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

You probably know a lot of the amazing stuff you can do with Microsoft Office on your PC. But what if you don’t have your PC? Or what if you don’t have the right Office app on your PC? What if you’re on the conference floor, on the train, or even on vacation and you need to…

•Make a couple of changes to a proposal that’s due yesterday?

•Check your stock of an item in an Excel spreadsheet to answer a client’s question?

•Review a colleague’s sales presentation right before showtime?

•Take some notes during a lunch meeting and add them to OneNote on your PC later?

•Open a document from your SharePoint Online site and add your brilliant insights before they fade away?

With Office 365 with Office Web Apps, you can create and edit Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote documents right from an Internet browser. And, you can view Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents on popular mobile devices.

Office Web Apps is part of SharePoint Online in Office 365, so you can access and edit your SharePoint documents from anywhere. You can open a document from your SharePoint Online library, or create a new one and save it to SharePoint Online. To create a new document right in the browser, just select the format (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or OneNote) and type the document name.

Office Web Apps is optimized for using on the go, so it’s fast and efficient. When new features are available, Office Web Apps is updated automatically, so you always have the latest functionality at your fingertips.

You’ll see your presentations, spreadsheets, documents, and notebooks in high fidelity. And when you edit them, the formatting is preserved, so your hard work making a great-looking document is never wasted.

Okay, now imagine you want to work together with someone else—sharing ideas, building a presentation, or creating a spreadsheet. With Office Web Apps, you can collaborate in real time on an Excel spreadsheet or a OneNote notebook in the browser, almost like you’re in the same room together.

With Office Web Apps, you can transform “to do” to “done” from just about anywhere.

Microsoft Office 365 Blog