August, 2007

I'm now quite comfortable with the thought of a 2GB inbox in the sky.  In fact, I've now had this for quite some time but I've always been thinking about how on earth I'll ever get anywhere like close to filling it up and it's always been languishing in the single digit percent of utilisation.

So what's new about 2GB?

Nothing.

So why the post about 2GB?

This isn't about 2GB, it's about the recent change in Hotmail to take it to 5GB

Sorry, did you say 5GB?

Yes that's right, as of today I have a 5GB hotmail address.

So there we have it 2GB is now dwarfed by this huge increase and.  This also means that I'm now right down to only 3% utilisation :-(

For more information on this and other changes look at this posting.

Could your students use a 5GB email store?  If so, look at http://get.live.com/edu for more information on Microsoft's programme to provide students with a university branded email address, blog, instant messaging and more.  Basically, Microsoft is working with universities to enhance the student experience whilst taking cost out of their operations.

I've had a number of meetings in the last few weeks with Universities up and down the country discussing their plans to deploy Office 2007.  One of the questions I've asked all of them is "what will you set as the standard file format?"  So I was wondering what universities at large were thinking about how they might prepare for an expected rise in the amount of attachments received that their users might have difficulty working with.

As you may know, the standard Office 2007 file format is the open standard based Open XML.  So, for example, if I was to send you a spreadsheet that I created in Excel 2007 would you be able to open it in Excel XP, 2000 or 2003?  More to the point, will your academic staff be able to open documents they receive from their students who have recently been out and bought a new laptop with Office 2007?

So the answer to the question "what will you set as the standard file format?" that most have come back with is a resounding vote for Open XML, which is great news for increasing the use of Open Standards.

The good news for universities who are not planning to migrate to Office 2007 is that file converters are available in the form of a Compatibility Pack and I know that many universities are already deploying this in preparation.  More information and access to the Compatibility Pack is here.

http://www.Microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en

I'm hoping that universities will start to think about deploying this conversion pack to enable staff to be ready for the start of term with new students and new file formats.

A perennial issue for colleges and universities is attracting, and retaining, students. There is a trend for students to act like consumers, and be more demanding of institutions, and more critical of services that they receive. And let's face it, that trend is only going to grow!

Perhaps that's just one of the reasons why there is a growing trend for institutions to adopt Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems - 12 months ago, Kable were predicting that CRM would become a high priority for both sectors by 2008/9.

One of our CRM partners, Touchstone, have just published a case study on their CRM implementation at Bourneville College in Birmingham, and the following quote caught my eye (TEEM is Touchstone's CRM):

Eddie Cottis, Project Manager at Bournville College, explains, “Most colleges now focus on the corporate and SME sectors; seeking to provide a range of flexible alternatives for training. Bournville College is a particularly attractive option for local businesses, given its excellent reputation for management and marketing courses amongst others. In keeping with our aim to provide the highest quality of service in all areas, we decided to invest in managing our interface with the local business community with TEEM. This allows our Business Development operation to target this sector more effectively, avoid duplication and ensure that there are no gaps."

 You can read more of the case study on Touchstone's web site

Even amongst those universities who are moving to Office 2007 this summer, one common fear is whether students/staff will be able to quickly transition to the new Fluent interface in Office 2007. If you want more help, then I've just come across these brilliant add-ins for Office 2007. Basically, it adds a new menu bar to your tab called "Getting Started".

This is the tab for Word 2007, but there's also ones for Excel and PowerPoint 2007. And it adds on an interactive guide to find commands, links to online training, video demonstrations for overviews and getting started, and even links to the online discussion forums. If you're installing this summer, then perhaps this is another thing you can do to help your staff and students to get started quickly on the first day of term...

Download the new tabs using the links below:

Word 2007 Add-in: Get Started Tab

Excel 2007 Add-in: Get Started Tab

PowerPoint 2007 Add-in: Get Started Tab

Exchange Tour Unplugged 2007

09:30 – 16:30

Monday 17th September
Microsoft Campus, Reading

This is your opportunity to get the inside scoop on Exchange Server 2007,  Office Communications Server 2007 and the rest of the Unified Communications platform.

Microsoft UK’s Unified Communications (UC) specialists will all be there to guide you through Exchange Server 2007, Office Communications Server 2007,  Mobility and the rest of the Unified Communications stack. You’ll learn, first-hand, how Exchange 2007 has changed in response to customer feedback,  how to migrate from your existing solution to a unified communications solution and how Office Communications Server 2007 can help your users communicate more effectively.

