Easy management of users in P1

Office 365 for professionals and small businesses (P1 plan) customers are currently limited to managing their users in the Office 365 Admin Interface.

The Microsoft Online Services Directory Synchronization tool  - only available to E plan users - is a tool to replicate users, contacts, distribution lists, and other objects into Office. But its not available to P1 plan customers (and it wont install on a Domain Controller).

But what if a P1 plan customer is running Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (SBSE)? Then there is an AD schema in place. Wouldn’t it be nice if that opened up for at least some of the administrative benefits seen in the E plan?

Enter the (very) soon to be released Office 365 Integration Module (OIM) for SBSE

OIM extends the features of the server Dashboard by providing seamless integration with Office 365 services. When you integrate Office 365 with SBSE, you can:

• Subscribe to Office 365 or configure the server to use an existing subscription.
• Perform the following Office 365 account management tasks from the Dashboard:
  • Bulk create Office 365 accounts  for network user accounts
  • Assign new or existing Office 365 accounts to network user accounts
  • Manage the  Office 365 account assigned to a user account throughout the lifecycle of the user account
    (e.g. deactivating a network user account also deactivates the Office 365 account that is assigned to the user account)
• Synchronize passwords for network user accounts and Office 365 accounts. This allows network users to sign in  to Office 365 using their Windows password.
• Link an Internet domain that you have set up on SBSE to Office 365.
• View information about your Office 365 subscription.
• Access your Office 365 management portal from the Office 365 page of the server Dashboard

OIM will be available as a free download from Microsoft Download Center