Is the version of Office Professional Plus in Office 365 “special”?

  • Article

JJAntequino_thumb1_thumb_thumb_thumb

J.J. Antequino

----------------------------------

Sort of.  You will have the same access to the following applications as you would in the Volume Licensing version of Office:

ProPlusOffice365

However, the activation, licensing, and use rights differ.

Here’s some good info from the Office 365 Beta Service Descriptions site (I highlighted some…..highlights Smile):

Administration, Provisioning, and Activation of Office Professional Plus

Using the Microsoft Online portals, you can easily provision users for Office Professional Plus, enabling them to download Office Professional Plus from any location connected to the Internet. The installation system will automatically install all required software, and then Office Profession Plus will automatically contact Microsoft Online, retrieve the licensing information needed, and activate the product.

Purchasing Office Professional Plus

The Microsoft Online Service Portal lets organizations try or buy subscriptions to Microsoft Online services, including Microsoft Office Professional Plus. When creating the account, the service administrator enters the number of Office Professional Plus licenses needed. This information is stored with the account in the Microsoft Online Data Center and can be modified to included new licenses or deprovision purchased licenses. Service administrators can return to this portal to decommission a license and reassign to a new user or to add new licenses.

Each license allows a user to install Office Professional Plus on five different machines. If a user attempts to install Office Professional Plus on a sixth machine, he or she will receive a message showing the machines that are active for the license. The message will instruct the user to disable the subscription on one of the active machines to proceed.

Provisioning Office Professional Plus Users

Microsoft Online service administrators provision users for Office Professional Plus by providing Microsoft Online credentials for subscribers in Microsoft Online Service Portal. Once provisioned, the user can download Office Professional Plus from the Information Worker Portal.

Administrators can also download Microsoft Office Professional Plus from the service and place the files on a central share. Users can then run the setup from this location or administrators can automatically deploy the setup using in-house tools.

Running Office Professional Plus for the First Time

As part of the Office 365 software download, administrators will install Office Professional Plus and prepare PCs with appropriate pre-requisites and updates for connecting to the Online Services. When users first run Office Professional Plus downloaded as part of Office 365, they will be prompted to enter the online credentials from their administrators. Once authenticated with these credentials, their subscription will automatically activate the product.