Microsoft Office 365 Beta Opens to the Public: Hands-On Tour

Thanks to SharePoint, the document on the left viewed in Word on a PC looks identical to the document in the right pane as viewed online within Internet Explorer.

You can choose to sync a document within SharePoint Workspace, working on it within the desktop Office instead of from a browser.

Editing sites and documents online is meant to seem familiar to users of the desktop Word. You'll see elements of the Ribbon layout from Word 2007 and 2010.

You can view the contact details of a user working in the same document that you're working in.

You can view the same contacts whether in a browser, on a PC, or on a smartphone.

You can give an outside user permission to share an internal SharePoint site via an e-mail invitation. The user must sign in with a Windows Live ID.

The Outlook Web App looks pretty nearly identical to Outlook on the desktop. You can receive reminders, sort messages by conversation, and look at mail in much the same way.

You can carry on an IM conversation with someone while working on a document together from afar.

You can create an online meeting from directly within Outlook. There's no need to look up meeting codes and pass codes. Participants will receive a URL, which they can click to join the meeting.

Here’s how it looks if you’re in a Word document and make changes to data that's connected to an online Access database.

Instead of e-mailing attachments to colleagues, you can share links to documents stored online within Office 365.

From a Windows Phone 7 smartphone, you can snap a photo at a meeting and pop it into a shared document in SharePoint.

With Lync you can upload a PowerPoint slide show, do a whiteboard presentation, and reach other users with video chatting.

Here's what joining an online meeting with audio can look like in Lync.

From a Windows Phone 7 phone, you’ll see updates to scheduled meetings, with links to maps for directions.

You can update a PowerPoint slide available via SharePoint from a Windows Phone 7 handset.

You can learn more about the small-business and enterprise pricing options of Microsoft's cloud productivity tools here, and sign up to test the beta service at office365.microsoft.com.

Related links:

• See Office 365's Admin Features

• How Office 365 Pays for Itself

• Why Office 365 Isn't Mobile Enough

• What's Inside Office 365

• Microsoft Office 365 Beta: Sneak a Peek

• Microsoft Embraces Cloud Productivity With Office 365

(Images from Microsoft)