Sessions will include:

• Exchange Server 2007 including SP1, an architectural overview and details on how it integrates into the rest of the UC suite.
• Real world experience from a customer.
• How to migrate from your existing platform to a new UC platform.  It’s not just ‘move mailbox’.  This section will cover other essential parts of migration including storage, public folders and hardware.
• How email and voicemail are coming together in Exchange 2007 in Unified Messaging. Also covered in this section is how Outlook Voice Access give can give you another way in which to interact with your inbox.
• Mobility and how Windows Mobile,  Exchange 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 provide secure and scalable communications such as email, calendaring, presence and IM across an array of mobile devices.
• Office Communications Server 2007. Communication can be seen, typed or heard.  Hear about the latest entrant into the Unified Communications stack and how it will change the way in which people will communicate forever.

This is a brilliant opportunity to hear about the technologies that make up the Unified Communications stack and shouldn’t be missed.

Register to attend this free event at our main campus in Reading

I predict that over the next few months I'm going to spending quite a bit of time thinking about, and writing about, web-based services, and the integration between traditional desktop applications and web-based applications and services. The phrase that's being used to describe this is "Software AND Services" - where the two integrate rather than separate. Internally at Microsoft, people are talking about "the cloud" - the ubiqitous Internet, where the data is stored "out there, somewhere" and allows users to access more information in more places - and intelligently link it to their working and social lives.

One of the example is Windows Live @ Edu - allowing universities to effectively outsource their email services for students and/or alumni, and continue to run their existing mail services for staff. The service is a free-service - basically it piggybacks on the back of Hotmail (which is used by a majority of students already!) and links into your existing university IT infrastructure for user account provision. Find out more about Windows Live @ Edu

• It helps to respond to the issue that students have expectations of BIG mailboxes, and your email servers are already full to the brim! By shifting to a hosted email service, you can provide a 2GB mailbox without having to provide the storage, and at near-zero cost!

Another way to see how things could change is to take a look at the Windows Live Quick Applications. These are examples of the way that Internet-based services can be brought together to meet the needs of a specific group of consumers - in this example, university students. It is more difficult to describe than to look at, so take a look and think about how it may help you to deliver enhanced services to your students...

Dive into the demo web site for Contoso University. You'll see a student portal for an imaginary university, bringing together a News section, Campus calendar, TV channel, Marketplace and a Room-mate Finder. In the middle is an intriguing area for students to have access to their own contacts from Messenger & Hotmail. This allows them to integrate their own data into the portal, but it remains their data - it doesn't mean they start sharing their contacts with you (who would worry about that more - you or your students?). It's a good illustration about how users can take control of how they use their online data in other places.

And then look at an overview of Windows Live Quick Applications to see other examples. The reason that we have developed these is to illustrate to our partners (IT providers, software developers) what an integrated world can look like - where all of the applications don't just sit on the workstation. And to get this moving, we're using CodePlex to share the source code - giving partners a chance to develop these ideas in their own direction. This means that you too could use this as a basis for developing your own services too.

What could you do with this?

Well, you could use the shared code and toolkit to build your own student portal (and with the constant pressure from students around service delivery, this could be a tool to enhance those services and create a stronger community feel for your students). And you could start to link it to your learning environment/VLE.

Or you could use it to raise the delivery of your existing portal providers, or start a conversation about why you need to upgrade your services. The demo site is a vibrant place which has a clear social angle, whereas many current student portals don't feature graphics that connect with students, and are very task-based. Which means that students use it when they are forced to (eg to complete an assignment), but it doesn't really make it somewhere that becomes important to their lives.

My colleague Michael Green wrote this article in his US university blog, and I thought it was worth repetition:

"Determining which Vista to install is not as complicated as you might think.  Vista Business contains most of what you are looking for out of an "everyday" work machine, including the capability to logon to a domain.  Assuming the "Business" as a base, we can construct a simple list of differences.

Business > Enterprise

BitLocker Drive Encryption

Subsystem for Unix Applications

Support for simultaneous installation of multiple user interface languages

Software Assurance Benefit - Install up to 4 additional copies of Windows in Virtual Machines on the Enterprise host

Enterprise > Ultimate

Themed slide shows

Native DVD playback

Windows Media Center

HD version of Movie Maker

Parental Controls

I often hear people say things like "Ultimate cannot connect to servers" or "Ultimate cannot be managed by Group Policy".  Those are incorrect statements.  Ultimate is a superset of Enterprise to add the consumer functionality like Media Center.  When you hear someone say that Ultimate cannot be managed using GPOs, what they really mean is that out of the list of features above that are specific to Ultimate, there are no GPOs to manage them.  The GPOs for Vista were designed with the feature set of Business and Enterprise in mind.  Home Premium and Home Basic are not able to join a domain but Ultimate can.  All versions of Vista can connect to servers.

So if you are deploying a computer lab which version should you choose?  Assuming that the hardware provider has provided DVD playback software, Enterprise is the best choice.  Enterprise was designed for large deployments and provides volume methods of activation to do so.  With Ultimate, Microsoft has to keep track of the DVD codec since there is a royalty due to a 3rd party.  As such, there must be a key that is per machine."

