Reseller and Business Support for Office 365 Suite of Collaboration Products
NEWS: Office 365 is now hosted in Australia. New subscriptions will be automatically created in the Australian data centres.
Office 365 is a set of messaging and collaboration tools in the Cloud managed and hosted by Microsoft. It includes options for shared hosted Teams (Collaboration), Exchange servers (mail), Website hosting, SharePoint for team collaboration and file sharing, OneDrive For Business, Skype For Business (previously Lync communications server), Yammer business social network, as well as licensing for Office desktop, laptop, tablet and phone versions.
Purchasing Office 365 in Australia can be confusing, as there is a variety of subscription packages and reseller options available. As a Microsoft CSP Partner, our team of experts at Phillips IT can help you understand the Office 365 plans, assess your business readiness, plan your solution, setup and configure your Office 365 tenant, migrate your data from existing systems and provide ongoing technical support and advice.
Office 365 Business services offered by Phillips IT
As Sydney’s Office 365 specialists, we can:
- Discuss your business requirements and advise you on the subscription packages that are suitable for your business needs.
- Step you through the billing options for the subscriptions. We offer monthly and yearly billing.
- Perform a business readiness check where we dive deep into your business to find out if Office 365 is the right fit for you.
- Advise on Exchange Public Folders, Site Mailboxes and SharePoint options.
- Advise on and setup your online user directory. This can be synced with your internal Active Directory or configured as independent logins.
- Advise on and setup Active Directory Federated Services
- Advise on and setup of a Hybrid system, by providing services in your offices as well as on Office 365. An internal Microsoft Exchange Server can co-exist with Office 365, allowing you to have some, or all, mailboxes in the cloud.
- Provide fixed fee mailbox migrations. Most migrations can be done with zero downtime.
- Advise on and setup of collaborative services such as SharePoint, Yammer and Skype For Business (Lync).
- Setup an Intranet and team SharePoint portals.
- Migrate your data from your existing document syncing and sharing services to OneDrive For Business
- CSP Partner monthly billing and support
Existing Office 365 subscribers
If you are already using Office 365 and you are looking for a new IT/CSP partner for support and advice in Sydney, you can easily add us as your Office 365 Partner/reseller. You can also provide us with delegated access to allow us to support your Office 365 service.
Partner/Reseller
- Microsoft CSP Partner – If you are paying a Microsoft CSP Partner for your Office 365 subscription then you can change your CSP partner to Phillips IT. The transfer process happens behind the scenes and is fast with no downtime. Please call to discuss if you would like to change your Microsoft Office 365 CSP Partner.
- Microsoft Direct or Advisor Partner – If your business has subscribed to Office 365 directly or you have purchased the subscription through a different Office 365 reseller, you can change your Partner/Reseller ID to Phillips IT. To do this, log into Office 365 as an Administrator, select “Manage your Subscription” and then change your Partners ID to 1072881. Once that has been saved, Phillips IT will be your partner/reseller.
Office 365 Support:
- Delegated Access for Support – Once we’ve been added as your partner/reseller, you can connect your account to our support portal (delegated access) to allow us easy access to your subscription for migration, support and administration of your account. To do this click here (it will take you to Office 365 and ask you to login if you are not already logged in).
If you are curious about Office 365, or if your business is looking to move to Office 365, then please call us on (02) 8262 9900 so one of our Office 365 migration specialists can help. We can assist you with planning and migrating your business systems as seamlessly as possible, as well as provide ongoing Office 365 support and advice.
Migrating to Office 365
Whether you’re a growing small business with basic email or an established enterprise with Exchange, migrating your email to Office 365 can be performed seamlessly in the background. With zero downtime or user interruption necessary in most circumstances, your business can continue to operate smoothly whilst transitioning your infrastructure to the robust and flexible Office 365 cloud hosted services.
There are multiple techniques to provide the level of integration best suited to your business:
- Directory Synchronisation – Directory Synchronisation allows migrated Office 365 accounts to be linked to your company’s existing Active Directory (AD) computer login accounts and passwords to ensure ease of use.
- Single Sign On – In combination with Directory Synchronisation, Single Sign On (SSO) means Windows machines will automatically authenticate when they load the Office 365 web portal.
- Hybrid Office 365 Environment – A hybrid environment means mailboxes hosted on your local Exchange server can seamlessly interact with mailboxes hosted in the Cloud, with all the functionality of having them locally hosted.
Our technicians can help you identify and plan the solutions best tailored to your business’ needs to ensure it runs smoothly and can expand to meet the future needs of your growing business.
