Optimizing Your University of Miami Experience with Outlook and Microsoft 365

The University of Miami provides its students, faculty, and staff with a comprehensive suite of IT tools and services to enhance their academic and professional lives. Microsoft 365, with Outlook as a central component, plays a vital role in communication, collaboration, and productivity. This article explores the various features and updates related to Outlook and Microsoft 365 at the University of Miami, aiming to help users optimize their experience.

Accessing Essential Software and IT Resources

To begin your academic year on the right foot, it's essential to familiarize yourself with the IT resources available at the University of Miami. These resources include software like Adobe Creative Cloud and Office 365, accessible through miami.edu/software.

Adobe Creative Cloud (CC): Provides access to industry-standard creative applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Dreamweaver, Muse, Lightroom, and Acrobat Pro.
Office 365 (O365): Includes core Office programs like Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Word, essential for academic and professional tasks.

Other essential IT resources include:

CaneID: Your unique identifier within University systems, used for various purposes. You can manage your password at caneid.miami.edu.
CaneLink: The University's Student Information System (SIS) for searching classes, viewing course schedules, class rosters, and advisees.
Blackboard and Canvas: The University's active learning management systems (LMS).
UPrint: A wireless and networked printing solution promoting responsible printing and copying.
Zoom: A video conferencing tool for meetings with peers across the campus or around the world.
Wi-Fi Calling: Enhances cellular service on campus by allowing calls over Wi-Fi networks.

Mastering Outlook Mobile for Enhanced Productivity

Outlook Mobile offers a range of features designed to enhance productivity and communication on the go.

Calendar Management on the Go

Sharing Calendars: Share your work or personal calendar with Outlook Mobile to allow others to view or edit events. You can also view a coworker's calendar to quickly see their availability. Sync your Office 365 shared calendars to your mobile phone for any permission level (view, edit, or delegate permissions). Share a calendar or accept shared calendar invitations from Outlook mobile.
Managing Meetings: Respond to RSVPs, or create and edit meetings and events directly from your mobile device.
Time Zone Support: Designate a different time zone when scheduling a new event in Outlook for iOS and Android.

Efficient Email Management

Swipe Actions: Set up swipe actions to schedule non-urgent messages to reappear in your inbox when it is convenient for you-today, tomorrow, or next week.
Up Next Feature: Outlook will begin surfacing information about what’s Up Next in your calendar to the top of your Inbox, 30 minutes before the start of the event.
Suggested Replies: Similar to suggested replies in Outlook for Android and Outlook on the web, end users will see a message at the bottom of the inbox screen once they receive the app update with this feature. Tap the message to launch the on-boarding process.

File Access and Collaboration

Offline File Access: The Teams mobile app now allows you to access files even when you are offline or in bad network conditions. Simply select the files you need access to, and Teams will keep a downloaded version to use in your mobile app.
Attachment Options: Users in tenants with OneDrive enabled will see new options in the attachment previewer for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. This release will enable users to better collaborate by expanding how attachments look (icons have been added to menu) and what users can do with them. The hover over menu has been replaced with a single, always present click target for all actions. Users can access Preview, Edit in Browser, Edit in Word desktop app, Save to OneDrive and Download. Clicking Edit in Browser or Edit in Word desktop app, saves a copy of the file to OneDrive and opens it in the corresponding web or desktop app.

Delegate Management

Adding and Removing Delegates: Add and remove delegates from within Outlook for iOS and Outlook for Android. With this update, users can manage delegates from within their Outlook mobile app.

Addressing Potential Issues

iOS 13 Location Restrictions: Apple introduced a change in iOS 13 that restricts Outlook for iOS and other apps from using the device location in the background. As a result, Time To Leave notifications from Outlook will no longer be reliable.
Older iOS Versions: Older clients lack the ability to connect using Microsoft Sync Technology, which is now required for Office 365 and Outlook.com accounts. To fix this problem, users will need to update their devices to iOS 11 or higher.

Unlocking the Power of Outlook on the Web

Outlook on the web offers a range of features designed to enhance productivity and collaboration.

