Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Office 365 and Office 2013 Preview

As many of you know Office 2013 Preview is available in Office 365. You have the ability to go create your own free tenant to start playing with Office 365 with Office 2013 Preview software. Go here - click here
Additionally, if you like to get a high-level overview of some of the new features and capabilities that are available in the preview – I recommend that you review these short high level articles about many of the new capabilities.

Office 365 ADFS Whitepaper

I have had a few customers ask me recently about low level details around how authentication works for Office 365 and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). There is a great whitepaper located here that I highly recommend that you read - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28971
I recommend reviewing sections:
  • Section 5.2 covers Web Client for SharePoint/OWA authentication flow.
  • Section 5.3 covers the Lync authentication flow.
  • Section 5.4 covers the Outlook authentication flow.
All are a little different because clients are active vs. passive which determines the flow of how the claim is ultimately sent to Office 365.