Microsoft Teams, a free collaboration platform for faculty, staff and students, will be the supported for general campus use by the UCCS Office of Information Technology Jan. 14. Departments, classes and offices used the service in a pilot phase during the fall semester.
“Teams allows an easy, low-barrier solution to quickly work with other people across campus on projects, allow for discussion with students outside of class and keep everyone informed,” said Rachel Schlueter, collaboration service owner in OIT. “Teams has already been implemented for classes, events and emergency operations.”
Microsoft Teams is available through a browser or an application downloaded on computers and mobile devices with a UCCS account. The platform integrates with other Office 365 applications available to UCCS users, like OneDrive, OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The system replaces Skype for Business for campus users.
Users can quickly start new chats, add and remove people to group discussions, conduct video conferences and upload commonly-used documents for sharing and editing. A full overview of the features is available on the Microsoft Teams website.
The service can take the place of other collaboration products like Slack, which required a separate username and password, integration setup with other applications and cost for additional features. Teams will be fully supported by the OIT Help Desk and the Faculty Resource Center. The other CU campuses have also started to adopt Teams for their collaboration needs.
An interactive demonstration will be available at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 10 in Centennial Hall 186 and a “Come Ask an Expert” session will be held 9:30-11:30 a.m. Jan. 16 in University Center 124. Registration is not necessary but encouraged.
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