500MB of free online storage that can be private, shared or public.

This has been coming for a little while, and then when it arrived, it was initially only for users in the US. But now, it has been activated for customers in the UK. And this has some really useful applications in education. SkyDrive gives users 500MB of free online file storage - password protected by their Windows Live ID. And they can be stored in private, shared or public folders - allowing you to decide who has access to each folder.

What could you do with it? Well, things like...

• Backup up important files, using personal folders.
• Access files from any PC with Internet access - making it easy to move files between a personal PC and a shared university PC - for you or your students.
• Work on a project with colleagues or amongst students, using shared folders.
• Publish files, so that students can read them, but control their access so that they cannot add files or delete them - useful for assignments?

Some of the features added to this Beta version are:

• An upgraded look and feel – new graphics to go along with your new features!
• “Also on SkyDrive” – easily get back to the SkyDrives you’ve recently visited
• You can see thumbnails of your image files
• Drag and drop your files right onto your SkyDrive, using the handy applet
• Embed your stuff anywhere – with just a few clicks, post your files and folders anywhere you can post html

Sign up for your personal SkyDrive here

If you've not had a chance to join a Live Meeting before, then this would be a good opportunity to find out how it works. Basically, it's just like a real meeting, but without the travel! Dominic Watts will be presenting this one, and once you've logged on you'll see his presentation on your screen and hear him live. You get the opportunity to ask questions via a message box on the screen - which means that you can get the same opportunity to interact as at a normal meeting. All without leaving your desk.

Summary

In this session we discuss how Higher Education & Further Education customers can benefit from the Microsoft Enterprise Client Access Licence (CAL) Suite, which brings together 11 of the latest Microsoft products to provide your users with the newest innovations in compliance, real-time collaboration, security, communication, desktop management and more. The Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite provides an outstanding opportunity for you to utilise your existing investments in the Microsoft core platform.

Furthermore, the Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite provides significant cost savings over the purchase of individual CALs. Customers considering investments in just two of the products included in the suite will find that the economic value of the Microsoft Enterprise CAL Suite becomes compelling.

Dominic Watts, our Business Manager for Higher Education in the UK will present the session, which is on Tuesday, Aug 21, 2007 4:00 PM for an hour

To attend, just log on to the following URL (about 5 minutes before, if you need to download the Live Meeting client)

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=D3JFMK&role=attend

You'll need the Meeting ID:   D3JFMK

And then dial into the meeting on your phone for the audio. Dial (0118) 909 2000 and use Participant code  2947513

If you have questions or feedback please contact either Margaret Umoh (Internal Business Manager, Higher Education) on 0118 909 7820 email:v-maumoh@microsoft.com or Sarah Finch (Internal Business Manager Further Education) on 0118 909 7861

And once you've been to your first Live meeting, you might also wonder how it might help you to deliver courses and tutorials over the web to students.

There's already quite a lot that you can do with Learning Gateway, and explicitly the SharePoint components, to increase accessibility to users, across devices. And this news item I read promises more:

Shared-source software kit will advance the accessibility of SharePoint-based solutions for people with disabilities

July 31, 2007 — HiSoftware , a leading provider of software, services and managed operation solutions that monitor and optimize Web content governance, quality and regulatory compliance, today announced an agreement with Microsoft to develop the Accessibility Kit for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. The kit will provide templates, master pages, controls and Web parts along with technical documentation to advance MOSS accessibility for people with disabilities. All of the source code will be provided via the Microsoft Permissive License and will be available on CodePlex (www.codeplex.com) later this year for customers and other Microsoft partners to download, reuse and extend.

The Accessibility Kit for Office SharePoint Server will include site templates, Web parts, documentation, instruction and tutorials enabling partners and customers to develop Web sites that conform to the guidelines set out in the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The solution will also provide accessibility updates for Office SharePoint Server templates and Web parts for Web publishing, corporate intranet, team and project collaboration sites and more. This allows users to create a site and replace “out-of-the-box” MOSS components with accessibility kit templates, reusable Web content and Web parts.

As part of the testing for the kit, HiSoftware will work with Microsoft, key stakeholders and early adopters to maximize value and functionality, including organizations in the UK and worldwide.

Accessibility Community for Office SharePoint Server
As part of this initiative HiSoftware will provide an extensible platform with an open API and SDK, on which other Microsoft partners can build, collaborate and extend. HiSoftware will lead a partner and customer community to share thoughts, solutions and strategies for enhancing usability and accessibility across MOSS deployments.

There aren't any more details available yet, other than what's in the HiSoftware press release, but look out for the first releases in the autumn! And when I know more, I'll post it here.