What is Microsoft Office 365?

Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based service that embodies familiar Office 365 apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and combines them with powerful collaboration services like OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Stream. 

Microsoft Office 365 is available to all current students, staff, and faculty and is now a fully supported service.

Take a look at our Office 365 FAQ and Office 365 Quick Start Guide to get started.

What's included?

With your UVic Microsoft Office 365 account, you will have access to these applications:

Teams

Microsoft Teams is a chat-based collaborative workspace that brings together people, content, and conversations. With Teams, channels of colleagues or classmates can create content while collaborating with one another at the same time. Users can share files through Teams both internally and externally, and access their team files from the teams’ shared storage.

Teams’ powerful chat feature means that colleagues and classmates across the University can instantly communicate with one another through instant messaging and audio/video conferencing. Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are connected to Teams, similar to Slack. There are also mobile, desktop, and online versions of Teams.

Please see our Teams FAQ pageGetting Started guide, and Teams Quick Guide for more information.

OneDrive

With your OneDrive account, you can securely store all of your personal files in one place, easily share them with your colleagues and access them from any device. With OneDrive, you no longer need to email documents to yourself or save them to a USB key because all of your files are accessible anywhere. Please abide by UVic record management policies when using OneDrive. OneDrive is not a replacement for your department’s shared drive.

You can store and share up to 1 TB with OneDrive while creating, collaborating on, and editing Office 365 documents. With OneDrive, you can also:

  • Control the sharing rights on your documents and access files remotely.
  • Better collaborate with colleagues by editing and sending changes to OneDrive email attachments in real-time. There is no need to collate multiple recipients’ edits and comments.
  • Keep track of document comments and edits in one place, not across multiple copies of a document.

Please see our OneDrive FAQ page and our Quick Guide for more information.

Planner

Microsoft Planner is a simple way to organize teamwork and manage tasks.  With Planner, you can bring teams, tasks, documents, and conversations together in one place. Use Planner to create a project plan, assign tasks to a team of individuals, and update the status of your tasks.

In Planner, each project can be organized visually with a plan board. Using the board, you can organize tasks into buckets, categorize tasks based on their status, and easily drag and drop tasks between columns.

Please see our Planner page for more information.

Stream

Microsoft Stream is a secure video service that allows you to share recordings of classes, meetings, presentations, training sessions, and related videos. It also works well with other Office 365 apps like Teams, OneNote, and Forms. With Stream, users can access their videos on multiple devices from any location and deliver both live and on-demand videos to curated audiences.

Stream also offers a number of features that will help you create and deliver engaging communications, meetings, training, and education. These features include:

  • Speech to text and auto-generated closed captions.
  • Flexible permission settings that allow users to share videos with specific groups, channels, and people.
  • Custom video libraries that can be organized by audience and topic.
  • Video commenting and time code tags to refer colleagues, students, or instructors to specific parts of videos.

Please see our Stream FAQ page and Quick Start Guide for more information.

Forms

With the Microsoft Forms tool, you can create surveys, polls, and formative quizzes – and easily see results as they come in. When you create a survey or form, you can invite others to respond to it using any web browser, even on mobile devices. As results are submitted, you can use the light-weight, built-in analytics to evaluate responses. Form data can be easily exported to Excel for additional analysis.

The Microsoft Forms tool provides basic functionality for forms and surveys. It offers time-saving and efficient features, including:

  • Re-usable template forms.
  • The option to add pictures and videos to your survey.
  • Collaborative design that allows you to co-edit forms with colleagues.

Data collected via the Forms tool is safe and secure as part of the Office 365 environment. Since the Forms tool is relatively simplistic in functionality, we recommend using alternatives for complex research activities. Forms should not be used to conduct high-stakes educational activities such as course evaluation and summative assessments.

See Microsoft’s Quick Start Guide for Forms.

If you have concerns or questions about using the Forms tool, please contact helpdesk@uvic.ca.

