Office 365 observations

[justin]

so i decided to jump at signing up for office 365 for business (we got good non-profit pricing, so i went with it)

1.) contact sync issues with rackspace - apparently the new Outlook isn't yet fully compatible. I set up an account, it downloads the email, calendars, and (most?) contacts. Random contacts here and there don't show up. Any changes/additions made in 2011 will sync to the server and are available in OWA, but those changes do not push the Outlook 2016. I was on with rackspace support about it and they said it's something that they are working on, and that Outlook for mac 2016 is "still beta" which i don't know. I find puzzling considering it's readily available on microsoft's website for purchase if it doesn't work with existing exchange servers. September they launch standalone version of office which i can't imagine are going to be a different build.
I guess i should have done more research on the subject but there really wasn't much of anything available at all, and shame on me for assuming that Microsoft Office would work with Microsoft Exchange..

2.) i am now able to "live update" all of the office applications (individually as well) which is pretty nice, previously with 2011 it was a single update package (which i didn't mind) but it would kill any running office apps, as well as browser before install. doesn't do that anymore, it'll install the update and run the new version on relaunch....which means no more 5 minute logouts for people on office update day. (yes, we used to do cache/install until we put a gigabit connection in and it no longer really matters)

anyone else decide to jump to Office 365 and having success overall?

also, anyone have an Autopkg .pkg recipe around for this yet?

[bpavlov]

I'm a bit confused. Why are you using Rackspace for Office 365? Isn't Exchange Online hosted by Microsoft? And MS Office 2016 is definitely not in beta anymore. It was released earlier this month to all Office 365 customers.

[justin]

"Office 365" as in the new version of Office (2016) which can be used with Exchange or Office 365 accounts. you can use their service, but you don't have to. We've been using rackspace hosted exchange for a long time and don't really want to move away from it yet (unless there's a good reason, or the service continues to degrade)
it's $2/user/month, so 24 dollars a year for each license isn't hard to swallow. in september i will re-evaluate and decide if we want to just go back to a site-license (if available) as we did with 2011... but i like the option to have online versions available and the collaborative editing features are not bad (not as good as google docs but..) so either way, it gave us access to sorely needed office update, and we're not locked in to anything. if we don't like it we can change, and we've not invested much at all.

and yes, i know it's not beta, and i don't know why rackspace is arguing it is. i explained to them a zillion times that it's not, it was released.

[mm2270]

Not sure about Rackspace. In the last year or two I've heard a fair number of complaints from people using them. Seems their customer service is pretty poor. Clients having downtime on hosted services with them and no real explanation as to why, and no compensation for the downtime, etc. etc.

If you're only getting grief from them, might be time to look elsewhere or go back to site license once that's out. We are patiently waiting for the full standalone version this Fall. We're all internal Exchange here, so no O365.

[bpavlov]

Wasn't aware you could use third party online hosts for Exchange Online. Pretty interesting. It sounds like you need to escalate this further up Rackspace Support then. After all you are a paying customer and they are clearly incorrect or miscommunication information (is it possible they aren't support 2016 yet hence why they say its in beta still?). Good luck.

[justin]

mm2270: yeah, they used to be my go-to for everyone, and i've watch things degrade pretty badly. their support chat used to be amazing, now it's kids reading a script regardless of whether it applies or not.

bpavlov: i think that's a big part of the miscommunication -- they are considering it beta (which is silly imo, considering it's commercially available software) because they don't support it. I don't know if rackspace's exchange is some hacked together thing or what, but you'd think (i assumed) it would work out of the box. I wonder what MS O365 exchange is doing differently than theirs.