The combination of the Office 365 ProPlus suite and the Office 365 services provides the best way for users to collaborate on documents. An Office 365 ProPlus subscription enables customers to purchase monthly licenses for each user. Each user license gives users five concurrent installations.

After Office 365 ProPlus is started, users sign in to Office and Office automatically links to their files, and settings. The users' content and applications are available to them wherever they are and on whatever corporate or organization computer they are using. And their application settings, links to recent files and folders, custom dictionaries, and even bookmarks to their last position in a document roam with them from device to device.

Processors that are 64-bit are becoming the standard for systems that range from servers to desktop computers. The 64-bit systems can use more virtual and physical memory than 32-bit systems. This lets users work with much larger data sets than they could previously, and to analyze and solve large computational problems. Office 2010 introduced native 64-bit versions of Office products to take advantage of this larger capacity. The 32-bit version of Office 2013 provides the same functionality as the 64-bit version and is also compatible with 32-bit add-ins. By default, the 32-bit version of Office 2013 is installed and is the recommended installation. Learn more about 64-bit editions in 64-bit editions of Office 2013.

Depending on the plan that you purchase for Office 365, the subscription license may include access to Microsoft SharePoint Online and Office Web Apps for viewing and editing documents on the web. Users can view and, depending on the license, edit Office documents by using a supported web browser on computers and on various mobile devices, such as Windows Phones, iPhones, and iPads. Learn more about Office Web Apps availability to consumers and businesses in Overview of Office Web Apps and how Office Web Apps work on-premises with SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps: extend your Office experience to the web.

In small business scenarios, you as the administrator, sign up for Office 365 and set a new domain name and create an Online Services ID for your account during the Office 365 sign-up process. The Online Services ID is an email address and password combination that is used to sign in to Office 365. You use your Online Services ID to sign in to perform administrative tasks, view billing and account information, and use any of the services, such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online.

In enterprise environments that have deployed Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) on premises, you can configure the following authentication services: single sign-on or identity federation, Active Directory synchronization, or domains.

Office 2013 introduces a new tool and process for assessing compatibility issues. The new Office compatibility process that is used with the new telemetry tools and features in Office 2013 helps speed up the testing and deployment process so that users can start to use the new version of Office with fewer disruptions.

The new Telemetry Dashboard tool is a Microsoft Excel 2013 workbook that is configured to connect to a telemetry database. Telemetry Dashboard is installed together with Office Professional Plus 2013 and Office 365 ProPlus, and it replaces the Office 2010 compatibility tools such as Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM), Office Environment Assessment Tool (OEAT), and the Office Code Compatibility Inspector (OCCI).

You can view or download a poster that shows Telemetry Dashboard components and usage. To learn about how to assess Office compatibility, see Office 2013 compatibility guide. Learn about how to deploy Telemetry Dashboard components in Deploy Telemetry Dashboard.

To help you manage and enforce add-ins for Office, see Let's manage add-ins using Telemetry Dashboard to learn how to specify a list of managed add-ins for each Office 2013 application. By using Telemetry Dashboard, you can detect add-ins that crash frequently or that are not supported by your organization, and then you can disable them by using Group Policy.

Administrators who have signed up for Office 365 and provisioned user accounts for the users in their organizations can enable users to install Office 365 ProPlus (and Project Pro, Visio Pro, SharePoint Designer, or Lync products) directly from the Office 365 portal. This is the default option.

In managed enterprise environments, end users may not have permission to install software from the Office 365 portal. Administrators can use the Office Deployment Tool to manage Click-to-Run installations. By default, a Click-to-Run installation will download Office sources from the Internet. We recommend that you use the Internet as the installation source because it always offers the latest Office version and has all the security updates. However, if your organization's users won't be able to download from the Internet, the Office Deployment Tool also enables you to install Office 365 Click-to-Run products from an on-premises location. You can download the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run from the Microsoft Download Center site. The download includes a sample configuration file, Configuration.xml. To download Office 365 Click-to-Run products to an on-premises location and to customize an installation, administrators run the Office Deployment Tool and provide a customized Configuration.xml file. The Office Deployment Tool performs the tasks that are specified by using the optional properties in the Reference for Click-to-Run configuration.xml file.

After you download the Office 365 ProPlus product sources, you can place the downloaded sources on a network share on the local network. Then you can instruct users to install Office from that location. You have several options for deploying Office 365 ProPlus from an on-premises location. For example, to simplify and automate the installation process for users, you can provide a script or batch file. You can use a software distribution product, such as System Center Configuration Manager, or a Group Policy computer startup script to deploy the script or batch file.

You can use Group Policy for Click-to-Run products to enforce settings for security, Telemetry Dashboard, Outlook, roaming user settings, Office templates, add-ins, and other areas. Learn about new policy settings in Office 2013 in Office 2013 Administrative Template files. To learn about the security features that are available in the Office 365 and Office 2013 products, see Compare security features in Office 365 and Office 2013 SKUs.

By default, Click-to-Run for Office 365 installations are automatically updated, and the update process automatically detects and downloads the new data in the background. This is the recommended option because it keeps users up-to-date with the latest security fixes.

In an enterprise environment, you can opt to have updates automatically delivered to users or you can stage and deploy Click-to-Run updates from an on-premises location by using the Office Deployment Tool. You can roll out specific Office builds that are based on organizational testing and validation. A range of the most recent Office Click-to-Run builds will be provided to Office 365 administrators to help them remain current, and to provide the flexibility to allow for testing before new builds are deployed into their production environment. However, as a best practice, we recommend that you always use the latest version to make sure that users get the latest security updates.

The new apps for Office enable you to run the same solutions across applications, platforms, and devices, and provide an improved experience within Office applications by integrating rich content and services from the web. An app for Office is a webpage that is hosted inside an Office client application. You can use an app for Office to extend the functionality of a document, email message, or appointment. The apps for Office can run in multiple environments and clients. These include rich Office desktop clients, Office Web Apps, mobile browsers, and also on-premises and in the cloud. Developers can publish apps for Office to the Office Store or to an onsite catalog, where it can be available to users from their Office 2013 applications.

To enforce settings for apps for Office, use Group Policy. To monitor loads and load failures for Word, Excel, and Outlook apps for Office, use Telemetry Dashboard.

After users sign in to Office 2013, they will experience Office the same way, whether they’re using a desktop computer, a laptop, or a mobile device. Learn about roaming settings in roaming settings in Office 2013.

The new Office on Demand feature uses Click-to-Run to deliver Office 2013 on demand to a Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer that connects to the Office 365 service. Users access Office on Demand applications through an active SkyDrive Pro account in Office 365. Learn about how to install the Microsoft Office (Roaming) add-on, a requirement for Office on Demand, in Using Office on Demand.

Review training content to help users learn about the new features in Office 2013 and Office 365 in this article: End user training resources for Office 2013 and Office 365.