Collaboration tools can make work easier, save time and keep you connected with your colleagues across campus. Learn about the various team tools that are available to help you communicate and collaborate more effectively! Faculty and staff can refer to additional IT resources by going to oit.uci.edu/faculty.
To download the presentation given at TechnoExpo, please click here.
Communication
Note: Faculty/Staff will need to have an O365 account in order to use this service. To see if your department has the appropriate license, contact your department's Computing Support Coordinator or send an email to oit@uci.edu and we can verify the information for you.
Exchange Distribution Lists (DL) are included in the Microsoft Office 365 Suite and are centrally managed by OIT. Contact Groups can be created & managed by Office 365 users without OIT’s assistance.
Features:
- Faculty & Staff can use DLs to communicate with colleagues in their department who use Office 365.
- Users can create their own Contact Groups with email addresses of others in their department or other depts.
- DL admins can email oit@uci.edu to add or remove any group members.
Request for services:
- To request for a Distribution List, send an email to oit@uci.edu. In the email, provide the requested email address and members in the group.
- To create a Contact Group, refer to Microsoft's help documentation on how to create a contact group.
Note: To make full use of Google Groups, each participant must have a UCI Google account. To get an account, go to oit.uci.edu/help/google and follow the instructions under "Getting Started."
Google Groups is included in UCI G Suite. Google Groups allows you to create and participate in online forums and email-based groups with a rich experience for community conversations.
Features:
- List admins can easily manage group membership.
- Emails should only be sent to individuals with UCI Gmail accounts who voluntarily provided you their email addresses. Do not use Google Groups to send unsolicited email to campus users.
- Group members can participate in online forums or search for other UCI groups to join.
- Group posts can be read through email, an online interface, or both.
- Share files & folders on Google Drive with your entire Google Group (instead of sharing files with each member individually)
Request for service:
Go to oit.uci.edu/mailing-lists/google-groups/ and select "Request a Google Group." Once you have created the Google Group, please refer to Google's Help documentation on how to use Google Group.
The Mailman service can be used by faculty & staff to create email discussion groups (aka listservs) or to send announcement emails to the subscriber base. Each mailing list is given a unique web page that allows users to subscribe, unsubscribe, and change their account options.
Features:
- List administrators can manage their membership subscriptions through an online portal.
- Self-service tool makes it easy for users to manage their own membership.
- Great for sending mass emails to UCI faculty, staff, and students, regardless of which email service they use (unlike Google Groups which limits membership to other Google users).
- Emails should only be sent to individuals who voluntarily provided you their email addresses. Do not use Mailman to send unsolicited email.
- Lots of additional how-tos can be found on the main Mailman page.
Request for Service:
Go to oit.uci.edu/mailing-lists/mailman/ and select "Request a Mailman List."
The ZotMail is best used to transmit authorized business messages to specific groups of employees & students. This web-based messaging system enables authorized senders in the offices of the Chancellor, Provost, Vice Chancellors, and Deans to send messages using a password-protected interface.
Features:
- ZotMail authorized senders can send email to all staff in their department or across campus.
- All UCI affiliates can manage their own ZotMail subscriptions.
- New employees/affiliates are automatically added to the ZotMail system.
Request for service:
Only authorized senders can send Zotmails.
- To add an authorized sender for Zotmail, you must first be granted direct authorization from the account owner. This is typically your department’s Dean or Vice Chancellor. The email authorization must be sent to oit@uci.edu with Zotmail in the subject line. See the Zotmail FAQ for additional information.
Collaboration
Note: Faculty/Staff will need to have an O365 account in order to use this service. To see if your department has the appropriate license, contact your department's Computing Support Coordinator or send an email to oit@uci.edu and we can verify the information for you.
OneDrive is a file hosting, collaboration, and synchronization service operated by Microsoft and is part of the UCI Office 365 ProPlus license. For UCI staff and faculty, OneDrive comes with a generous 1TB of storage space.
Features:
- 1 TB of OneDrive storage (can be increased to 5TB; simply email oit@uci.edu to request a quota increase for OneDrive).
- Easily access your files from anywhere, including your iOS and Android devices
- Use the web versions of Office from any web browser (or download the mobile apps)
- Upload and store any kind of file on OneDrive.
