Office 365 is a suite of online programs such as Office (the other tools will be explained further in another section), which is similar to Google Docs. Some of the major benefits include the ability for “live” collaboration within Office (gone are the days of saving multiple versions and emailing them back and forth!), access to all of your files from anywhere using any device (no more cumbersome process for accessing your H-drive files from home), improved e-mail reliability as it is now in the cloud.

Office 365 does not replace your existing Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, rather it is an additional tool set available to you. You can continue to use the desktop/laptop version of Office that you are familiar with using. Only when you want to collaborate on a document will you be required to use the online version. The online version looks and acts very much like the desktop version.

An important feature of Office 365 (O365) is a new and much more feature-rich web version of Outlook email. This version of Outlook on the web will replace the current version if you are using webmail access. Once your account has been migrated to O365 you will need to use the O365 website to login to your email on the web. If you only use the Outlook program installed on your computer, nothing in it will change.

Another important component of O365 is OneDrive (for Business). OneDrive provides you with secure file storage in Microsoft’s “cloud” for all your documents, files, images, etc similar to other popular file storage programs such as Google Drive and Dropbox. Later in the year, IT will discontinue support of the H-drive as OneDrive will be replacing it. The significant benefits are the ability to access your files quickly and easily via the web or OneDrive application on virtually any computer or device with internet connectivity. You can also share your files easily. If you choose to install the application on your home computer or mobile device, please install the Business version. 

You can go to https://login.microsoftonline.com/ or wtps.org and under Staff you’ll find a link to Office 365. We’ll also be pushing out a shortcut to your PC’s desktop. Be sure to check out wtps.org/technology for helpful resources for working with O365. To access O365 from a mobile device, please go to this website for complete directions.

IT will be migrating all staff to Office 365 over course of the next 2-3 months. Because we need to migrate everyone’s email from being stored locally in our data center to Microsoft’s cloud, it is impossible to say exactly how long it will take. You will receive an email approximately 2-3 days before your migration to inform you.

All of your contacts, calendars items, and emails (including folders and folder structure) will be migrated to the new email system for you. The only thing it will not migrate for you are your email rules, Microsoft doesn’t give us the ability to move these for you. If you are using email rules and would like to continue, please click on this link for directions on how to save your rules and how to import them following migration.

Before migration: nothing unless you have email rules setup that you’d like to save. For directions on saving your rules, please click on this link. 

During migration: nothing, you can continue to use email.

After migration: If you use the Outlook program, you will receive an alert that the Administrator has updated your email settings and that Outlook needs to be restarted. Simply close Outlook and reopen. If you have your username and password set to be saved, you’ll need to type them in and click the box to remember them again at login. If you use the website to access email you’ll need to go to the O365 website, https://login.microsoftonline.com/ , instead of the website that you have been using. We have added a link to Office 365 portal under the Staff page of the district website for your convenience. If you forget and accidentally go to the old email website, after trying to login you’ll be directed to the correct page. Lastly, if you are getting your email on a mobile device, those settings will need to be updated, please go to the link for those directions.

The following tools are available inside of the Office 365 platform:

•Word – word processing

•Excel - spreadsheets

•PowerPoint – presentation software

•Mail - e–mail

•Calendar – calendar 

•People- address book/contacts

•Newsfeed

•OneDrive (for Business)- Secure file storage in the Microsoft “cloud” for all your documents, files, images, etc. This will eventually replace your H-drive later in the year.

•Sites- coming soon! This is the new version of SharePoint which offers a significantly improved experience over our current version.

•Tasks – Create tasks and/or see tasks that you have scheduled for yourself in e-mail.

•Delve- With Delve, you don't have to remember the title of a document or where it's stored. Delve shows you documents no matter where they're stored in OneDrive for Business or in Sites in Office 365.

•Video - Is an internal only space for storing and sharing videos.

•OneNote – Microsofts version of the popular Evernote application. This is a online notebook that can be shared. 

•Sway - Is is digital story telling application, use it to create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more.