Office 365 and SharePoint Online Guide for On-Premise SharePoint Professionals

eobieta |
May 29, 2012 |
5:11 am |
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NOTE: Please note that unless it’s stated, this article provides overview of SharePoint Online Standard for Office 365 Enterprise Customers. I personally think, this is most common deployment model for SharePoint Online for Enterprises.

If you are experienced On-Premise SharePoint 2010 Architect and just getting into Office 365 and SharePoint Online, this article will provide high level overview and basic differences between On-Premise SharePoint implementation vs SharePoint Online features in Office 365. Since Office 365 and SharePoint online are ever-changing landscape, I will try my best to update this article as Microsoft release more updates in future.

Although you can visit my compilation of Office 365 and SharePoint 2010 resources, following three resources are most important for any one wants get up to speed with SharePoint Online. I personally think, these are must have resources for any SharePoint Online Architects.

Office 365 and SharePoint Online Overview

  • Office 365 can be licensed in one of the three models – for professionals & small businesses, for midsized businesses & enterprises, and for education, Education model is free.
  • SharePoint Online comes in 2 flavors – Standard and Dedicated
  • SharePoint Online Standard Plans in Office 365
    • SharePoint Online features in enterprise licenses
      • E1 => Basic Collaboration Portal, Office Web Apps for View Only
      • E2 => E1 + Office Web Apps for Edit
      • E3 => E2 + Advanced SharePoint Services like Excel, Access, Visio, and Forms, Office Professional Plus
    • SharePoint Online Standalone Plans
      • SharePoint Online Standalone Plan 1 included in E1 and E2
      • SharePoint Online Standalone Plan 2 included in E3 and E4 – Same as E3 minus Office Web Apps for Edit
  • Software and Hardware Requirements
    • See Microsoft SharePoint Online for Enterprises – Service Description for Browser & Desktop Client Software Requirements by each Operating System – Page 9-10 on March 2012 Update
  • Tools – Microsoft Office 365 Desktop Setup
    • Free Office desktop setup tool is required for all workstations that use rich Office clients like Outlook, Word, or Excel to access documents from Office 365. It would also automatically configure Outlook and Microsoft Lync to use with Office 365.
    • It is important to note that this tool is not an authentication or single sign-in service.
  • Microsoft Office Support
    • 2007 – Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word
    • 2010 – Access, Excel, InfoPath, Outlook, OneNote, PowerPoint, SharePoint Designer, Word, SharePoint Workspace, Project Professional
  • SLA
    • 99.9% uptime guarantee
    • SPO Data backed up every 12 hours and retained for 14 days
    • 6 hours RTO – recovery time objective, resume service within 6 hours after service disruption
    • 1 hour RPO – recovery point objective, restore copy of data that is less than 1 hr old

SharePoint Online Storage Guidelines and Software Boundaries for Enterprise Tenant

  • Max storage allowed per tenant – 25 TB per tenant
  • Allocated Storage (pooled)
    • Applies to all the Site Collections per tenant
    • Initial Storage – 10 GB base customer storage + 500 MB per E1-E4 user license/internal user + No additional storage for external user (e.g. an organization with 1000 internal users and 200 external users by default would have (1000×500) + (200×0) = 500,000 MB = 500 GB + 10 GB = 510 GB initial storage)
    • Additional storage available at a cost per GB per Month, No minimal purchase limitation – $0.20 USD/GB/month
  • Minimum Users – 50
  • Maximum Number of AD Users – 500,000 AD Objects
  • External Users (PALs – Partner Access Licenses) – 50 PALs included per tenant, Current feature preview allows for upto 1000 external users but MS may charge for additional PALs beyond 50 in future Update
  • Site Collection storage quota  – 24 MB initial, Maximum allowed up to 100 GB Per site collection
  • My Site storage quota – 500 MB per my site, this can’t be adjusted, this does not count towards tenant’s overall storage pool
  • Sandbox resource quota – 300 + 200 per number of licensed user seats. e.g. 25 seat licensed environment, server resource quota is 300 + (200×25) = 5,300, This is fixed, can’t be purchased additional resource quota.
  • # of Site Collections Per Tenant – 300 Non-My Site Site Collections
  • File Upload Limit – 250 MB per file

