Microsoft 365 FAQ
When scheduling a Teams "meeting"... what is the difference between "Schedule meeting", "Lecture" and Class"?
According to the user's needs, each feature in the Teams app has a specific function.
"Schedule Meetings" in Teams offer voice, video, and screen sharing for groups of up to 1,000 individuals, as well as view-only options for larger groups. Teams meetings can be joined by anyone, even if they don't belong to an organization or have an account with Teams. They can phone in through audio if it's available, or they can join immediately from the calendar invitation by clicking the Attend meeting link.
"Live event" is an enhancement of Teams meetings that allows users to stream video and meeting content to a large online audience. Live events are designed for one-to-many interactions where the host of the event is facilitating the conversations and audience engagement is mostly centred on viewing the host's shared content.
"Webinars" are planned events with defined roles for speakers and attendees. Webinars support sophisticated registration management, configurable event and registration sites, and event-oriented default meeting choices.
The "Classroom" and "Lecture" options offer defaults when creating a New meeting. See the default for each below.
New meeting Options in Teams
Are there any tools that can help students develop their oral presentation skills?
For courses that seek to develop students' abilities in oral presentation skills, Microsoft users can use the Microsoft Speaker Coach add-in that helps students prepare in private to give more effective presentations. Speaker Coach evaluates the student's pacing, pitch, filler words, etc. After each rehearsal, students get an autogenerated feedback report that includes statistics and suggestions for improvements.
Is there a smart way to retrieve the students' attendance to Teams meetings Or better yet an aggregate report?
The "Insights" tab in Microsoft Teams provides an aggregate digital activity report which tells you how active your students were in Teams within a given time frame.
Export the data to Excel. If the student was active one day, a "V" appears in the cell.
Note: Data on class meeting attendance will take a few hours after the meeting ends to be reflected in the digital activity report. In some cases, the data may take up to 24 hours to appear.
Visit the Digital activity data in Insights website for more information.
How can I create a Shared Mailbox/Distribution List Using Office 365 Groups?
In Microsoft Office 365, you can create a new group to collaborate with your teammates on documents, spreadsheets, project plans, and meetings. You can also create a shared mailbox for a new email address you define, such as announce@UofH.UH.EDU.
PRIVACY WARNING
There are two factors to keep in mind when using Groups, because Microsoft settings cannot be changed.
Your membership list will be public, even in a private list. This could be a problem if you are coordinating a research group, recovery group, assault survivors group, etc., where no one should know who is in the group. When a person has a UH e-mail address, they can see the member list of your group.
Non-list members with UH email addresses can send emails to your group, even if the list is private. This could result in spam, abusive messages, unwanted calendar invitations, or attachments taking up space. Notice that you can block non-UH email addresses from sneidng email to the group.
Microsoft has stated that these flaws are "by design," and they have no plans to fix them.
Use the following instructions to create a Shared Mailbox/Distribution List Using Office 365 Groups
Open a web browser and log into UH MS Outlook Web App with your Cougarnet credentials.
Under your mailboxes, you will see Groups. Click New Group to add a Group.
In the New group dialog:
In the Name field, type in a name for the new group/distribution list. Outlook will then let you know if the name is available. If available, the email address to be created will appear in the Email address field.
We recommend adding a Description so members can see what group they are joining.
If you would like control over the membership of the group, you can leave the Privacy setting set to Private. If you would like UH employees and students to be able to join the group on their own, change the Privacy setting to Public.
You can leave the Language setting unchanged, if the default selection is acceptable.
If you plan to use the Group for email, be sure to check the box at the bottom labeled "Members will receive all group conversations and events in their boxes…etc.”
When you are ready to go, click on the Create button at the bottom of the dialog box.
In the Add members dialog box in the upper right corner of the screen:
Type in the email address of the members of the group and press the Enter key. Continue until all members have been added. Note: You do not need to add all members at once; you can add more later. When you are finished, click on the Add button to create the new group. The Group's home page will appear.
Note: By default, Office 365 groups can receive email from other UH students, faculty and staff but not from external sources. To allow emails from sources outside of the College, please select the Group settings and make sure the box next to "Let people outside the organization email the group" is checked.
When do students get loaded into Canvas and Teams templates for the semester?
