Quick Start Guide

Office 365 offers many different tools to use in order to collaborate in various ways.  Every group may find benefit out of the tools in various ways.

Use Case examples by role:

  • As a Faculty member:
    • Augment Canvas for your classes
      • Create a Team for your class
        • Allow for students to communicate with each other extemporaneously
        • Let students answer other students for knowledge sharing
      • Develop lesson plans and syllabi with your grad students in Word Online
    • Research collaboration
      • Create a Team for collaboration — work with grad students, peers from other institutions, and students.  Create notes, post files, write papers, have meetings, and chat with each other.
      • Share videos and teasers of your research to others within the University community.
  • As a staff member:
    • Manage a project with a Team and Planner
    • Use a Team to share information with your department or division – share files, chat, have meetings.
    • Manage your personal tasks with To-Do.
    • Get feedback with Forms.
  • As a student:
    • Create a Team to collaborate
      • student organizations
      • class projects
    • Share and watch videos in Stream
    • Manage your day with To-Do.

 

General Guidance:

  • Think Teams first
    • Collaborate in small groups (under 2500 members), then consider using a Team.  All items are shared to all members of the team.
      • Group and direct chatting
      • Video/audio meetings
      • Shared files via OneDrive
      • Shared notebook via OneNote
      • Shared Planner for task management
      • Shared calendar
      • Shared email
      • Video hosting (Stream)
      • Extends to incorporate other cloud applications
  • Chat with potentially all of campus, then consider using Yammer.
  • Collaborate with shared email/calendar/Planner/OneDrive only, and will never use chat: use an Outlook group. 
  • Host videos with Stream for campus use. 
  • Manage your personal task and to-dos, use To-Do.
  • Manage group tasks or light projects, use Planner.
  • Create stories for the web with Sway. 
  • Gather feedback from others on the web with Forms. 
  • Create interactive schedules for staff with StaffHub. 

 

More advanced functionality is available with SharePoint, Flow (workflow), and PowerApps (simplified application creation.) 

Still have questions? Please contact us at Office365@UChicago.edu.