This post originally appeared on the RES blog before the company was acquired by Ivanti in July 2017.

RES ONE Workspace has supported Microsoft Office platforms for many years now, and we’ve enhanced our Office 2016 support in this latest release. RES ONE Workspace 2015 SR2 includes capabilities that support added security, cloud readiness and improved support for workforce productivity, as highlighted in this post by my colleague Pete Downing. I would like to take a moment to go over the new Office 2016 support in RES ONE Workspace 2015 SR2. Read on to learn how you can simplify your Office 2016 implementation, configuration and migration with RES ONE Workspace.

RES ONE Workspace templates for Office 2016 user settings

As you may have seen on my previous blog “Configure Windows 10 user settings in only a few clicks, with RES ONE Workspace templates”, RES ONE Workspace can simplify the preservation and application of user settings independent from the Windows profile. RES ONE Workspace can automatically detect user settings that are being changed by the user. These settings are preserved outside the Windows profile and when required by the Windows session and/or applications, they are applied ‘just-in-time’.

It will not be a big surprise that RES ONE Workspace delivers built-in templates for Microsoft Office user settings. With the release of RES ONE Workspace 2015 SR2 the following templates for Office 2016 are included (both on global and application level):

  • Access 2016
  • Excel 2016
  • OneNote 2016
  • Outlook 2016
  • PowerPoint 2016
  • Publisher 2016
  • Word 2016
  • Office Common
  • Office tools

A Simple Example with Office 2016 User Settings:

As you can see RES ONE Workspace has many valuable templates for Office 2016. I will use the application Word 2016 as an example to configure user settings for this application. All with only a few simple steps.

The steps:

  1. User settings for the application Word 2016, can be easily configured by opening the managed application Word 2016 at Composition -> Applications in the RES ONE Workspace Console. Select the User Settings section at the Properties tab, make sure that the Zero Profile mode is enabled and set to Capture target items on session end or application end
  2. At the Capturing tab, go to Add and navigate through the Templates tree and select Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Word -> 2016
     When 2016 is selected, the user settings are automatically added to the application
  3. Click OK and close the application by clicking OK again

That’s it! You have just configured user settings for Word 2016 in RES ONE Workspace!

RES ONE Workspace e-mail settings for Outlook 2016

As you have seen it’s easy to configure user settings for Office 2016 applications and common settings with RES ONE Workspace templates. Similar to the example with Word 2016, you can also configure user settings for Outlook 2016 with a template. Now, Outlook is probably one of the most business critical applications. By using a RES ONE Workspace template you preserve and apply settings that are already set in the application, which is cool! But, the biggest hurdle with Outlook is the user who has to step through a technical wizard, to configure the Outlook application connecting to their actual mailbox, running on a Microsoft Exchange platform.

RES ONE Workspace now supports E-mail Settings for Outlook 2016. With this long lasting feature of RES ONE Workspace, you can automatically configureOutlook 2016 to connect to Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Exchange Online (Office 365) without any user interaction (like a wizard), even if it’s the first time the user logs on and Outlook has never been started.

A simple example connecting Outlook 2016 to on premise Microsoft Exchange:

In this example I will show you how to create an E-mail Setting in the RES ONE Workspace Console, to connect Outlook 2016 to an on-premise Microsoft Exchange environment.

The steps

  1. Let’s first create a new E-mail Setting, by using New… at Composition -> Applications -> E-mail Settings in the RES ONE Workspace Console. Provide an E-mail Settings name for this ‘template’ and select Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5. or higher and click the Configure button
  2. In the Configure Service screen for this E-mail setting, select Use Autodiscover (requires Exchange 2007 or higher) and make sure that Outlook 2003 (and up) is selected in the versions drop down box.
     As you probably noticed in the Configure Service screen above, RES ONE Workspace uses Microsoft’s Exchange Autodiscover service (instead of providing a mail server name manually), so Outlook automatically finds the connection to the Microsoft Exchange backend.
  3. Close the configuration of this E-mail Setting by clicking OK and you will notice that the entry is visible in the content pane of the E-mail Settings feature in the RES ONE Workspace Console
  4. The only thing you have to do now is attach this template to the managed application Outlook 2016 in the RES ONE Workspace Console. Open the managed application Outlook 2016 (in this example), got to Configuration and select the E-mail Settings. Use the arrow to move the created template “Outlook 2016” from Available E-mail Settings to Selected E-mail Settings.
     Close the application by clicking OK and the E-mail setting for connecting Outlook 2016 to Microsoft Exchange is finished. When the user launches Outlook 2016, the mail profile is automatically created (even if it is the first time the user launches Outlook 2016).

In this example I used an on-premise Microsoft Exchange environment to configure a RES ONE Workspace E-mail setting. RES ONE Workspace also supports E-mail settings for Microsoft Exchange Online (Office 365). I will not go through the configuration for Office 365 now, but the configuration in the RES ONE Workspace Console for Microsoft Exchange Online (Office 365) is almost identical to the Microsoft Exchange on premise example:

Now the e-mail profile for Outlook 2016 is set and done, there is one thing left I want to centrally manage and that is the Outlook signature.

A simple example managing an Outlook signature for Outlook 2016:

As part of the E-mail Settings support for Outlook 2016, RES ONE Workspace also supports Outlook signatures for Outlook 2016. Basically the steps of creating an Outlook signature for Outlook 2016 are the same as configuring the connection to Microsoft Exchange:

  1. Use New… at Composition -> Applications -> E-mail Settings in the RES ONE Workspace Console. Instead of selecting Microsoft Exchange…, select Outlook Signature, give it a name and click the Configure button
  2. In the Config Feature screen, make sure Outlook 2016 is selected as version and start building your signature in the format and look and feel you like. RES ONE Workspace already provides an example signature which reads out some common fields from Active Directory.
  3. Once you’ve finished designing the signature, close the configuration screen and attach the new created E-mail setting for the Outlook Signature to the Outlook 2016 application.

    When the application Outlook 2016 is launched, the E-mail Settings ‘Outlook 2016’ is launched to set the connection to the mailbox on Microsoft Exchange AND ‘Signature 1’ is launched to set the signature designed for Outlook 2016.

Summary

So, this blog shows how powerful and easy it is to configure your Office 2016 environment with the support for Office 2016 in RES ONE Workspace 2015 SR2. Use the power of the user settings templates to automate the process and save yourself time of manually preserving and applying settings for all Office 2016 applications, and specifically use the E-mail Settings feature in RES ONE Workspace, so that the connection of Outlook 2016 Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Exchange Online (Office 365) is fully automated. Finally, E-mail Settings also supports Outlook signatures for Outlook 2016, where you easily can use a great looking signature like this one:

RES ONE Workspace support for Office 2016 is a must have when you want to manage an existing or migrating to Office 2016.