Speakers: William Smith Paul Bowden
Level: Intermediate, Lecture
Excerpt: Learn how Mac admins and Microsoft developers are collaborating to make supporting Office 2016 for Mac easier.
Description: On the last day of the 2015 MacAdmins Conference at Penn State, Microsoft released Office 2016 for Mac. Just one day earlier, William Smith presented “Administering Office 2016 for Mac”, based on what he knew at the time from private betas and pubic previews. As Microsoft released more editions of Office 2016, Mac admins found installers didn’t work and unexpected windows and dialogs appeared for each new user. They rallied to find solutions.
Then something amazing happened! A developer from Microsoft reached out to Mac admins, listened to our concerns and started fixing our problems. In less than six weeks, Paul Bowden addressed 10 major pain points he had identified. He went on to create a comprehensive installer website, allow us to test and give feedback on pre-release software, and involve other Microsoft developers in the community. This has been an unprecedented two-way conversation between a major software developer and its customers. What have we learned in this conversation about Office 2016 for Mac and Microsoft?
We’ll cover:
• Understanding the various installers
• Choosing the best method for installing Office 2016
• Managing full, combo and delta updates
• Volume licensing gotchas
• Secrets of Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU)
• Suppressing first run windows
• Setting defaults for Save locations
• Deploying templates, add-ins and other common user files
• The Office Insider program
• The future of Office for Mac
About the speakers
William Smith – Professional Services Engineer – JAMF Software (Twitter: http://twitter.com/meck)
Bill has worked in the computer technology field for 20 years specializing in support for advertising, design, graphics and print systems in several enterprise environments as well as a consultant and trainer. His specialty is integrating Macintosh computers with Windows file sharing and messaging servers. He is currently a Professional Services Engineer with JAMF Software headquartered in Minneapolis and serving education, enterprise and government clients. In April of 2003, Microsoft awarded him as an MVP for his online support of others in the Microsoft communities, recognizing him in his area of expertise in Macintosh and Windows integration and later Office for Mac. He has worked internationally to support Macintosh computers and integrate them with Active Directory, Exchange and Office 365. Bill has spoken at JAMF Nation User Conference, MacIT and Penn State MacAdmins Conference. He has written for MacTech Magazine and is co-author of the second edition of the Enterprise Mac Administrator’s Guide. And he is a co-founder of Twin Cities Mac Admins, a community supporting all things Apple from Education to Enterprise.
Paul Bowden – Principal Engineer – Microsoft Corp (Twitter: mrexchange)
Paul is a Principal Engineer in the Apple Platform Experience (APEX) team at Microsoft, and primarily works on Office for Mac, and Office for iOS. Paul is the lead engineer for product installation and update experience. Paul has been at Microsoft for 19 years, with much of his career working in the Exchange team, designing Office 365 and ActiveSync. When he’s not working with the latest Apple gadgetry, you can find him on his farm feeding goats and pigs.