Office 365 for Education Implemented at City of Westminster College

In March, City of Westminster College (CWC) came to Parabola as they wanted to take advantage of the new features in Office 365 for Education but were concerned they lacked the necessary technical experience to implement it successfully. Our experience of the various elements involved, particularly Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager, meant we were able to rise to the challenge.

Key requirements were that management of accounts in Office 365 should be automated, that students should not need a separate login for their Office 365 account and to enable their 8000+ students to use Outlook anywhere.  CWC wanted to enable their students to harness the power of the full suite of Office 365 products; SkyDrive, Lync and Office Web Apps.

Office 365 Directory Sync was deployed to fully automate the management of their 8000+ student accounts in Office 365. There is no additional work for CWC IT staff when dealing with new students – students are granted Office 365 access automatically.

To avoid the need for multiple passwords, Active Directory Federation Services was deployed and configured to federate CWC students’ existing account credentials to Office 365. This single sign-on solution as implemented also works with SharePoint, internal applications and Collabco MyDay.

Do you want a smooth, successful Office 365 implementation in your organisation? Contact us today to see how we can help you.