What is included in Office 365?
Office 365 is a growing suite of collaborative products designed for enterprises but available to all for a monthly or yearly subscription fee.
The full of services on offer as part of Office 365 can be found here.
What is Microsoft Exchange?
Microsoft Exchange Server is an email server, contact manager and calendaring program that was released in 1996. It’s the most common messaging system used by businesses. Exchange Server runs on Microsoft Windows Server, and can be run in house or hosted as a cloud service.
Exchange Server works best with Microsoft Outlook (Part of the Office suite) as the email client on your PC, tablet or phone.
At Phillips IT, we consider the Microsoft Exchange Server to be a core component of the solutions and services we offer. Microsoft Exchange online synchronises your email, contacts, calendar and tasks to as many devices as you need/want, meaning all devices have the same data on them. No matter which device you send an email from, the sent email will appear in your “Sent items” on all devices
A challenge for Exchange online is data backups. Office 365 uses delayed replication to create multiple copies of your data for redundancy, however it is not backed up. Deleted items etc. can be recovered up to 30 days after they were deleted, after which they are no longer recoverable on Office 365. We have the solutions that allow you to archive all emails as well as provide email continuity.
What is Microsoft SharePoint Online?
Microsoft SharePoint Online enables your business to create and manage custom team-focused and project-focused websites for collaboration. You can use it as a secure place to store, organise, share, and access information from almost any device, making it a great tool to deploy an organisation-wide intranet portal used to disseminate information and news across the business. All you need is a web browser such as Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox.
SharePoint sites/portals can include one or more document libraries. Document libraries allow teams to manage and collaborate on documents/files related to the team. Document libraries include document versioning, document check out and document locking. Documents can be added to a library in several ways:
- Email – Libraries can be email enabled. Email enabled document libraries link to a mailbox in Exchange server and have an email address which allows new documents to be added to the library as email attachments.
- Drag and Drop file(s) to your web browser – Files can be dragged and dropped into the document library. To do this, in a supported web browser, open your SharePoint portal and select the document library you wish to add a document to. In Windows Explorer you then drag the file you wish to add to the library into your document library in your web browser, and then drop it into the library.
- Upload link – Files can be added by selecting the “Upload” link on any document library in your browser. The “Upload” link will then allow you to browse to the file and select it to be uploaded.
- Drag and drop file(s) into Windows Explorer – The OneDrive for Business client will allow you to synchronise many SharePoint document repositories, as well as your OneDrive for Business personal storage to your local devices. Once the SharePoint document library has been synchronised to your local device, you will have a local folder that you can use windows explorer to drag and drop files into, similar to Dropbox. You can then also edit those files (even when you are not connected to the internet) and the OneDrive for Business client will resync them when you regain internet connectivity.
For further details on Microsoft Microsoft SharePoint, please click here.
What is OneDrive for Business?
OneDrive for Business is a personal document library intended for storing and organising your work documents. As an integral part of Office 365 or SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business lets you work within the context of your organisation, with features such as direct access to your organisation’s address book.
The OneDrive for Business client allows you to synchronise your OneDrive for Business files as well as your SharePoint document libraries to your local devices/tablets/computers, meaning you can edit them while offline. OneDrive for Business allows files to be manually “checked out” and locked whilst you are working on them, and it automatically takes care of versioning and locking files when they are edited and saved.
OneDrive for Business is an alternative to Dropbox, Box and other Cloud file syncing and sharing services, with the added benefit of being integrated into Office 365.
OneDrive for Business vs. OneDrive.
OneDrive for Business is different from OneDrive. OneDrive for Business is part of the Office 365 business plans, and is a business-focused Dropbox replacement. OneDrive for Business is also different from your SharePoint team site, which is intended for storing team or project-related documents. However, the OneDrive for Business client can synchronise your SharePoint documents to your local device for offline access.
For further details on Microsoft OneDrive for Business please check out OneDrive for Business.
OneDrive for personal use is simply called “OneDrive”, and it’s intended for personal storage separate from your workplace. It’s a free cloud storage and sync service that allows you to store and access photos, movies, music and other files on any device whenever you are connected to the internet. It can also sync Windows 8 settings and Explorer favourites across Windows 8 PC’s. Extra storage can be purchased and comes packaged in the Home Office 365 plans.
OneDrive uses a different client/app on your local device to OneDrive for Business. For further details on Microsoft OneDrive for Business please see – OneDrive Personal.
To find out more information about how we can provide your Sydney business with quality Office 365 support and solutions, call us on (02) 8262 9900, or send us an enquiry below to see how we can help.