What is Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 (M365) is another service with a suite of cloud-computing productivity and collaboration software tools offered by the Office of Technology Services (OTS). Among many other apps, M365 includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneDrive, and Teams.
We have organized below the different categories of M365 tools that are currently available to current, active Mies Campus faculty and staff. The M365 environment will be coming soon to Mies Campus current, active students (i.e., enrolled in at least one class). You can learn more about each tool by clicking the applicable link.
Please continue to refer back to this page for the latest information.
M365 Resources
A. Document, Report, and Presentation Creation
Desktop and Mobile Apps
- Word - Create documents with premium templates, fonts, icons, and stickers. Benefit from advanced spelling and grammar features with Microsoft Editor, more than 20 languages, sharing and real-time collaboration, dictation, voice commands, and transcription.
- PowerPoint - Create slide presentations with 3D and imbedded animations, as well as practice your speech and get recommendations with the AI Presenter Coach. The ‘while you were away’ feature tracks recent changes made by others.
- Excel - Create spreadsheets and workbooks with charts and graphs, sparklines, and tables to predict trends.
- OneNote - An organizable notebook that you can divide into sections/ pages. Share ideas and create together, draw your thoughts with a stylus or your finger, record audio notes, and more.
- Sway - Create and share interactive reports, presentations, newsletters, and more. Reduce time formatting with Sway’s built-in design engine to make your creation look its best.
Desktop (PC) Only
- Publisher (PC only) - A desktop publishing application with emphasis on page layout and graphic design rather than text composition and proofreading (Word).
B. Collaboration Tools
- Teams - Share and edit files together in real time with Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Communicate in real-time, ideate with Whiteboard in a Teams meeting without having to share your screen or prepare the Whiteboard ahead of time.
- OneDrive - Create, view, edit and securely share files, including those from Teams, working together in real time with Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
- Yammer - A tool to improve engagement and enhance communication, build communities of interest, gather ideas and feedback, and keep everyone informed.
- Word - Share your documents with anyone and edit them together, adding comments and suggested changes in real time.
- PowerPoint - Create slide presentations with 3D and imbedded animations, ‘while you were away’ feature tracks recent changes made by others.
- Excel - Create spreadsheets and workbooks with charts and graphs, sparklines, and tables to predict trends.
- OneNote - Organizable notebook you can divide into sections, pages, share ideas and create together, draw your thoughts/ideas with a stylus or your finger, record audio notes, and more.
C. Organizing Tools/Productivity Enhancers
- Planner - A collaborative, task-management tool that automatically visualizes task status into pie and bar charts. Create Kanban boards (a project management tool). Planner works well with Teams and has color-coded labels and files.
- Power Automate - A tool to help you build automated processes using low-code, drag-and-drop tools, with pre-built connectors, templates, and AI assistance. Power Automate helps take the guesswork out of what to automate, providing guided recommendations for creating flows and making automations even smarter using AI Builder.
D. Storage
- OneDrive - Create, view, edit, and securely share files, including those from Teams, working together in real time with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. OneDrive has a global user list that is searchable for sharing documents and finding team members. Each active student, faculty, and staff member has 1 TB (1000 GB) of cloud storage in OneDrive.
E. Publishing
- Publisher (PC only) - A desktop publishing application that differs from Word in that the emphasis is placed on page layout and graphic design rather than text composition and proofreading.
Who Manages Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 is supported internally by the Office of Technology Services (OTS) as advised by the university's Desktop Apps Advisory Committee. In addition to our internal support, the university has 24X7 support coverage from Microsoft. Please contact the OTS Support Desk (see across) for any support requests.