Staff and students will shortly be able to benefit from increased communication and collaboration options thanks to the Office365 project!

Recently, Murdoch University upgraded its Microsoft Office applications to be in line with Microsoft best practice. This includes the upgrading of all Staff computers to Microsoft Office 2016 applications and Outlook online.

Did you know…? Staff can install a copy of Office 2016 applications on up to five of their personal computers or mobile devices. Click here to find out more!

As part of this best-practice upgrade, in December, our students will have their mailboxes transitioned to sit within the same ‘tenant’ (house) as our staff.

Students/staff will not be able to see each other’s email addresses/details via the Murdoch University address book; however, if staff choose to, they will be able to collaborate with Students via Yammer or Skype for Business.

• Skype for Business will require the staff member to initiate the conversation with the student. As students cannot initiate conversations with staff members, until after they have been invited to connect by the staff member. Remember, this tool enables you to have instant message chat, video calls, voice calls and share your computer screen, so is a great way to support ad-hoc learning activities!

• Yammer is our Murdoch University-wide ‘social – interaction’ hub, where staff and students can form private group discussions, or take part in University-wide conversations. This Yammer site was previously only for staff members, though as of Sunday, 10 December both staff and students can collaborate here.

These two communication and collaboration tools are the Universities latest step towards greater staff and student collaboration. Further products will be released in the New Year.

• Further information about the Student transition can be found here.

If you have any questions or queries related to this change or would like further information on the Office products/applications, please refer to the Office365 Moodle site or contact the Office365 project team.