- When you install Office 2016, Office 2019, or Office 365, then OneDrive will also be installed.
- Files are private by default, but you can share files with anyone with an Office 365/Exchange account, a personal Microsoft account, or even a Gmail account.
- Files are encrypted using SSL.
- Easily save attachments from Outlook to OneDrive.
- Powerful search options
- Upload Photos to OneDrive
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software built into the OneDrive mobile app so you can scan docs & receipts!
- Integrated with Microsoft Outlook to facilitate the sending & sharing of files. This way, your recipients can collaborate on it in real time. Note: The attachment size limit for OneDrive files is 2GB.
- At the top of a new email message or calendar event, select
> Attach File. - Choose the file or folder you want to share from the list of recent items.
- Select Share link.
- Select the pulldown menu next to the attachment and select Change permissions
- Choose if people can edit the file or only view it. .
- In addition, you can learn how to easily attach files that reside on your computer or another cloud storage service like Google.
- At the top of a new email message or calendar event, select
- Share a document with your colleagues directly from Excel, Word, or PowerPoint without having to open Outlook. When you share your document with others and give them permission to edit, everyone's changes are made in the same document.
- In the top right corner, above the ribbon, click Share.
- Save your document in OneDrive, if it's not already there.
- Enter email addresses of the people you want to share with, and make choices for permission you want to allow.
- Type a message if you want, and click Send. The people you're sharing with will get mail from you, with a link to your document. You can learn more about this new collaborative service here.
- Collaborate on Office documents with real-time co-authoring, When someone shares a Word document with you, the email you receive includes a link that opens the document in your web browser.
- In Word Online:
- Select Edit Document > Edit in Browser.
- If anyone else is working on the document, you'll see their presence and the changes they're making. We call this coauthoring, or real-time collaboration.
- From here, if you'd rather work in your Word app, select Edit in Word, near the top of the window.
- Learn more about this service here & here.
- Want a guided tour? Download this Collaborate in Word learning guide, or type Collaborate in the search box in File > New in Word (works best in versions 2016 and later for Windows).
- Want a guided tour? Download this Collaborate in Word learning guide, or type Collaborate in the search box in File > New in Word (works best in versions 2016 and later for Windows).
- Select Edit Document > Edit in Browser.
- In the desktop version of Word:
- In the upper right corner, if anyone else is working on the document, you'll see their presence and the changes they're making.
- Select their name and click Join Group Chat if you'd like to discuss the changes.
- In Word Online:
- Collaborate with Comments in Office 365: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/collaborate-with-comments-in-office-365-32865e98-1fbd-4d69-9a16-28e877873271
- AutoSave is a new feature available in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint that saves your file automatically, every few seconds, as you work. AutoSave is enabled by default in Office 365 when a file is stored on OneDrive. You can learn more about the feature here.
- Version History allows you to restore a previous version of an Excel, Word, or PowerPoint file. Simply open the file to work with, click File > Info > Version history, and in the Version history pane, select a version to open and view it in a separate window. You can use this feature in Office 365, Office 2016 & 2019, and Outlook on the Web. You can learn more about this feature here.
To use service:
- To use OneDrive, simply by logging into UCI Office 365 and selecting the 'dialpad' icon in the upper-left corner to see the full list of Office 365 web applications. Select "OneDrive" to access the application. If you have Onedrive installed on your computer. you can use that instead.
- Please note that DSS-supported clients can request Onedrive to be installed, if it isn't already installed on their machines. Please send an email to oit@uci.edu and ask us to install OneDrive on your machine.
- To learn more about OneDrive, Microsoft has excellent training materials on their website.
Note: Faculty/Staff will need to have an O365 account in order to use these services. To see if your department has the appropriate license, contact your department's Computing Support Coordinator or send an email to oit@uci.edu and we can verify the information for you.
Features:
- Microsoft Teams allows users to send direct or group messages with up to 250 people.
- You can start & name your Group Chats in Teams. Simply select New chat
at the top of Teams, select the down arrow to the far right of the To field and type a name for the chat in the Group name field. Then, type the names of the people you’d like to add in the To field. Learn more by reading this article.
