The Office 365 service upgrade delivers lots of new functionality for organizations signed up for Office 365 Small Business Premium or Office 365 Small Business.
In this article
What’s new for your users?
The latest version of Office with Office 365
- If you’ve purchased Office 365 Small Business Premium for your organization, each user can install the latest version of Office on up to five PCs or Macs. Learn more: Install Office on your PC or Mac with Office 365
- Don’t have Office 365 Small Business Premium? If you’re new to Office 365 Small Business, make sure everyone sets up their software to work with Office 365. If you were using Office 365 pre-upgrade, you and your users probably already set up Office 2007 or Office 2010 to work with Office 365. You don’t need to do it again.
With the service upgrade, access to email, calendar, and contacts is improved, with a new version of Outlook Web App that’s optimized for phones and tablets.
- What’s new in SharePoint Online
- Store and synchronize documents in the cloud: SkyDrive Pro is part of every Office 365 subscription, so each user gets a private storage area in the cloud and can access important documents on the go. Learn more about SkyDrive Pro.
- Share documents more easily with team sites and SkyDrive Pro: Invite people outside your organization to work with you on documents in real time.
- Use Office Web Apps in SkyDrive Pro and team sites: Office Web Apps make it easier for you to work in the cloud because they open Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents in a web browser.
- Take control of projects: You can manage projects right from your team site. As you create and assign tasks, Office 365 builds a timeline view that gives everyone an easy-to-understand picture of the project plan.
High-definition video conferencing, screen-sharing, and real-time note-taking help make meetings with colleagues and customers more effective.
What’s new for admins?
Setup and ongoing management are easier in the redesigned admin portal. We’ve integrated the most frequently performed admin tasks into the Office 365 portal, together with the communication and collaboration tools you use every day.
First, watch Video: Introducing Office 365 Small Business. The video will give you, as admin, an overview of the new management capabilities and navigation in the Office 365 portal. Then check out these resources:
Exchange Online: Email, calendar, and contacts
Admins can manage these tasks in the Office 365 portal.
NOTE: If you want to perform more specialized Exchange management tasks that aren’t available in the new Office 365 portal, you can access the Exchange admin center as follows:
- In the Office 365 portal, at the top of the page, select Outlook.
- In Outlook Web App, go to the address bar in your browser and replace the URL to the right of https://outlook.office365.com/ with ecp. For example, if your Outlook Web App URL is https://podxxx.outlook.com/owa/..., change it to https://podxxx.outlook.com/ecp, and hit ENTER. That will take you to the Exchange admin center.
- When you’re done, return to the Office 365 portal by clicking Admin at the top of the page.
SharePoint Online: Sites, SkyDrive Pro, and more
Admins can manage these tasks in the Office 365 portal.
Learn more about what you can do with SharePoint Online for Office 365 Small Business.
Lync Online: IM, meetings, and conferencing
Admins can manage these tasks in the Office 365 portal.
Support for admins
Monitor the service and submit service requests from the Office 365 portal.
Get help and more information
If you have a question, you’ll find answers and online support in the assistance panel on every page in the Office 365 admin portal, on the Support overview page, and in the Office 365 Community. Here are resources specifically for admins:
Frequently asked questions about the service upgrade