Authentication and User Management

  • Anonymous Users for public sites
  • Cloud based Identity – Office 365 Accounts (@onmicrosoft.com)
    • Only global administrator or user management administrator role can managed users
    • Manually create users in Office 365. These accounts will have @[mycompanyName].onmicrosoft.com format
    • Creating Users, office 365 would assign random passwords for each users. User must change their password after they login to Office 365 very first time.
  • Identity federation with on-premises Active Directory domain
    • Either register your domain with Office 365 or Use @[mycompanyName].onmicrosoft.com domain
    • Use Active Directory Synchronization (DirSync) Tool to crawl your domain and creates copies of users in Office 365
    • AD synchronization simply replicate users and provisions copies on on-premise  identities in MS Online’s User Store. It doesn’t synchronize passwords and by default, it doesn’t accommodate  single sign on. Users has simply two accounts, two passwords, and the federated identity is simply mapped to the on premise identity.
    • To accommodate single sign on, you can configure ADFS 2.0 server and proxy in your domain and configure Active Directory Federation trust with Microsoft ADFS 2.0 server to federate identities with the Office 365 federation gateway and facilitate single sign on for on premise users. Federated identity is not used for authentication, Authentication takes place on trusted  on-premised identity provider. Exchange Online and Lync Online requires local identity to attach mail boxes.
    • DirSync can only Synchronize a Single Forest. If you have more than 1 forest in your AD, you need to pick the forest with your user accounts or plans on a forest consolidation.
  • External Sharing Identities
    • This Site Collection Level  Feature enables company to invite external users to view, share, and collaborate on their sites
    • MS Supports invited external users sign in using MS Online ID services like Windows Live ID including @live.com, @hotmail.com, or @msn.com, Once external user receive their invitation from SharePoint Online, they have to login to the SPO either using Hotmail or MS Online Service ID.
    • External users can use their business email address as long as their email user name associated with Live ID system.

Authorization, Security Groups, Security Roles, and Site Membership

  • Security Groups in SharePoint Online
    • Office 365 Global Security Groups
      • These groups created by global administrator
      • If you have many users and if they need to have permissions across more than one SharePoint Online Site Collection, this is preferred method.
      • On premise AD groups can be mapped to the Global Security Groups when AD synchronization is configured. Group membership for Synchronized groups will be updated every 3 hours
    • SharePoint Online Groups
      • Same as On-Premise SharePoint
  • Security Roles in SharePoint Online
    • Office 365 Global Administrator
    • SharePoint Online Service Administrator – Office 365 Global Administrator with SharePoint Online License
    • Site Collection Level Role – Site Collection Administrator
    • Site Level Roles – Site Owners, Site Contributors, Site Visitors