- You can start & name your Group Chats in Teams. Simply select New chat
- Conference call with audio-only or video.
- Click Calendar
on the left side of the Teams app, then select the meeting. To join a meeting with video, select the Join button.
- Click Calendar
- Easily schedule meetings from Outlook or Teams. When it's time for the meeting, you'll receive a popup notification where you can select a Join Online button to start the meeting (or join a meeting in progress).
- Meet Now feature allows you to start an audio or video call with another Teams user as well as join an existing meeting.
- Start a meeting.
- To start a meeting, do one of the following:
- Select
in a new conversation. - Select in an existing conversation to keep all that conversation’s context.
- In your video preview, enter a name for the meeting, and select Meet now.
- Select the names of the team members you want to invite to the meeting.
- Select
- To start a meeting, do one of the following:
- Join a meeting.
- Look for the meeting notification icon in a conversation to find a meeting.
- Select Jump In to participate in the meeting.
- Look for the meeting notification icon
- Start a meeting.
- Collaborate on files with other Teams users or with a group! Just upload the file to the chat window and everyone in the chat can view the file and start collaborating. Learn more on this page.
- Allows for screen sharing.
- Teams:
- To share your screen in a meeting, select Share in your meeting controls. Then, choose to present your entire desktop, a window, a PowerPoint file, or a whiteboard.
- Skype for Business:
- At the bottom of the conversation window, click the Present (monitor) button.
- Choose one of the following:
- To share the content on your desktop, click Present Desktop.
- Important: When sharing your desktop, everyone in the meeting can see your programs, files, and notifications. If you have confidential information or files that you don’t want people to see, close them or use Present Programs instead.
- To share one or more programs or files, click Present Programs, and then select the specific program or file.
- To share the content on your desktop, click Present Desktop.
- On the sharing toolbar, on top of the screen, use either of these options:
- To share control of your desktop or program with the participants, click the Give Control button in the small toolbar at the top.
- Click the pin to hide the toolbar and have more space. To unhide the toolbar, move your mouse to the top of the screen. When the sharing toolbar appears, use any of the controls you need or click the pin again to keep the toolbar visible.
- Teams:
- Microsoft Teams: Outlook integration allows you to schedule, start, or join an existing Teams meeting.
- With Teams, you can create integrations with other cloud storage services, like Google Drive. Visit this page to learn more.
- Note: Skype for Business end of life date is 2021. OIT will work with departments to migrate them from SfB to Teams.
To use service:
- To use Skype for Business, simply by logging into UCI Office 365 and selecting the Skype (S) icon in the upper-right corner to start chatting to your colleagues.
- If you don't see Teams, look under the All Apps option.
- To learn about Microsoft Teams, go to oit.uci.edu/microsoft-teams.
Note: To order to use UCI Google Drive, you must have a UCI Google account. To request for a UCI Google Apps account, go to oit.uci.edu/help/google and follow the instructions under "Getting Started."
Google Drive is included in UCI G Suite. Share documents and files, build out spreadsheets and make a presentation with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides apps. There is unlimited storage for UCI Google Apps.
Features:
- Includes Shared Drives (formerly Team Drives), which is best for sharing files with a group. Ownership of all files is shared with all members of the Shared Drive, instead of just one individual.
- Leverage your Google Group to easily share files & folders with everyone who belongs to the group.
- Access your files from anywhere, including your iOS and Android devices.
- Overview: https://www.google.com/drive/using-drive/
- Unlimited Storage: https://drive.google.com/settings/storage
- Single file size limit is 5TB
- You can upload and store any kind of file on Google Drive
- Install Google Drive File Stream to access your Google Drive files on your computer
- Files are private by default, but you can share files with anyone with a Gmail account (can be an organization Gmail like UCI Gmail or personal gmail.com accounts)
- Drive is encrypted using SSL
- Easily save attachments from Gmail to Google Drive OR from Outlook to Google Drive (Outlook plugin is installed when you install Google Drive File Stream)
- Powerful search options (using Google’s core technology!)
- Google Photos
- Chromebooks work seamlessly with all of Google’s services
- Huge suite of apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and more
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software built into the Google Drive mobile app so you can scan docs & receipts!
