03/03/2015

BestpracticesforusingOffice365onaslownetwork

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Best practices for using Office 365 on a

slow network
Wouldnt it be nice if the Internet was always fast and never down? Perhaps that day will come. But in the meantime,
there are practical things you can do to work around a balky network and still get your daytoday work done.
Although Office 365 is a cloudbased service, it also provides many ways to work with your content offline and to
smoothly keep your changes synchronized. Besides, its sometimes more efficient to work with content offline just
because applications run faster and the user interface is more responsive. The point is this: Office 365 gives you the
best of both worlds. Heres how to take advantage of that.
TIP Want to see how slow or fast your network connection is? Try the OOKLA Speed test or the Network Speed

Test App.

Are you sure its the network?

Whenever you experience performance problems, first make sure that your device is not the root cause of the
problem. There are two things you can do that might make a big improvement:
Make sure your device is running well and there is no malware on your computer.
If possible, buy more memory. Adding memory is the simplest and often most effective way to improve
performance on your device. Its especially helpful when working with large files and videos.
For more information, see Windows Performance and maintenance and Fix Windows system performance problems.

Best practices for using Internet Explorer

Your browser is your gateway to the Internet, so it can have an impact on performance, especially with the time it
takes to load a page and how often you round trip to the Office 365 service. Here are some suggestions for your
browser and Internet Explorer:
Upgrade to Internet Explorer Version 11 or later for substantial performance improvements over previous
versions.
Disable browser addons that might impact performance and that you dont really need.
Increase the cache size for your temporary internet files.
Once you have signed into your work or school account, keep the browser window open throughout the day.
You can open other tabs and windows without signing in again. If you need to sign in to another account, use
InPrivate Browsing.
Once each page is downloaded and open, keep them open by using tabs. Its easy to navigate between tabs
and use the page later on in the day. Refresh a page only if you need the latest data on that page.
If a page is taking too long to open, stop the page download press ESC and then refresh the page press F5.
When possible, reduce round trips to the Office 365. For example, rather than paging through lists or libraries,
use search to locate files in a large library and filtering in a list to get directly to the results you want. Or, create
views that minimize page load time. For more information, see Improving page performance.
If video performance is poor, you may be able to download the video and watch it on your device. A download
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link may be available, or you may be able to right click the video link, and select Save Target as.
For more information, see Fix Internet Explorer issues.

Best practices for using Outlook and Outlook Web App

Reading, writing, and organizing email is a big part of everyones day. Both Outlook and Outlook Web App OWA
offer offline support. Using an email app on your smart phone is another useful alternative. Use the following
options that best fit your needs:
Upgrade to Outlook 2013 SP1 or later for substantial performance improvements over previous versions.
Outlook Web App lets you create offline messages, contacts, and calendar events that are uploaded when OWA
is next able to connect to Office 365. For more information about setting up and using OWA in offline mode,
see Using Outlook Web App offline.
Outlook lets you work in cached mode, in which it automatically connects whenever possible. You can have
Outlook download your entire mailbox, or just a portion of it. For more information, see Turn on Cached
Exchange Mode and Change how much mail to keep offline.
Outlook also offers an offline mode. To use this, you must first set up cached mode so that information from
your account is copied down to your computer. When in offline mode, Outlook will try to connect using the
send and receive settings, or when you manually set it to work online. For more information, see Work offline to
avoid data connection charges, Change send and receive settings when you work offline, and Switch from
offline to online mode.
If you have a smart phone, you can use it to triage your email and calendar over your phone carrier's network.
NOTE Here is some guidance on when to use Outlook or OWA. If disk space is not an issue on your device, Outlook
has a full set of features and might work best for you. If disk space is an issue on your device, consider using OWA
which has a subset of features, but also works best in an online situation. Of course, you can use either because they
work well together.

Best practices for using OneDrive for Business

OneDrive for Business is designed from the ground up to work with your files online and offline. Once you set it up,
synchronization of changes occurs automatically and reliably wherever and whenever you make them. If the network
is slow, you can work with the offline version of the files.
The OneDrive for Business sync app is available with Office 2013 Professional Plus, or Standard editions, or an
Office 365 subscription that includes Office 2013 applications. If you dont have Office 2013, you can download the
OneDrive for Business sync app for free. This app is also faster than using the Open in Explorer or Upload
commands. For more information, see Sync OneDrive for Business or SharePoint site libraries to your computer.
Here's some additional guidance for using the OneDrive for Business sync app:
If you're syncing a large library for the first time, start the sync during off hours, for example, overnight.
You can use the Pause syncing feature to temporarily stop syncing updates. However, use this feature for brief
periods, such as a few hours at a time, to avoid queuing large numbers of updates, and to minimize the risk of
merge conflicts if several people work on the same document.

