What exactly IS Microsoft Office 365 for Education?

• • It is a subscription to suite of Microsoft applications which are hosted by Microsoft (in the cloud) and accessible online from anywhere with Internet access. 
    These applications include:

    Email (Outlook), Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, Skype for Business, Yammer, Delve, Sway (and more – Microsoft continues to update these as time goes on)

    Although individuals and business can purchase a subscription to Office 365, staff and students are covered by the College’s annual Education subscription which entitles all current staff and students to download full versions of these application for use on up to 5 personal devices.

• These applications are covered under a separate College license, so they should not be downloaded to any computer that already has a valid licensed copy of these applications (we use a separate license for all Student/Lab and Staff computers at the College). If anyone purchased previous versions of Microsoft Office (through the Home Use Program – $11.00) they would need to uninstall that version before installing the new versions on their home computer/device under this license agreement with Microsoft.

What is the difference between Office 365 (that came with my new PC/Tablet) and Office 365 for Education?

• • Although they sound the same, they are two different places to store your online documents, emails, etc.

    “Office 365 for Education” uses your work/school identity and you use your regular Holland College username/password.

    “Office 365” is sometimes purchased/included with a new computer and it uses your home/personal identity (account) – perhaps a hotmail, gmail, or Windows Live account.

    The cloud storage is called “One Drive” (versus “One Drive for Business” which Microsoft calls your work/school cloud storage)

• It can be confusing if you have a personal “OneDrive” or “Skype” account, and then come to the College and use “OneDrive for Business or “Skype for Business” … Although they sound the same, your personal accounts are totally separate from your College accounts – you log in using 2 different usernames/email addresses so they are completely different accounts.

  The following is a great explanation of the difference between “One Drive Personal” and “One Drive for Business”and the same idea follows for Skype for Business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frfVDc8BzIw

Who has access to Microsoft Office 365 for Education?

• • Any staff or student who has a valid username and password to the College network, automatically has access to all the applications available in Microsoft Office 365 for Education.

• However, students use Office 365 email and calendars while staff use Exchange 2013 email and calendars which are hosted on servers at Holland College. While this is relatively seamless between staff and students, some calendar/folder sharing features are not available between Office 365 and our hosted Exchange 2013. Consequently, we hope to have all staff and students in a single email/calendar solution (Office 365) by the fall of 2017.

How do I access Microsoft Office 365

• • Just use a web browser to open the link https://portal.hollandcollege.com

• While IE 11 (Internet Explorer) is the best browser to use in order to access all of the Office 365 features, other browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari also work. They just may not work as seamlessly.

Is it safe to use Microsoft OneDrive for Business?

• It is safe to use OneDrive, but we recommend that NO confidential or sensitive documents be stored in the cloud.

  Although documents stored in OneDrive are actually as secure (perhaps more) than anything you store on your F:\> Drive or H:\> ( and definitely your C:\> Drive) – the risk is in the way phones/tablets/PC’s can be setup to automatically “sync” to the cloud. Often things are happening that you aren’t entirely aware of – and it can be a little too easy to accidentally share or provide access via these devices. The OneDrive location is as secure as the password you use to log in (i.e. 12345 isn’t a good password).

  One Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox all have the same inherent issues and since we are totally a Microsoft shop here at Holland College, One Drive is by far the best solution for work documents. You don’t have to create/remember a separate user account and password – and when you change your password at work, One Drive access changes along with it. You can download and use a “One Drive client” which is used in the sync’ing process, but we don’t recommend that as it writes a copy to your local Drive C:\> before it sync’s it to the cloud (One Drive). If someone got access to your local C:\> Drive, they could possibly see the files you are sync’ing to the cloud.

Should I “sync” my phone or computer with Microsoft OneDrive for Business?

• We generally do not recommend that you sync your smartphone or computer to OneDrive for Business – especially if you use different computers from day to day. Each time you log into a computer, Microsoft may want to sync files “from” the cloud down to that computer you are using. Besides taking time, you may have more data in your online OneDrive than you have space on your local PC – and you can fill up your local hard drive before you even get totally sync’d. It may not be so bad in the other direction (sync’ing your computer/phone up to OneDrive in the cloud – but people forget that sync’ing goes both directions and can cause performance and security issues.