- Working Offline mode (select certain files and folders so you can use them when you have no network)
- See old versions using the Version History feature
- Restore a previous version: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/190843
- Shared Drives Overview: https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9310156?hl=en
- Highly recommended for groups – great way to share files with a group of users and make sure they don’t disappear when someone leaves UCI
- Someone from the group creates the Shared Drive, adds the members, and sets the permissions.
- Collaborate with Comments: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/65129?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
To use service:
- To use Google Drive, go to drive.google.com and sign-in with your UCInetID@uci.edu. Enter your UCI Google Apps password (this could be different from your UCInetID password).
- To learn more about Google Drive, Google has created various training materials on their website.
Note: To order to use UCI Google Chat/Meet, you must have a UCI Google account. To request for a UCI Google Apps account, go to oit.uci.edu/help/google and follow the instructions under "Getting Started."
Google Hangouts Chat & Meet are included in UCI G Suite. There is unlimited storage for UCI Google Apps.
Features:
- Hangouts Chat allows users to send direct or group messages
- Hangouts Meet allows users to setup an audio-only or video conference call with other users; allows for screen sharing as well.
To use service:
- To use Hangouts Chat, go to chat.google.com. To learn more about Hangouts Chat, refer to Google's help documentation of Hangouts Chat.
- To use Hangouts Meet, go to meet.google.com. To learn more about Hangouts Meet, refer to Google's help documentation of Hangouts Meet.
Zoom Education is a video, audio and web conferencing service accessible by the internet (computers, tablets, smartphones) and telephone.
Features:
- Only hosts need a Zoom account. Participants do not need an account to join meetings.
- Hosts can use Zoom for free for up to 40 minutes per group call. Zoom Pro accounts allow for unlimited time.
- 1 to 1 meetings are unlimited.
- Have a meeting with up to 300 people at once!
- Easily share your screen (you can also request control from the meeting host).
- Click the Share Screen button located in your meeting controls.
- Select the screen you want to share. You can also choose an individual application that is already open on your computer, the desktop, a whiteboard, or an iPhone/iPad.
- (Optional) Enable these features:
- Check Share Computer Sound: If you check this option, any sound played by your computer will be shared in the meeting.
- Check Optimize for full screen video clip: Check this if you will be sharing a video clip in full screen mode. Do not check this otherwise, as it may cause the shared screen to be blurry.
- Click Share (you can also consult this page for more info).
- Easily modify your Meetings settings:
- Login first to https://uci.zoom.us
- Consult this page to learn how to manage your settings.
- Information about Zoom add-on features, such as Zoom Rooms & Zoom Webinars: https://www.oit.uci.edu/telephone/conference/zoom-conferencing-service/
- Zoom Webinar. Webinars allow only hosts and panelists to share audio, video and screens as opposed to meetings where all participants can share these things.
- Zoom Rooms. Software-based collaboration for conference rooms.
- Many departments at UCI have their own contracts with Zoom (which are separate from OIT’s contract). A searchable table of depts can be found on the page above. Zoom is NOT centrally managed by OIT.
- This was done so the depts themselves (and not OIT) can manage their own user accounts & billing, as well as purchase any add-ons like Zoom Rooms & Webinars.
- Support for these services can be obtained by partnering with Zoom.
To use service:
- To use Zoom, go to zoom.us/ and on the upper-right select "Sign-up, it's free."
- Once you have an account, you can follow Zoom's help documentation on getting started.
- If you would like to upgrade to a Zoom Pro account, please check to see who your Zoom point of contact is. If you do not see your department, send an email to oit@uci.edu.
The Webfiles system is used by faculty, staff & graduate students to securely host and share files. These files can easily be shared with other Webfiles users or with the general public by way of a ticketing system. The server is hosted on-campus (it is not cloud-based) and storage capacity is capped at 2GB per user.
Webfiles Deprecation: The Blackboard Xythos product that presently provides the OIT Webfiles file sharing service will reach end-of-life December 2019. The product will no longer be maintained or updated by the vendor. OIT will keep running the current version of Webfiles service until all customers have transitioned to another solution. OIT will be reaching out to customers to help identify alternate solutions. All customers who use Webfiles as a part of their current business service should plan for a transition to a different solution within the next three to six months.