Read also: Comprehensive Guide to UCF Email

New Features and Updates

Org Explorer: The University of Miami's Microsoft 365 subscription is being updated with a new service in Outlook: Org Explorer. Access to Org Explorer depends on which Outlook platform you use. When you select a person in Org Explorer, the page displays org information about them. For example, contact information, who their manager is, people reporting to them, and who they collaborate with.
Spaces: Spaces can be found on Outlook on the web by clicking the sticky note with a push pin icon in the tool tray at the bottom left Outlook on the web screen.
My Day: An icon on the top-right side of the Outlook on the web ribbon, named My Day.
Tasks Integration: Tasks in Outlook on the web are being updated to better reflect the integration between Office 365 products. The name of the Tasks module and the Tasks tab in My Day will be labeled To Do.
Personal Calendar Connection: Connect a personal calendar (Outlook.com or Google Calendar) to your Office 365 and Microsoft 365 accounts. After the connection, you will be able to view and interact with you personal calendars when you are signed in to your work or school account. However, in the case of TeamSnap, you will only be able to view calendar details for TeamSnap events.
Notes Experience: A new experience for the "Notes" folder in Outlook on the web.
RSVP Directly in Message List: RSVP directly in the message list in Outlook on the web. After you click on RSVP, you can accept, decline, or tentatively accept.

Notifications and Alerts

Inbox Capacity Notification: Whenever someone has used 90% or more of their inbox capacity, Outlook on the web will display a notification.

Collaboration and File Sharing

Sharing Cloud Docs: Outlook on the web is updating how you share cloud docs from OneDrive and Sharepoint. Now when you paste a link for a OneDrive or Sharepoint file in a message, it will replace it with the name of the file and the corresponding Office app icon.

Browser Compatibility

Browser Updates: If you see the light version of Outlook, this means you're using an old browser that's incompatible with the Outlook on the web or with Outlook Web App. For the best experience, please update your browser to the latest version.

Enhancing Productivity with Microsoft 365 Tools

Microsoft 365 offers a suite of tools designed to enhance productivity and collaboration.

Microsoft Teams

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as Teams Personal Apps: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (WXP) are now available as Teams Personal Apps.
Power BI Integration: The new Power BI collaborative workspace lets users bundle a collection of dashboards, reports, and paginated reports into an app, which they can then share. With this update, Teams can display this new app in the Power BI tab.

PowerPoint

Live Presentations: Live Presentations for PowerPoint for web, which allows audience members to see slides and a live transcript of the presenter’s spoken words (including live translation) on their devices. A live presentation allows each audience member to follow a presentation on their own device, whether laptop, tablet or phone. They can also choose live subtitles from more than 60 languages, navigate between slides, send real-time reactions and provide feedback to the presenter.
Presenter Coach: Integrated presentation best practices into Presenter Coach to help people give more effective presentations - all through the power of AI. This feature allows people to enter rehearsal mode and while speaking they receive on-screen feedback about pacing, inclusive language, use of filler words like “um” or “uh,” culturally insensitive phrases and, if someone is just reading their slides. At the end of each rehearsal session, the presenter receives a detailed report that highlights additional areas of practice for improvement.

OneNote

Class Notebook Add-in: A new and improved version of the OneNote Class Notebook Add-in. The new version of the Add-in, along with the most recent OneNote build, is expected to significantly improve your users’ OneNote experience.
Attachment Size Limits: Attachments within OneNote are being limited to 50 mb. If users need to insert attachments larger than 50mb, they can choose the option to upload to OneDrive and insert a link to the file. Page distribution sizes are also being limited to 50 mb.
OneNote for Android Updates: Features that have been added to OneNote for Android over the last few months. From more natural inking capabilities to right-to-left language support and search improvements.

Word

Open in Review Mode: When people share documents with Open in review mode only selected, recipients who open the document in Word for the web will be limited to adding comments or leaving tracked changes in the document. People who open the document in the Word desktop app instead of on the web will only be able to view the document.

OneDrive

Files On-Demand (macOS Mojave): For current OneDrive users on macOS Mojave, Files On-Demand is enabled by default. Files On-Demand allows OneDrive users to access all their OneDrive files without having to use storage space on their device.

Key Changes and Important Updates

Microsoft Copilot Access: Expanding Microsoft Copilot access in education. This includes Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise).
Microsoft 365 Storage Changes: On August 1, 2023, Microsoft introduced changes to storage across the Microsoft 365 for Education suite. Beginning February 1, users will receive warning notifications when approaching the storage limit. At 100% capacity, the user's OneDrive will be limited to read-only access.

tags: #outlook #university #of #miami