Office 365 Partner Getting Started Guide

Important e-learning, documentation, kits and other material

intended to help Microsoft Partners getting started with an

Office 365 practice

Table of Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 1

Get Onboard ...................................................................................................................................................... 2

Training .............................................................................................................................................................. 2

More technical training ................................................................................................................................. 3

Certifications .................................................................................................................................................. 3

Preparation for certifications ........................................................................................................................ 3

Presales .............................................................................................................................................................. 4

Service Descriptions ........................................................................................................................................... 5

Planning and Deployment ................................................................................................................................. 5

Hybrid Environments ......................................................................................................................................... 6

Developer .......................................................................................................................................................... 6

Hub................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Courses .......................................................................................................................................................... 7

Documents ..................................................................................................................................................... 7

More Resources ................................................................................................................................................. 7

Page 1

Introduction

When you sell Microsoft Office 365, you can quickly begin to build new, recurring revenue streams. Cloud

services study showed that customers who move to a subscription-based model of acquiring software are

more inclined to purchase other services via subscription.

This creates opportunities to you to offer other recurring or subscription-based services that naturally

complement and add value to Office 365, including desktop management, desktop optimization, and end-

user training and support.

You can capture higher margins as you turn Office 365 transactions into a more stable, more profitable

recurrent model.

In this document you will find useful information to get your Office 365 business started: Get onboard,

Train, Sell, Deploy and Develop.

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Get Onboard

To start your journey as a Microsoft Cloud Partner you need to join the Microsoft Cloud Program. It’s as easy as going to the site Microsoft Cloud Partner and read about the requirements and benefits, claim your internal use rights (IUR) etc. You can access the site here.

Training

Training Plan

Below you’ll find an on-demand online training plan divided by role (sales or technical), beginning with a

four course introduction to Office 365. You can access the training plan here.

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The Selling Office 365 learning package will help you prepare for customer questions about Office 365,

specifics of what’s included, as well as pricing and licensing

The Implementing Office 365 learning package (Office 365 Jump Start for IT Professionals and Network

Administrators) is a comprehensive, 15-module series showcasing how you can best leverage the cloud.

Includes information about Office 365 technical functionality with Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft

Lync Server, and Microsoft SharePoint Online. (15 hours total, online). You can access the training here.

More technical training

In addition to, or as a supplement to, the above plan you can follow selected or all of the modules in these

workshops and labs:

• Power Start Workshop Technical Introduction to Office 365. Office 365 Power Start provides you

with a level 200 introduction to the major elements of Office 365. It consists of a series of 6, 1 hour

web seminars. You can access the training here.

• Office 365 Training for IT Pros – link. This series of virtual labs shows you how to prepare an

organization to move some of its on-premises user accounts to Office 365. In these labs, you will

walk through the process of setting up and configuring Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)

- here, see how to install, configure and run Directory Synchronization - here and finally learn about

the hybrid scenarios available in Office 365.

• Office 365 Momentum Workshops. Nine recorded modules from 4, half-day workshop aimed at

providing a deeper level 300 understanding of Office 365. To access the modules

1. Open https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/SearchCenter

2. Search for Momentum Workshops

3. Refine the results using the ”Office 365” refiner under the ”Products” header

Certifications

Certifications are a great way to verify and document your skills. To help you certify your Office 365 skills

you can take these exams. They will certify you as MCTS and MCITP

• Exam 70-323: Administering Office 365 intended for IT professionals who administer Microsoft

Office 365 in an environment that may include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Lync, and/or

Microsoft SharePoint. You can access the exam information here.

• Exam 70-321: Deploying Office 365 intended for consultants and IT professionals who plan and

implement Office 365. This includes migrations to Office 365 (simple and hybrid deployments). You

can access the exam information here.

Preparation for certifications

To prepare for the exams you can follow these two multipart series

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• Administering Office 365 Accelerated Jump Start is a 6 part series preparation for exam 70-323.

You can access the training here.

• Planning & Deploying Office 365 Jump Start is a 15 part series preparation for exam 70-321. You

can access the training here.

Or you can train with a Microsoft Training Partner. You can find a partner here.

Note: If you are a Small Business partner please check “Appendix A: The Small Business Competency”

Presales

• Microsoft Office 365 alignment index calculator kit. This tool can help you consistently measure

the technical fit, or alignment, of a customer for Microsoft Office 365. Use the calculator to assess

whether Office 365 fits your customers’ technical and business requirements. You can access the

kit here.

• Microsoft Office 365 demo provisioning tool. Create effective sales demos with the Microsoft

Office 365 demo provisioning tool, which enables you to easily provision an Office 365 tenant with

readily available content designed to be used with the enterprise demo script. You can access the

tool here.

• Office 365 Demo Showcase. Microsoft’s Demo Showcase Suite is a collection of click-through

demos. You can access the Office 365 showcases here.

• Microsoft Office 365 midmarket telephone discussion guide. This telephone discussion guide can

help scale resellers and value-added resellers (VARs) prepare for, conduct, qualify, and close

outbound customer calls to drive Microsoft Office 365 sales with medium businesses. (English

only). You can access the guide here.

• Microsoft Office 365 Purchase and Support Guide + Trial Guide. These Guides serves as an

introduction to the services, the benefits they provide and how to do a trial. You can access the

guide for the E plans here and the guide for the P plan here.

• Office 365 Buyers Guide for Enterprise Customers. Buying criteria’s and checklist for the decision

to move to the cloud. You can access the guide here.

