Get started with the Office 365 (Plan P1) Beta

After you sign up for the Office 365 (Plan P1) Beta, you can explore many exciting areas.

Explore the Office 365 Portal

After you sign in to Office 365, you will see the Office 365 Portal. As an administrator, you have access to administrator-specific areas of the portal to help you manage your user accounts and services.

Set up email

You can manage your company’s email settings, create distribution lists, manage shared resources, and manage your users’ mailboxes.

Create a team site

As the first administrator of your company’s services, you are also a global administrator on the Microsoft SharePoint Online site. You can start building your company’s team site to share documents and collaborate. As you create new user accounts, you must decide which accounts to add to your sites.

Instant messaging (IM), video calls, and online meetings

Microsoft Lync Online provides embedded presence and click-to-communicate capability in Office, enabling users to resolve issues quickly by moving, with context, from IM to audio and video calls and ad-hoc online meetings. Also, users can conduct scheduled online presentations with colleagues and customers that include audio, video, screen sharing, and a virtual whiteboard.

System requirements

To get the best experience, we recommend that customers meet our system prerequisites. For example, the prerequisites for the Office 365 (Plan P1) Beta include web browser support. The Office 365 Beta service will not work if customers are using Internet Explorer 6 or if they try to connect with Office 2003. If you do not have these system requirements, you can still use our current Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services, which has millions of business users today.

Operating systems
•Windows 7

•Windows Vista with Service Pack 2

•Windows XP with Service Pack 3

•Windows XP Home Edition is supported, but it will not support federated identity

•Windows XP Media Center Edition is supported, but it will not support federated identity

•Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard

System software
•Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 (for Windows XP)

•Java client 1.4.2 (for Macintosh OS X)

Office clients
•Microsoft Office 2010 or Office 2007 Service Pack 2

•Office 2008 for Mac and Microsoft Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition

•Office 2011 for Mac and Outlook 2011 for Mac

•.NET Framework 2.0 or later

•Microsoft Lync 2010
Client applications
•Services Connector

Browser software—Microsoft Online Portal
•Internet Explorer 7 or later

•Mozilla Firefox 3.x

•Apple Safari 3.x

Browser requirements—Microsoft Outlook Web App
•Internet Explorer 7 or later

•Firefox 3 or later

•Safari 3 or later on Macintosh OS X 10.5

•Chrome 3 and later versions

•Outlook Web App also has a light version that supports a reduced set of features on almost any browser