Students, faculty and staff at the University of Windsor are provided access to the Microsoft Office 365 system.
Microsoft Office 365 is a set of applications and services used daily by the University for collaboration, file sharing, and document editing. Office 365 is a cloud-based system that can also be integrated onto people's computers and mobile devices using software and apps, such as OneDrive, Outlook, Word and Excel. Similar to other cloud-based platforms, Office 365 is continually developing and changing, with new services, features and applications being introduced every few months.
This article describes the Office 365 services that are available to UWindsor users. Other Office 365 applications and services not listed here may be available on an on-demand basis - if you have a need for an application not listed, please fill out a service request.
Retirees, alumni and other campus community groups may not have full access to all these services. Office 365 Home edition can be purchased as an alternative.
On-line training is provided on these apps through Lynda.com. Current UWindsor faculty, students and staff can access those resources at uwindsor.ca/lynda.
Support for Office 365 services is provided at various levels as indicated below and can be accessed at uwindsor.ca/itshelp through Knowledge Base articles, answered questions or service requests.
Office 365 as a Tool
The purpose of Office 365 is to help UWindsor users in various tasks related to their career or studies. Office 365, through applications (tools) and on-line storage provides:
- Electronic mail and contacts
- Calendar
- File syncing and sharing / File search
- Document management / Productivity Tools
- Presentation tools
- Collaborative electronic workspaces
- Instant messaging and presence / Audio and Videoconferencing
- Identity Management
- Video storage
Office 365 as Storage
Office 365 also provides users with personal storage (OneDrive) and group storage (SharePoint). In both locations you can share documents with other users, and with anyone on the Internet. Files stored in OneDrive will eventually be deleted when your UWin Account is deactivated, but SharePoint documents may be retained longer, and should be used for work that is useful to the organization.
Services Chart
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Service
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Availability
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Use
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Support and Assistance
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Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, …)
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Faculty, staff and students
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Standard productivity tools: document, presentation and spreadsheets
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Widely used and fully supported
|
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Office Online Suite (Word, Excel, etc.)
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All users (including WURA)
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Versions of the standard Office tools that work in any Web browser
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Frequently updated
|
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Outlook Client
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Faculty and staff
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Electronic mail, calendaring, and contacts
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Widely used, mission critical application that is monitored and supported
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Outlook Web
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All users (including WURA)
|
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OneDrive
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All users (including WURA)
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Cloud-based file storage for personal working files. Files can be shared with other users. Files in OneDrive will be removed after user deactivation.
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Widely used and supported. This is the preferred storage location for user documents.
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OneDrive Client
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All users (including WURA)
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A program that will synchronize (copy) files between the cloud to local storage. This allows the user to work on files when disconnected from the network. It can also be used to create additional copies of documents.
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Widely used and supported. Use of the client is encouraged as a method of backing up copies of important documents on desktop computers.
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SharePoint
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All users (including WURA)
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Cloud-based storage space for groups of users. Files can be shared with users, including those outside the group. Storage is more persistent and not tied to an individual user.
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Widely used and supported as a method for common storage space between groups of users.
|
|
Groups
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Created via Service Request
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Groups holds the permissions for all shared items in Office 365. Members can be added or removed by the group owner. A group can also be used for distributing email messages.
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Fully supported
|
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Teams
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Faculty, staff and students
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Collaborative work technology that provides persistent group chat and acts like a hub to integrate Office 365 services. Teams also includes bots and other workflow assistants.
|
Gaining increased use in 2018, with full support of IT Services
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Skype for Business
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Faculty and staff
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An instant messaging system that allows for text, audio and/or video chats between two or more groups of users. Applications and files can be shared through the SfB client.
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Currently fully supported, but future is not clear. Teams will eventually replace Skype for Business.
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Forms
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Faculty, staff and students
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An on-line survey, poll, or quiz creator. Forms works with any Web browser and many mobile devices and supports question branching, and automatic grading (for quizzes).
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Moderately used. Replaces the InfoPath product. Technical support from IT Services provided on a best-effort basis.
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Sway
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Faculty, staff and students
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A cloud-based tool used to create interactive presentations, reports, journals and newsletters. Sway authors point to Web pages, polls, Power BI graphs, videos and other dynamic content.
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Helpful resources available through Lynda.com and Internet. Support from IT Services provided on a best-effort basis.
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Planner
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Faculty, staff and students
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Organizes tasks using boards and visual elements. Tasks are placed into buckets and categorized and assigned to users.
A simple and light weight replacement for Microsoft Project. Use Planner where basic project management functions will suffice.
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Helpful resources available through Lynda.com and Internet. Support from IT Services provided on a best-effort basis.
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Stream
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Faculty, staff and students
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A private streaming video site that is organized into channels. Teams will save recorded meetings into Stream and content from Stream can be embedded into SharePoint.
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Helpful resources available through Lynda.com and Internet. Support from IT Services provided on a best-effort basis.
|
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Delve
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All users
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An insight tool that proactively searches and provides personalized content to help users discover information and work with their colleagues
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Support not applicable to this search tool.
|
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Flow
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Faculty, staff and students
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Pre-defined or custom automated workflows between applications and services. Used for notifications, file synchronization, and data collection. Usage may be limited to a maximum number of runs per month.
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Helpful resources available through Lynda.com and Internet. Support from IT Services provided on a best-effort basis.
|
|
PowerApps
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Faculty, staff and students
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Allows a user to create an publish lightweight Web-based and mobile applications that pull data from various sources including Office 365, Dynamics 365, Slack, Google Sheets and more.
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Only basic PowerApps are included. Not widely used at UWindsor, and support is from Internet resources only.
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User Definitions
Faculty includes current faculty and sessional instructors, but not retirees (emeritus). Staff includes current full-time and part time staff employed by the university. Students include registered active students, full-time or part-time, but not alumni or prospective students.
All users include faculty, students, staff and other groups as mentioned.
Use Case Recommendations
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Need(s)
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Office 365 Solution(s)
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Personal note-taking for meetings or lectures
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- OneNote stored in OneDrive
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Multi-author resource development
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- OneNote stored in SharePoint (group) if the document contains many different types of resources (documents, attachments, Web pages, etc.)
- Shared Word or Excel document if the data is more of a single unit. If the sharing is between a small number of authors and the work is temporary, share the document from the personal OneDrive. If the document is institutional or requires a long lifetime with many different authors over time, store the document in a SharePoint Group.
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Student group project with Interaction
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Use a group chat in Microsoft Teams. You can add your class mates to the chat and give the chat a name. Files can also be shared through the group chat. Consult KB article for more information on how to collaborate without having to create a new group
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Ongoing group work, such as a committee or staff team that could involve brainstorming, meetings, polls, etc.
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For a committee or student club that has multi-year presence:
- Create a new group and team with a responsible owner(s).
- The owner(s) can add or remove members.
- Use Microsoft Teams to chat, meet, share files and apps.
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Microsoft Office tools are designed to work together, so choosing an app is not an either/or question. Apps can work together to provide even more value. For example, if you share a document in a Microsoft Team, it will be available in the corresponding SharePoint group. When you use Skype for Business or Teams to hold a real-time meeting, you can present a PowerPoint document right from your own OneDrive.