Office 365 online collaborative suite - seeking opinions

[Bluce Ree]

Yes, I am a big proponent of "do it yourself IT" and open source but, sometimes, you reach a point in the growth of a business where it just makes sense to put certain things in the cloud.

I'm looking at various online collaboration suites (i.e. Google Apps, Zoho, Bitrix24, etc) and decided to give Office 365 a look.

The business level plans are actually quite well priced:

http://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-more-office-365-for-business-plans

At $5 per user per month, the full suite of collaborative services and full online version of Office makes this offering very attractive. It also lets me move my email into the cloud using my own domain name with 50GB of email storage per user. The suite offers1 TB of document storage per user, IM and HD video conferencing, an intranet site for teams and corporate social network. The only thing missing is a CRM, which some of the other suites like Zoho and Bitrix24 have.

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of this product? I'd like to get some opinions.

 

[Overmind One]

Yes, I am a big proponent of "do it yourself IT" and open source but, sometimes, you reach a point in the growth of a business where it just makes sense to put certain things in the cloud.

I'm looking at various online collaboration suites (i.e. Google Apps, Zoho, Bitrix24, etc) and decided to give Office 365 a look.

The business level plans are actually quite well priced:

http://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-more-office-365-for-business-plans

At $5 per user per month, the full suite of collaborative services and full online version of Office makes this offering very attractive. It also lets me move my email into the cloud using my own domain name with 50GB of email storage per user. The suite offers1 TB of document storage per user, IM and HD video conferencing, an intranet site for teams and corporate social network. The only thing missing is a CRM, which some of the other suites like Zoho and Bitrix24 have.

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of this product? I'd like to get some opinions.

DO IT. I have extensive knowledge of this product. In fact, we are preparing a migration from Exchange 2010 and Office 2010 Professional. I will tell you if you dont know, Exchange is a BITCH to maintain. Hosted Exchange removes the Information Store limitations and give ActiveSync a whole new meaning. I strongly support it.

 

[Bluce Ree]

DO IT. I have extensive knowledge of this product. In fact, we are preparing a migration from Exchange 2010 and Office 2010 Professional. I will tell you if you dont know, Exchange is a BITCH to maintain. Hosted Exchange removes the Information Store limitations and give ActiveSync a whole new meaning. I strongly support it.

That's what I'll probably do. For the CRM component, I'll probably go with this open source project:

http://zurmo.org/

It is extremely feature-rich and I like the concept.

I'm really tired of running my own mail server. They're getting very clever at exploiting basic functional design of mail systems to deliver spam. The latest method puts the actual recipient of the intended spam as the sender then bouncing it off a random mail server to a bogus address that gets rejected and the mail is subsequently "returned" to its intended recipient. It's clever and took some messing around with scripts and add-ons to stop it but I am just tired of having to waste my time on trivial shit like that.

For $5 a month per user I get peace of mind for my corporate mail and I get a collaborative suite that saves me a bundle on MS Office licensing. Libre Office and its ilk are nice but they're not quite there yet in terms of compatibility. Google Docs is ok also but even there I've run into a few quirks that got really annoying.

 

[Joelist]

I have Office 365 Professional and love it. Not only does it give you the email, a ton of OneDrive storage and such but you get BOTH the web based and full install on machine (PC and Non PC) versions of Office both full and mobile. This includes the Office for iOS and Android (in final testing).

I have an iPad through work and the Office for iPad apps are the best mobile productivity tools I have ever used. They make the other solutions look amateurish.

 

[Joelist]

We're you going to host Zurmo yourself? It looks like if you do anything but that you're paying per user per month $35 or more depending on number of users. If that is the scenario why not just add Dynamics to your Office 365 buy or alternately look into Salesforce.com? Dynamics would cost the same I think (they have bundle pricing with Office 365) and while more expensive Salesforce has its advantages too.

Of course, if you're hosting Zurmo yourself it is all moot because then it is free.

 

[Overmind One]

The unbeatable combination is Hosted Exchange with Office 365 Professional and Lync (the MS Communications Framework with instant messaging, video and telepresence). At only $5.95 per user, it is unbeatable. Plus there is an Android and iOS app for Lync. I assume you want an enterprise level deployment, which is what I just described.

 

[Joelist]

That is a good combo.

