In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the Business Applications within Office Live are nothing more than an adaptation of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).  This is also true of the free Office Live WorkSpaces.  Why do I mention this?   Well, given this tidbit of information, you now know that when you’re having problems with your Office Live “backend” or don’t know how to use web parts, etc., you can search for WSS information on a particular topic to supplement the sometimes “thin” or non-existent information in the Office Live documentation.  On that note, I offer the following:

Alex, over on SharePoint Coding, had an excellent blog yesterday on planning SharePoint sites.  While his thrust was towards Enterprise WSS sites, his suggestions surely apply towards designing your Office Live Business Applications and Workspaces layout.  He also provides a link to a cool Visio add-in (called a Visio stencil) that provides Visio users with SharePoint unique symbols to use in designing your site layout.

I also ran across a blog item from last year by Paisano, on American Pai, that gives a nice overview of some of the different components that you can use within your Office Live Business Applications and/or WorkSpaces:

• Announcements: A place where important Company/Department news and announcements can go.

• Calendar: All company events and activities go into this public calendar. Holidays are usually added as well.

• Contacts: Centralize all your contact information a public address book - information on employees, vendors, partners, clients, etc.

• Tasks: Action items and the people who are assigned to get them done.

• Projects: Show basic tracking information for your project tasks, most importantly, a timeline layout, or Gant chart.

• Wiki: A place to generate ideas for those important projects you’ve got on your plate.

• Blog: Link your blog of news updates or for project status updates to your internal or external web site; such as I’ve done here.

• Message Board: If you need a good old-fashioned message forum then here it is.

• Image Library: Place all your authorized images, logo’s, etc in one central location for easy access by your team.

• Forms Library: Likewise, maintain all official forms and templates in the forms library.

• Shared Documents: You can create centralized depositories for all your company documents and files.

• Surveys: This is an excellent way to take company polls on any subject matter.

• Meeting Workspace: This powerful feature assists you with setting up meetings – a place where document decisions are made, tasks assigned and tracked, agenda notes stored, and online discussions can be held.

• RSS Feeds/Alerts: Stay on top of changes within your “virtual” office by using RSS feeds and email alerts.

He also talks about the seamless integration between Outlook (especially version 2007) and your WSS (read Office Live) site.  You should check every list on your site, under the “Actions” menu to see if there’s a “Connect to Outlook” link.  Paisano also has links to additional articles and videos on WSS – most have direct applicability towards improving and helping you with your Office Live “back-end”.

Finally, I had friend recently ask me about not being able to edit an Excel spreadsheet that resides in one of our Community Emergency Response Team’s (CERT) document libraries within our “virtual” office environment.  As users begin migrating from older Microsoft Office versions to Office 2007, you just might run across an error described as "'Edit Document' requires a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible application".  Try this link to get assistance on how to get that feature running again.

That’s it for today, hope you have a Great Day!

Beginning January 26th, the Microsoft Partner Program will make available an on-demand webcast of the Office Live Small Business Web Seminar Series.  Here’s the information:

Series Description

Series Parts

Part: 1 Microsoft Office Live Small Business: What It's All About
This seminar will introduce the user to Office Live Small Business and uncover many of the technological benefits that are available within it. They will learn to navigate the user interface & the workspace that is created upon activation.

Part: 2 Microsoft Office Live Small Business: Creating a Basic Website
This seminar will look at the steps needed to get a webpage for your business up and running. It will focus on creating a brand and an image and optimizing your site to give your customers the best possible browsing experience. Included in the topics will be: generating compelling visual interest & using HTML.

Part: 3 Microsoft Office Live Small Business: Marketing Tools
This seminar will key in on some of the current marketing trends to help your business gain a foothold in the e-commerce world. E-mail marketing and search engine marketing will be highlighted using AdManager and building up a customer database.

Part: 4 Microsoft Office Live Small Business: Reporting
In this class, the focus will be on understanding & using reports to building a statistical analysis for the purpose of increasing your website usage and increasing viewers and referrals. Also included will be a discussion about key performance indicators and meeting realistic goals.

Part: 5 Microsoft Office Live Small Business: Business Applications
This seminar will key in on developing workspaces as well as some of the additional applications available within Office Live such as Project Manager Contact Manager and Email integration. Also included in the discussion will be using document libraries and lists to give custom applications more savvy.

Part: 6 Microsoft Office Live Small Business: Adding Video Using SilverLight
This course will continue with the advanced web techniques to include Silverlight as a multimedia solution. The use of HD and cross-platform .NET based interactive applications will be discussed as well.

You can view this information and register for all the classes at ISV Innovation: Microsoft Office Live Small Business Web Seminar Series.  I believe that you’ll need to be a registered Microsoft Partner to view these on-demand web seminars.