• Total Economic Impacts - TEI. The total economic impact and potential return on investment (ROI)

companies may realize by deploying Office 365. You can access the report for Enterprises here and

Midsize businesses here.

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Service Descriptions

The service descriptions are an essential set of documents. They hold the most current information about

each individual service.

• Office 365 for Enterprise Service Descriptions. This set of documents provides service descriptions

for the components of the Office 365 suite of Internet-based services. You can access the service

descriptions here.

• Office 365 for professionals and small businesses Service Description. This document provides a

detailed description of the features and functionality of Office 365 for professionals and small

businesses (P1) service. You can access the service description here. To compare the P plan to the E

plans see this comparison.

Planning and Deployment

Deployment can be easy and it can be complex. Regardless, understanding the importance and the scope

of Plan phase, the Prepare phase, the Migrate phase, and the Post-Deployment phase will help you be

successful in your deployment projects.

• FastTrack Office 365 Deployment. New onboarding experience for Office 365. You can access more

information on FastTrack here.

• Office 365 Deployment Guide. The Microsoft Office 365 Deployment Guide helps you understand

the requirements and workflows that are necessary when you introduce Office 365 to your

organization and your customers. You can access the online version of the deployment guide here.

The guide is available in PDF too.

• Exchange Server Deployment Assistant. Web-based tool that can help you with your Exchange

deployment. ExDeploy asks you a few questions about your current environment and then

generates a custom checklist and procedures that help simplify your deployment. You can access

the tool here.

• SharePoint Online Planning Guide. These articles guide site collection administrators and site

owners through the steps involved in setting up and using SharePoint Online sites for Office 365 for

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enterprises. We recommend that you read all of the articles in this guide before you take any

actions. You will need to know how SharePoint features work together in order to make decisions

about setting up your sites. You can access the guide here.

Hybrid Environments

Customer requirements may extend beyond the capabilities of a pure cloud solution. This is when a hybrid

solution can help you. This document helps you understand the options for hybrid environments.

• Designing Hybrid SharePoint Environments with Office 365. Hybrid SharePoint environments

combine on-premises Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 with Microsoft SharePoint Online. You can

access the whitepaper here.

• Exchange Deployment Options Whitepaper. The purpose of this paper is to help you choose how

to deploy Microsoft Exchange: as Exchange Server 2010 on-premises, Exchange Online with

Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud, or using both in a temporary or permanent hybrid scenario. You

can access the whitepaper here.

• Exchange Hybrid Deployment and Migration with Office 365. You can access the online article here.

Developer

When the out-of-the-box capabilities of Office 365 needs to be extended you can develop a custom

solution. Custom solutions can be declarative, custom coded and a mix of the two.

Hub

• Office 365 Developer Hub. A one stop portal for training courses, developer resource centers,

technical recordings and much more. You can access the hub here.

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Courses

• Office 365 Developer Training Course. The Office 365 Training Course contains developer focused

presentations, self-paced labs and links to key resources to help you build solutions that leverage

SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. In Office 365, SharePoint 2010, Exchange

2010 and Lync Server 2010 are hosted in Microsoft cloud datacenters to provide collaboration and

communication as software-as-a-service (SaaS). Using this course, you’ll learn how to build

collaborative and communication focused cloud solutions that run in Office 365 using Visual Studio

2010 and the .NET Framework. You can access the course here.

Documents

• SharePoint Online for Office 365: Developer Guide. Use the SharePoint Online for Office 365

Developer Guide to gain knowledge and understanding of SharePoint Online within Microsoft

Office 365, and the rich features available to developers and designers. You can access the guide

here.

More Resources

• Practice Accelerator for Microsoft Office 365. Practice Accelerator (PA) is a Microsoft offering

designed to help partners build a technical services practice around Microsoft solutions. The

Practice Accelerator for Microsoft Office 365 is presented by Microsoft experts via Microsoft Office

Live Meeting for 4 hours per day over 4 consecutive days (totaling 16 hours). The session outline is

centered around the different phases in an Office 365 deployment project; the Plan phase, the

Prepare phase, the Migrate phase and the Post-Deployment phase. You can find more information

about the Office 365 accelerator here.

• Office 365 Community. Post questions and get help from moderators and peers, find Help Articles

and much more. You can access the community here.

• End user Help. Lots of Getting Started information from an end user perspective. You can access

the site here.

• Service Level Agreement for Microsoft Online Services. This document will help you understand

e.g. what qualifies downtime and how Microsoft compensate customers. You can access the

current service level agreement here.

• Microsoft Volume Licensing Online Services Use Rights. This document will help you understand

what customers are licensed for per plan. You can access the current use rights here.

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Appendix A: The Small Business Competency

Below is a snapshot of the Microsoft Small Business Competency Learning Path, the complete learning and

training path can be accessed here

If you check the Microsoft Partner Network “Small Business competency requirements overview” page

accessible here, you will notice that the current mandatory Office 365 exam for the Microsoft Small

Business competency, “Exam 70-323: Administering Office 365”, is being changed to align more with the

needs of small-business customers. A new test is being introduced - “Exam 74-324: Administering Office

365 for Small Business” - which will replace Exam 70-323. If you are working to attain the Small Business

competency, Exam 70-323 is still valid, but when Exam 74-324 is available (currently planned for

midSeptember 2012), we recommend having someone at your company pass Exam 74-324 to fulfill the

exam requirements for the Small Business competency.

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