall, the qualities you are looking for are leadership, competence, and flexibility. If at all possible, try to find people who will also be happy to evangelize for the deployed environment and willing to help co-workers when Office 365 is deployed.

Planning – Pilot User Communication

A key factor in a successful pilot is planning to engage your pilot users with the process. If you excel at motivating people, the ideal approach is to get the pilot users together and get them excited about the Office 365 pilot.

In addition to the initial meetings, you will also want to use internal email to communicate with your pilot users; for this purpose, Microsoft has provided email briefing templates which contains the following items:

• Introducing the new Office. Plan to send this out up to two weeks before the pilot starts.
• The new Office is coming. Plan to send this message out about one week before starting the pilot.
• The new Office arrives tomorrow. This message goes out the day before your pilot starts. Note that this message contains the user’s credentials.
• Welcome to the new Office. This message goes out on the day the pilot starts.
• Make the switch to the new Office. Plan to send this message out a couple of days after the pilot has started
• Take the new Office home. Plan to send this out a week after the pilot has started.

Planning – Pilot User Training & Support

Planning user training and support for the Pilot phase is an important part of the pilot experience. As a result, you need to consider planning training and support options for the IT department and for the customer’s support team.

Training on Office 365 is available through the Microsoft Ignite portal: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321177

Events and webcasts are available from the Microsoft Ignite events page:        http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321187

Guides are available from the Microsoft Ignite guides page:                                   http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321188

Resources are available from the Microsoft Ignite resources page:                    http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321190

For end user training on Office 365 ProPlus, see the Office training website: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=235688

For IT pro training, see the Office 365 Guides page of the Ignite portal:              http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321191

For other support resources, see the Contact Office Support page:                http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=321193