Luke Loranger |
UP email accounts may no longer be hosted by Gmail next year if the students and faculty currently testing Office 365 enjoy it.
Information Services is exploring a shift from Google Drive to Office 365 to see if the collaboration tools offered in Office 365 would work better for the University. The program will go until early May, when results will start to be compiled.
The idea for using Office 365 came about roughly a year ago, when students, faculty and the provost expressed interest in a set of collaborative tools where documents and presentations could be shared freely. The current system is split between Google Tools for the students and Microsoft Outlook for the staff.
“We really want input from the faculty and students, get them in Office 365 trying it out and see if it would meet their need for collaboration and calendar sharing,” head of technical services Michelle Sunderland said.
A total of 260 students and staff have signed up for Office 365 accounts so far, a process which is open to everyone. Office 365 shares many of the same tools as Google Drive, except for a few key features. Office 365 is FERPA compliant, meaning the data stored cannot be used for advertising purposes, a key security feature that Gmail does not offer. Office 365 also includes one terabyte of storage, while Google Drive has only 15 gigabytes.
Office 365 also has social tools like Yammer, a collaborative utility that can be used to form groups and act essentially like a private social media platform. Another tool is Lync, which allows for video calls and meetings.
A general consensus on whether to move forward on the Office 365 demo across campus will be not be available until May. Two communications interns for Information Services are overseeing and compiling the feedback.
“There has been a range of results so far,” communications intern Mark Roetcisoender said. “You will always have people that really like Google or Microsoft, and there are people who are in the middle. The big benefit of Office 365 is that students and faculty are still on the same system.”
However, not all feedback of Office 365 has been positive.
“The layout and functionality [of Office 365] are very clunky, especially on mobile devices. These same design flaws are apparent in the cloud storage, a service I use a lot on Gmail,” said Jack Greenwood, who is currently studying in Galway, Ireland. UP’s study abroad program in Galway uses Office 365 as their main email program.
Office 365 is available for use by any student or staff member and can be downloaded at https://sites.up.edu/office365/ until early May.
Luke Loranger is a sports reporter for The Beacon. He can be reached at loranger18@up.edu.
