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General

What is Office 365?

The Microsoft Office 365 suite is a hosted, online version of the traditional installed version of Microsoft Office software. This online service is subscription-based and includes Office, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Skype for Business (Lync) Online and Microsoft Office Web Apps.

The advantage of the Microsoft Office 365 suite is that the cloud service is provided by Microsoft and thus eliminates a company’s IT maintenance tasks, such as patching, and infrastructure support costs. For end users, the advantage is the ability to access Office 365 offerings using any device, anywhere with an Internet connection.

Logging in to the Office 365 portal, users have access to Office applications including Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel, Yammer, Skype for Business (Lync) and OneDrive for Business.

Office 365 Issue Resolution

Office 365 Governance Roles

Why change to Office 365?

Office 365 provides state of the art features for staff, faculty and students to improve productivity and academic success.

  • Economy - Moving data to the Cloud reduces operational costs for managing mail servers, which frees up out limited resources in ITS to focus on more campus and departmentally-specific projects.
  • Efficiency - Office 365 will serve as a hub of productivity, offering a full-fledged office suite, online collaboration tools, and security to help students and faculty be more collaborative and have a more meaningful experience. With features such as real-time communication and extensive file-sharing capability, students, staff and faculty will have a new, fluid experience with technology.
  • Security - As hackers agressively pursue private data, the need for enhanced security features grows exponentially. Moving to a Cloud-based solution provides the full power and security protections of Microsoft engineers to protect intellectual property from these threats, as well as providing meaningful changes to the way students, faculty and staff work in an online environment.
As an end-user, do I need to do anything to prepare for Office 365?
The Office 365 shared services team and the campus migration team will manage the migration of data into the unified Office 365 environment.  If prep steps are required, they will be communicated to you by your campus migration team.   
NOTE:  There is not a set list of end-user prep steps as each migration process (from one institution to the next) is different.

What applications are included in my Office 365 license/account?

The Microsoft Office 365 suite is a Cloud-based, online version of the traditional installed version of Microsoft Office software. This online service is subscription-based and includes Office, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Skype for Business (LynC) Online and Microsoft Office Web Apps.

The MnSCU Unified license for Office 365 may be called Office 365 for Education.

Web applications include:

Office 2013 Desktop applications may also be referred to as Office Professional Plus 2013 (ProPlus), and includes:

For PC:

    • Word
    • PowerPoint
    • Excel
    • Access
    • OneDrive for Business
    • OneNote
    • Outlook
    • Skype for Business (Lync)
    • InfoPath
    • SharePoint Designer
    • Project
    • Publisher
    • Visio

For Mac:

    • Office for Mac 2011 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)
    • Office 2016 for Mac (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote)
    • Lync for Mac 2011

Add-in for PowerPoint

Office Mix

Who do I contact if I have a problem with Office 365 service?

Contact your local IT help desk. If necessary contact the system Service Desk.

How do I update my job title in the Office 365 profile?

Job title information will eventually be obtained from ISRS/SCUPPS, but at this time it is whatever was migrated from the local Active Directory. 

Submit a ticket to request a manual update to your Office 365 job title.

How will Office 365 impact my work?
Once the migration is complete, users will have greater access to content like email and documents stored on OneDrive for Business (OD4B).
Users with the Office desktop applications installed may continue to use those and login to the Office 365 portal when using a device without Office desktop installed.

Some noticeable changes:
    • Access - Files saved to OneDrive for Business or SharePoint can be accessed via a browser wherever an Internet connection is available.
    • Collaboration - Applications like OneDrive for Business, OneNote, Skype for Business, and Yammer can be used to share, edit and contribute in real time on documents, conversations, online meetings, and more.  
    • Storage - Office 365 allows 50 GB of storage for email and 1 TB of storage in OneDrive for Business.

Will Office 365 be compatible with my mobile device (phone/tablet)?

Office 365 is designed to work with the primary web browsers, including currect versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Mobile apps are available for both iOS and Android. Apps will sync with OneDrive for Business so documents will also be available on your compatible device.

  • Windows - Office Mobile applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook mail, and Outlook Calendar) require Windows 10.
  • iOS - Office for iPad and iPhone require iOS 8.0 or higher. Office for iPad Pro requires iOS 9.0 or higher.
  • Android - Tablets and phones that are running Android KitKat 4.4 or later version and have an ARM-based or Intel x86 processor.

What is The Cloud or "cloud services?"

A cloud service is any resource that is provided over the Internet. The most common cloud service resources are Software as a Service* (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
Cloud services are the same thing as Web services. However, the term cloud services has been more commonly used as  cloud computing has become more pervasive.

*SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet. PaaS refers to the delivery of operating systems and associated services over the Internet without downloads or installation. IaaS involves outsourcing the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components, all of which are made accessible over a network.  SaaS, PaaS and IaaS are sometimes referred to collectively as the SPI model.

What is Windows Intune?

Microsoft Windows Intune is a cloud-based service for Windows PC management and security and includes always-up-to-date antivirus with the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine.

What Intune can do (video, 4m)

What is the "Video" app in Office 365?

Office 365 Video provides organizations with a secure, company-wide destination for posting, sharing and discovering video content. From onboarding new employees, to distributing a CEO message company wide, to community contributions, video is now a first-class citizen to power and enrich your internal communications.

Using Azure Media Services, Video benefits from adaptive smooth streaming technology optimizing video play for the device it's being viewed on. It leverages Yammer and the Office Graph to deliver a social, personalized experience within Office 365.

There are four core elements to Video:

  • Simplicity
  • Discoverability and share'ability
  • Mobile
  • Built-in security and management


Simplicity-
To upload a video, content owners simply drag and drop their video files into the web user interface—or upload from their mobile device—type a title and description, and let the service take care of the rest. You can upload a wide variety of video file types. The service then generates a standardized set of playback files for fast, easy viewing.

Discoverability and Share'ability-
Videos are easily searchable via enterprise search, with a dedicated search experience in the video portal already scoped to show only video results. All uploaded videos are discoverable in Office Delve (similar to documents, videos are automatically fed into the Office Graph).

Mobile-
People will be able to view and share videos within Office 365 on any device. They can easily navigate the home page and channels to find and view content, and even upload new videos from their device. We’ll share more news in the next few months about how you can best interact with your video portal from your mobile device.

Built-in Security and Content Management-
It’s very easy to set the permissions for the home page leveraging the same Active Directory powering authentication in all areas of Office 365. This same governance model enables admins to manage permissions for each channel. Channels are easy to create and assign delegated owner(s)—or channel managers—who can then manage their own content and specific set of permissions.

New features to the Video app will roll out to Office 365 clients automatically when they are released. Microsoft is focusing on broader mobile device coverage, “publish to” scenarios like using Office Mix to publish training content into Office 365 Video (coming soon – read more here), recommendations powered by Office Graph, ability to embed videos elsewhere in your intranet, captions, the ability to create collections and share them, and always monitoring performance and solid upload experiences and means to improve overall.

 

What is Delve?

Delve surfaces personalized content to you from across Office 365. Delve shows you how you connect with documents and one another. 

What is Office Delve

Find People and information with Delve

Group and share documents in Office Delve

Read more about Delve. (article, Microsoft)

What exactly is Delve and why should you care (video by Benjamin Niaulin, 8m)

What is Sway?

Use Sway to create and share a polished, interactive, web-based canvas of your ideas with colleagues, students, and teachers. It's ideal for presenting a project or paper visually, recapping a conference or field assignment, and much more.

Read more about Sway.

 

What is OneNote Class Notebook?

OneNote Class Notebook is an app that helps you set up OneNote with sub-notebooks, including:

    • Student Notebooks: private notebooks that are shared between each teacher and their individual students. Teachers can access these notebooks at any time, but students cannot see other students' notebooks.
    • Content Library: a notebook for teachers to share course materials with students. Teachers can add and edit its materials, but for students, the notebook is read-only.
    • Collaboration Space: a notebook for all students and the teacher in the class to share, organize, and collaborate. 

Read more about OneNote Class Notebook.

Office Blog: Introducing OneNote Class Notebooks--a flexible digital framework for teaching and learning.

Using OneNote Class Notebook (video, 2m)

What is Office Mix?

Mix is a free add-in for PowerPoint. It provides everything you need to easily create and share interactive online videos.

    • Voice, Video and Digital Ink
    • Polls and Interactive Apps
    • Insights and Analytics
    • Plackback on Any Device

Read more and get Office Mix.

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Logging In

After changing my StarID password, I'm not able to sign in to Office 365 and/or the Office applications.

When you change your StarID account password, there is a slight delay while the system sync's the Active Directory. After changing your StarID password, wait three to five minutes minutes before signing in to Office 365. If, after giving the system time to sync, you're unable to sign in please submit a request for support

Do I need an internet connection to sign in to Office 365?

You must have an internet connection to sign in to Office 365 and the online apps. If you have the desktop versions of the applications installed on your PC you can work offline and sync the updated content to the online content the next time you're online.

 

Post Migration

Reestablishing connections/setups for mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android)

There isn't an automated way to switch a mobile device to the new service. Office 365 servers have their own internet address, so you will need to add the new account connection information.