There are so many offerings coming along within the “Cloud” that it’s tough to sort out exactly what you get with each offering.  Today, I hope to shed some light on the differences between several of Microsoft’s recent offerings:

First is Office Live Workspace.  This is a FREE offering that allows an individual, organization, or company to invite others to view, comment on, and edit documents in a password protected-workspace, online (in the “cloud”).  As the Microsoft promotion says, “Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta is your online place to store and share documents. When you have multiple people involved in a project or planning an event, Office Live Workspace makes it easy. You can share documents, coordinate schedules, and manage to-do lists in your own password-protected online workspace. It’s a great way to keep everyone actively involved – whether they’re next door or on the next continent.”

“How can it help my business?”, you might ask.  Well, let’s say that you’re an estate planner, for example, working out of your home.  You’ve completed a workup of your client’s plan and you now need to review it with them.  With Office Live Workspace, you simply create a workspace for that client’s document(s), share the workspace with them (which generates an email detailing how to access the workspace), and let them review the details or work collaboratively with them over the phone.  You’ve saved either yourself, your clients, or both, a trip to a mutually agreed upon meeting place, gotten your work accomplished, and are ready to meet with another client immediately following this meeting.  That’s what using technology in your business is all about – doing things more efficiently and timely, freeing you to expand your business.  If you’re interested in more details about Office Live Workspace, view some of the online demos.  The main, and only, thrust of Office Live Workspace is document sharing, otherwise known as collaboration.

Next is Office Live Small Business.  In a nutshell, this is your “virtual office.”  It is a combination of offerings that starts out FREE and gradually escalates in services and cost.  At the FREE end, you get a public-facing web site (with 500 MB of Web site storage and easy-to-use design templates), domain name (free the first year then $14.95/year thereafter), Business E-mail (with 100 company-branded email accounts using Outlook Web Access which can also be integrated into your desktop Outlook), Contact Manager (a sort of lightweight Business Contact Manager for managing sales opportunities, contact information, and tracking customer interactions), Business Applications (for managing your business with Document Manager, Project Manager, and Workspaces), and 5 FREE business users.  As you begin to grow your business, you can add additional services, at additional cost, such as E-mail marketing, E-commerce, Keyword Advertising, Additional Storage, and Additional Users.  You can see the pricing scale here. 

As your estate planning business begins to grow, you’d step up from Office Live Workspace to Office Live Small Business in order to have a public presence on the internet while still having the ability to collaborate with your clients in a password-protected online space.  In addition, you now have the ability to manage your business – emails, financial data, contacts, etc. from virtually anywhere without having to return to the office to access critical information on your computer.  Furthermore, Office Live Small Business has a really slick feature that allows you to expose selected business information from your password-protected site out to your public site – things like upcoming events calendars, client lists, business statistics, etc.  And, all of it interfaces nicely with your desktop Office Outlook program and the rest of your Office Suite.

At the top end of the Microsoft “cloud scale” is Microsoft Online Services.  Here, you can get Microsoft Exchange Online (a hosted enterprise messaging solution – $10.00/user/month), Microsoft SharePoint Online (a hosted enterprise-collaboration solution – $7.25/user/month), Microsoft Office Live Meeting (a hosted Web conferencing solution – $4.50/user/month), Microsoft Office Communications Online (a hosted instant messaging and presence solution - $2.50/user/month), any combination of these services, or all of them - called Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS - $15/user/month).  BPOS has minimum purchase requirement of 5 users.  All service purchases have to be made through a Microsoft Partner.  You can get additional information on Microsoft’s Online Services here.

By now, your estate planning business has really taken off and you’re managing a staff of several estate planners along with an office staff.  In order to maintain the office efficiencies you saw using Office Live Small Business, you need to assess how best to implement enterprise software into your operation.  Do you expand your staff (and expenses) by hiring an IT staff or do you let Microsoft host your systems while you serve as the IT administrator?  Some possible options are explained here.

Finally, I see that Microsoft is getting ready to announce its Office Web Applications release - lightweight versions of Office productivity software, delivered through your browser.  Another offering “in the cloud.”

While I have been an almost original user of the Office Live Small Business resources (an Office Live web site, Office Live Premium User, and the recently released Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)), this past weekend I came across several initiatives that will allow me to take my efforts to a new level:

• The Office Live Small Business Partner program allows an individual or company experienced with Office Live tools to join the "Microsoft® Office Live Small Business Designer & Developer Community."  There, you can market your business in one or more of several categories: Web Designer, Custom Developer, Training Specialist, Services Specialist, Business Solution, or Marketing Services. In addition, you can "receive 18 months of three (3) free add-ons (10 users, 2GB app storage, 1GB Web storage) to your Office Live Small Business account (Approximate Retail Value, US$519.30)."  I highly recommend any designers/developers that are trying to increase their business to check this program out.
• Once you've completed signing up for that program, then it's time to reap the rewards of your efforts by advertising Microsoft's Office Live program.  They have an affiliate program for all their approved developers that pays you for leads to Office Live.  The program is connected with Commission Junction.  Unfortunately, I've dropped the original link that gets you from the Office Live Small Business Partner program to the affiliate program.  I'll keep looking for it and when I get it, I'll post it here.  Once your Office Live Small Business Partner application is approved, you can then place affiliated Office Live advertisements onto your web site.  Each click and/or lead will generate you some additional income.