Additional apps

University of Victoria community members will also have access to these additional products. Click on the links to view the Microsoft quick guides.

How to login:

Login to portal.office.com with your UVic NetLink ID credentials.

Please note that you will need to enter in your NetLinkID@uvic.ca, not just your NetLinkID.

Microsoft Office 365 FAQ

How do I get a UVic Office 365 account?

All UVic students, faculty, and staff have a UVic Microsoft Office 365 account- no additional sign-up necessary!

UVic affiliates must manually sign up for UVic Office 365 by logging in with your UVic NetLink ID to onlineservices.uvic.ca.

Once you have signed up, login to portal.office.com with your UVic NetLink ID credentials. Please note that you will need to enter in your NetLinkID@uvic.ca, and not just your NetLink ID.

What Microsoft services will I get with my UVic Microsoft Office 365 account?

With your UVic Microsoft 365 account, you will have access to Teams, OneDrive, Planner, Forms, Stream, and other familiar Microsoft services including Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. As a current student, faculty, or staff, you will also be able to install the Office apps to your device.

Can I download the Office 365 desktop applications?

Current students, faculty, and staff are able to download the desktop versions of the Office 365 applications. To do this, login with your UVic Microsoft 365 account to portal.office.com and click the “Install Office” button at the top-right of your screen. See Microsoft’s documentation on downloading Microsoft 365 for more information.

The default Microsoft 365 license for emeritus and affiliates does not include the use of desktop applications.  Emeritus and affiliates are still able to use the Microsoft 365 web apps. 

How long will I have access to my Office 365 account?

While you are a UVic community member with an active NetLink ID you will have access. You will lose access to your UVic Office 365 account when you leave the university. However, Microsoft lets you sign up for a free Office 365 account that includes OneDrive and apps. You will lose your UVic account, but you can create an account for free to put all your files in.

I’m a student. What happens to my Office 365 account after I graduate?

You will lose access to your Office 365 account when you are no longer a current student. You should move all your files to a different Microsoft Office 365 account before the end of your last semester.

What happens to my Office 365 account when I leave or retire from the university?

You will need to save your files to a new location before you leave or retire from the university.

Can faculty emeritus have a UVic Office 365 account?

Faculty emeritus are eligible for all Microsoft web apps that are included in the UVic Microsoft 365 account. The default Microsoft 365 license for emeritus does not include the use of desktop applications.

Is Office 365 accessible?

Microsoft designed Office 365 features with built‑in accessibility to support people with different abilities. Visit the Microsoft – Office 365 Accessibility webpage for more information.

Are my files and conversations in Office 365 secure?

Office 365 is part of Microsoft’s hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud, which delivers advanced security and compliance capabilities. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Files and notes are backed by Microsoft encryption. You can read more about security and compliance in Microsoft’s documentation found here.

Remember to abide by UVic record management policies, including IM 7200, IM 7700, and IM 7800 while using Microsoft 365 applications. Use UVic email for formal conversation and decisions, do not share confidential information, and consult with your supervisor about your department’s data storage strategy.

Are my files in Office 365 FIPPA compliant?

All data is stored in Canada, however, some automated processing, including spell check and transcription, may occur outside of Canada.  You can read more about privacy in Microsoft’s documentation found here.

Why can’t I add applications such as github or Pinterest to my Office 365 account?

For privacy and security reasons, you can only add apps that have been whitelisted by University Systems. Please send app inquiries to helpdesk@uvic.ca.

How do I request a feature or app?

For UVic-specific Microsoft 365 features and apps, please post in the ‘Teams features and app requests’ channel of the Teams Support team.

For Microsoft-specific features, please feel free to post a new idea or vote for an existing idea on Microsoft’s feedback and suggestions site: https://office365.uservoice.com/

Is there a place to see which features Microsoft is planning to implement?

Yes! Take a look at the Microsoft 365 roadmap to see planned updates to Microsoft 365.