SharePoint Online Features Overview

  • SharePoint Online Administration
    • Allows you to create Private Site Collection under two managed paths – sites and teams. Custom managed paths are not allowed in SharePoint Online.
    • Allows you to specify Storage and Resource Quota per Site Collection.
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support customers to use of Windows PowerShell for service administration.
    • SharePoint Online comes with pre-defined list of blocked files. You can’t manage list of blocked file types.
  • URL Naming
    • URL structure for SPO sites is based on name of your company provided during sign up. This name can’t be changed. e.g. if your company domain name is contoso, URL would be – https://contoso.sharepoint.com
    • Vanity URLs are not supported for intranet zone sites or SPO private site collection.
    • You can register domain and apply Vanity URLs to your SPO public web sites.
  • Single Signon from Browser
    • IE automatically configures SPO sites as trusted sites when users install the service connector. After users singing with the Office 365 application, they will not be prompted for their username & password again when they visit SharePoint Online Sites – Admin, My Site, and Main Root Site Collection
    • Other browsers like Firefox or Chrome would prompt username & password for SPO sites
  • Service Applications Partitioned for Each Tenant
    • Secure Store Service
    • Business Data Connectivity Service for WCF Connectors
    • Managed Metadata Service
    • Search Service
  • Communities
    • Supported capabilities are My Sites, My Profile,  Ask me About, Status Updates, Recent Activities, Colleague Suggestions, Enterprise Wikis, Blogs, Newsfeed, Note Board, Organization Browser, Content Tagging, Tag Cloud, Tag Profiles, Ratings, Comments, I Like It
    • Profiles are either created when new user is created from Office 365 UI or during profile import from Active Directory.
    • You can brand My Site Host and Individual user My Sites with Custom Sandbox Solutions. It is important to note that when users provisions their My Site first time, it would take default branding based on OOB My Site template. User must upload Sandbox solutions to apply branding to their My Sites. Individual end-users can use SharePoint Designer to update branding on case by case basis as well. This should be avoided.
  • Composites
    • Supports methods of customizations and development are Browser Customization, BCS connection to external data sources via WCF endpoint, Sandbox Solutions using Server
      Side Object Model, Access Databases in Access Service, No Code Solutions using SharePoint Designer 2010 including workflows, List & Library InfoPath Forms including Sandbox Solutions with InfoPath Code, Silverlight, JavaScript Client Object Model, jQuery Integration, and Content Editor & Content Query Web Parts
    • Fully trusted Farm Level Solutions are not supported in SharePoint Online Standard. Only dedicated version allows fully trusted solutions with proper code review.
    • BCS in SharePoint Online allows connection to external data sources via WCF endpoint in both read-write manner, It doesn’t support direct connection to SQL Azure (WCF endpoint is required)
    • Although Access Services is supported in SPO, Access reporting is not supported because SSRS is not available for SharePoint Online. Access reporting requires SSRS.
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t allow publishing InfoPath forms that require full trust or farm level deployment.
    • Developer Dashboard is not available in SharePoint Online for customers.
  • Content
    • Supported capabilities are Document Libraries, Browser Based Document Editing, Managed Metadata Service, Document Sets, Document Center Site Template, Metadata Driven Navigation, Unique Document ID Service, Shared Content Types across multiple Site Collections, Content Organizer
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support Record Management, Records Center Site Template, and Information Rights management
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support Word Automation Services and Open XML SDK
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support WCM publishing approval Workflow along with Variations for Internet sites. These features are available only for Private Site Collection and Intranet environment.
    • Managed Metadata Service provides multiple taxonomies and folksonomies from tenant-level Term Store service. All Site Collections would share same term store. SharePoint Online service administrator can delegate Term Store management from SPO Admins page.
  • Insights
    • Supported capabilities are Excel Services with REST-based APIs, KPI Web parts, and Visio Services
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support Performance Point Services
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support Power Pivot for SharePoint and Excel
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support Business Intelligence Center Site Template, Chart Web Parts, and Data Connection Libraries
  • Search
    • Supported capabilities are Basic and Enterprise Search Center Site Templates, Metadata Driven Refinement, Phonetic Search, People & Expertise  Search, Documents View In Browser, Best Bets, Site Collection level Search Scopes
    • SharePoint Online supports only Enterprise Search, It doesn’t support FAST Search including Thumbnails & Previews, Deep refinement, Relevancy tuning, Visual Best Bets
    • By default, Search Service is partitioned and enabled for each tenant. Enterprise Search just works without any additional configuration required by tenant. By default, all the content is indexable and searchable. You can configure content is not searchable at the document library or list level, not site level.
    • No administrative access to the Search Service Application, You can’t create additional tenant level Content Sources, Search Scopes, Crawl Rules etc.
    • SharePoint Online only supports site collection level Search Scopes
    • SharePoint Online doesn’t support Federated Search
    • SharePoint Online supports search across all site collections, irrespective of which site collection content resides in. Microsoft already provides default enterprise search center site. You can access talent level default Search Center from http://{rootsitecollectionUrl}/search
    • SharePoint Online Standard doesn’t support indexing content outside of SharePoint.
    • Indexing occurs automatically every 5 minutes. SharePoint Online Crawler setting is to crawl content every 5 minutes.
    • SharePoint Online include PDF iFilter. PDF documents and content with PDF files will be picked up and included in main Search Index, PDF files open in Adobe PDF software.
  • Sites
    • SharePoint Online supports most of all capabilities from Sites area including Lists, Libraries, Large List scalabilities, Web Parts, MUI, Security Permissions Management, Audience Targeting, and Site Templates
    • Web Analytics Service is not supported in SharePoint Online.
  • Office Web Apps
    • Office Web Apps are included part of SharePoint Online as an preconfigured service to access and view Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and One Notes documents. This is by default available for all the users with SPO licenses
    • Office Web App License is required to Edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and One Notes from the browser.
    • Users with Office Web App License can create new Office documents via the Office Web Apps in conjunction with associated document library content types and do not have Office installed on the desktop.
  • Public Site
    • Office 365 customers can create only 1 simple public web site per tenancy. Once it’s created, customers can apply a Vanity URL by registering additional domain.
    • Public site does not use SharePoint Publishing Portal framework. These features are supported only for Intranet Sites to brand Intranet Sites with master page framework in private site collections.
    • Public Web Site is configured by built-in Site Designer Ribbon Tool.
    • SharePoint Designer 2010 can’t be used to edit public web site. SPD 2010 can be used to edit only private site collection sites.
  • Recycle Bin Capabilities
    • Items supported – Site Collections, Sites, Lists, Libraries, Folders, List Items, Documents, Web Part Pages
    • Site & Site Collection Recycle Bin capability works same as On-Premise for Lists, Libraries, Folder, List Items, Documents, and Web Part Pages Restore
    • Site Collection Recycle Bin capability works same as On-Premise Sites Restore from Site Collection Administration Section
    • New SharePoint Online Tenant specific capability – Tenant level Recycle Bin to restore Site Collection from SPO Admin Page

Source from: 
http://nikspatel.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/office-365-and-sharepoint-online-guide-and-resources-for-sharepoint-on-premise-architects/

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