 

[Bluce Ree]

We're you going to host Zurmo yourself? It looks like if you do anything but that you're paying per user per month $35 or more depending on number of users. If that is the scenario why not just add Dynamics to your Office 365 buy or alternately look into Salesforce.com? Dynamics would cost the same I think (they have bundle pricing with Office 365) and while more expensive Salesforce has its advantages too.

Of course, if you're hosting Zurmo yourself it is all moot because then it is free.

Yes, I will be hosting Zurmo. It's feature set and interface is too good to pass up and so worth the price tag.

 

[Bluce Ree]

The unbeatable combination is Hosted Exchange with Office 365 Professional and Lync (the MS Communications Framework with instant messaging, video and telepresence). At only $5.95 per user, it is unbeatable. Plus there is an Android and iOS app for Lync. I assume you want an enterprise level deployment, which is what I just described.

Business Essentials is $5 per user per month but adding Exchange to it is an additional $4 per user. I'm ok without hosted Exchange.

 

[Overmind One]

Business Essentials is $5 per user per month but adding Exchange to it is an additional $4 per user. I'm ok without hosted Exchange.

If you have at least 300 users, you can negotiate. We got them down to $5.95

 

[Bluce Ree]

If you have at least 300 users, you can negotiate. We got them down to $5.95

If I had 300 employees I wouldn't be so concerned with this because I'd have a dept head taking care of this.

 

[Joelist]

OM is right you can negotiate them down pretty easily.

 

[Bluce Ree]

So, two weeks in using Office 365 Business Essentials and I wanted to share a few comments.

First, the email service is solid. Attaching my domain was a snap and the feature set, such as creating mail groups (i.e. info@ sales@ support@) is very impressive and simple to use. Most email clients, including the Gmail app in Android, auto detected the settings ones I put in my email address. Thunderbird had just one issue, which was detected the correct IMAP and SMTP server settings. It kept detecting everying at "outlook.com" rather than "office365.com". A quick edit fixed that.

Online apps. To be honest, my feelings are a little mixed. I'm really happy with Excel online except for a few quirks. Excel online had trouble opening a few .xls and .xlsx docs saved in 3rd party applications. It would not, under any circumstance, open any .xls/.xlsx file made in Google Docs or in Libreoffice, which I found particularly annoying because they open fine in the desktop versions without complaining.

Word online was a little annoying as well. It's almost like they purposely watered it down to force one to buy the desktop version. One of the most annoying "features" of Word online was the "Edit View", which forces everything into one giant page format, like an endless web page. The only way to get a page broken view was in "View Mode". This was frustrating as hell when trying to format a document in real time. This is not a problem present in Google Docs, however.

On the upside, every document opened in either of these applications opens a new tab, which is a REAL convenience. In Google Docs, one has to click the 3-dot menu to the right of the file and choose "Open in new tab", which I find a little less intuitive. Office 365's way leaves the base tab with the files and apps always available whereas in Google one has to navigate back by close the currently open document.

I haven't had a chance to use Lync yet but I will update my impressions as I use this product more.

 

[Joelist]

I just tried creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs (spit) and then opened it in Excel online - no issues. So I have not been able to replicate the issue so far.

 

[Overmind One]

I just tried creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs (spit) and then opened it in Excel online - no issues. So I have not been able to replicate the issue so far.

I just did the same thing as well...no issues.

 

[Bluce Ree]

I just tried creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs (spit) and then opened it in Excel online - no issues. So I have not been able to replicate the issue so far.

Add some formulas that reference cells across sheets. I have a proforma written up with monthly totals that are broken to details and calculated in other sheets (i.e. data center cost detail -> formula references calculations in sheet 2). It refuses to open in Excel online.

 

[Bluce Ree]

I just did the same thing as well...no issues.

I'm going to email you my Google Docs sheet to try out, if you have a moment so you can try it yourself. When you start doing complex formulas that links across sheets, Excel online won't open the file.

 

[Joelist]

Okay, I put a formula on Sheet1 and had references in it to Sheet2. Still worked properly.

Not saying I don't believe you, just that I'm not able to reproduce it so far.

 

[Bluce Ree]

Here's an example of the formula pointing to a cell in another sheet in Google Sheets:

View attachment 9999

And here's the error I get when trying to open it in Excel online:

The file is an .xlsx

 

[Overmind One]

Here's an example of the formula pointing to a cell in another sheet in Google Sheets:

View attachment 30778

And here's the error I get when trying to open it in Excel online:

View attachment 30779

The file is an .xlsx

Im not getting that error. What is the computer you are using running, and are you using Internet Explorer?