Best practices for using OneNote

Every SharePoint team site has a builtin OneNote notebook and you can easily create your own. OneNote is a great
way to collect timely information that you need every day to get tasks done. For example, many teams use OneNote
as a collection point for weekly meetings, project notes, ideas, plans, and status reports. You can neatly organize this
disparate information by using pages, sections, and tabs.
But the beauty of OneNote is that you can access the content from virtually any device, whether a desktop, a laptop,
a tablet, or a smart phone. And you dont have to worry about saving or synchronizing because OneNote does it for
you.
For more information, see Microsoft OneNote.
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Best practices for using Lync Online

The following are general guidelines for using Lync Online when your network is slow:
Use instant messaging whenever you can because it works well on a slow network.
Avoid making phone calls over a virtual private network VPN or remote access service RAS connections.
Make sure your audio device is approved. For more information, see Phones and Devices Qualified for
Microsoft Lync.
When using PowerPoint in an online presentation, reduce the size and complexity of the slides. For more
information, see Tips for improving the performance of your presentation.
Whenever possible, share a monitor, instead of a program or a desktop. For more information, see Share your
desktop or a program in Lync.
Instead of sharing, send out the PowerPoint slides ahead of time as a meeting request attachment. For more
information, see Set up a Lync Meeting.
Video performance is very dependent on network performance. Avoid using video if your network is slow.
For more information, see Poor audio or video quality in Lync Online and Slow screen update in Lync 2013.

Best practices for using SharePoint lists

Working with list data offline to "scrub", analyze, or report data is a great way to minimize the impact of a slow
network. You can read and write most lists from Microsoft Access 2013 by linking to them. You can also export a list
to an Excel Table, which creates a oneway data connection between the Excel table and the list.
Furthermore, if the Access Services feature is activated, then you can work with considerably more data than the List
View Threshold, up to 50,000 items by default. Both Access 2013 and Excel 2013 automatically process list data in
small batches and then reassemble the data, a technique that enables working with substantially more data than the
List View Threshold, and without adversely impacting the service performance of other users.
For more information, see the section "More about managing large lists" in Manage large lists and libraries in Office
365.

Best practices for customizing web pages

When you customize a web page, you may inadvertently cause poor performance with the page. A number of
factors can have an impact, such as the complexity and size of the page, how many web parts are added, how many
list or library items are initially displayed, and the way you code the page.
For more information, see SharePoint Online Performance Designing your Pages to be Fast.

Why is my network so slow?

Although you dont have control over network performance itself, it helps to understand whats going on behind the
scenes. The Internet is enormously complex, but there are a few concepts that can help you understand the situation
much better.

Major factors that affect network performance

The two most important measures of network performance are bandwidth and latency:
Bandwidth is the rate of throughput measured in bits per second. Bigger is better. Bandwidth is like a water
pipe. The larger the pipe, the more water that you can put through it.
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Latency is the time it takes for content to get from a server or service to your device and is measured in
milliseconds. Faster is better. Latency can be caused by a number of factors including low bandwidth or a
sparse connection.
Besides bandwidth and latency, other issues have an impact on network performance and are often unpredictable.
Network performance can fluctuate based on the time of the day or your physical location. The network can become
clogged when certain events occur that spike the use of the Internet, such as a natural disaster or a major public
event. The size and complexity of the page being loaded and the number and size of files being transferred have a
direct bearing on performance. A WiFi connection can temporarily degrade: for example, you poll a large conference
meeting of thousands by requesting everyone to tweet at the same time.
Following the best practices in this article can help workaround these issues and reduce frustration.

Whats the best way to report problems?

Microsoft continually strives to improve the overall performance of Office 365 by monitoring the network, measuring
bandwidth and latency, improving page load time, reducing disk I/O, and redesigning pages to use Minimal
Download Strategy. For more information about checking your current status and reporting issues, see View the
status of your services.

See Also
Network planning and performance tuning for Office 365
Office 365 performance management

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