Earlier load: Send an email to canvas@uh.edu if you want students loaded earlier than 7 days before the start of the semester.
Limited Changes: Once students are loaded into a Canvas course, changes to the course organization are limited. The course can no longer be combined with or separated from other courses or sections.
For more information, visit the Canvas procedures website
Starting five to seven days before the first day of classes, students are loaded and can access your course. If your course is not ready, you can make it unavailable by unpublishing it.
If you have any customization you’d like done to your class team, send your request to Andy Moon, ajmoon2 @ central. uh. edu.
Student enrollments and drops will be updated in Canvas and Teams based on PeopleSoft data.
Enrollment processing is done twice a day at 5 am and 5 pm. Once a student makes an enrollment change in PeopleSoft, it may take 1-2 days for enrollment changes to appear in Canvas and another day for them to appear to the student in AccessUH.
Students will have access to the course until 10-14 days after the session closes.
How can I bulk-remove MS Group members?
You can remove a large number of members from a group or remove all the students currently listed in Group associated to a class team by using a comma-separated values (CSV) file to bulk remove group members. For more information visit the Bulk remove group members in Azure Active Directory.
How can I request a class Team for my course?
– If you plan to use Blackboard and Teams for your course, login into AccessUH, click on the Course Request System icon, and select "Request a Blackboard/Teams course". If you have never used the CRS, please follow these instructions.
In the “What template would you like to use?” section, you have three request options:
If requesting a Blackboard blank course and Teams:
Select any of the "Starting templates". Note: A Teams course will also be created.If requesting a copy from a previous Blackboard course and Teams:
Select the "Copy from my previous course" radio button, and choose the course you want to copy. Note: A class Team will also be created. If you have any customization you’d like done to your class Team, send your request to Andy Moon, ajmoon2@central.uh.edu.If requesting a or copy from another Blackboard instructor’s course and Teams:
Select the "Copy from another instructor’s course" radio button, a new window will pop up, so you can select an available Blackboard course. Note: A Teams course will also be created.
– If you don’t plan to use Blackboard to teach but will use Teams, select the "Teams Template" from the "Starting templates" drop-down menu. Note: A Blackboard course will also be created with a message redirecting students to use Microsoft Teams.
Notice:
Students are not able to see or interact with courses in Teams until the instructor activates them.
Class teams will have the same name and section as the Blackboard course shell but will be formatted as follows: H_+Year+Semester_+CourseName_+CourseNumber_+Section_+<_MAIN> if combined.
(e.g., H_20213_BIOL_X000_X0000_MAIN)
If a course combination is desired, please make sure to submit it in the CRS as early as possible. It would be best to avoid setting up your team until any desired combinations have been applied in Teams.
This process does not affect the content of a Bb course. Materials stored in a Bb course will not automatically transfer to a Class Team.
It is suggested to wait until you’re ready to respond to student inquiries before activating the class team. Unlike Blackboard, once the team has been activated there isn’t a way to deactivate it – please plan accordingly.
For Instructional Continuity, a class team will be created for all semester classes after ORD.
Please reach out to nsmit@central.uh.edu with any questions.
What is the New Stream Experience?
Coming May 16 th. 2021
On May 16th. 2021, the university will be moving to the new Stream experience where Teams recordings will no longer be automatically uploaded to the Stream platform, but will instead be uploaded to the user's Onedrive (for meetings on a user’s Outlook calendar) or SharePoint (for recordings of meetings in a Teams channel).
Classic Stream will not go away immediately, and so users can continue to use the Stream functionalities that they enjoy, the only caveat is that users will now need to manually upload their videos to Microsoft Stream to enjoy these functionalities.
If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us, refer to the FDIS tutorials, the Microsoft tutorials, or contact the UH Office 365 team at office365@uh.edu.
I’d like to have a TA to help manage and administer the breakout rooms
This functionality is not supported in the current breakout rooms structure, however, the behavior can be substituted by using teams channels as breakout rooms.
How can I record the MS Whiteboard within a Team session?
Altough the MS whiteboards whitinTeams and shared notes are not currently captured in meeting recordings (Click here for information), you can open up MS Whiteboard through O365 or open the Windows MS Whiteboard desktop app to share your Desktop and record the meeting. Follow the steps below to record your whiteboard within your Team session.
Join the scheduled meeting.
Click on More Actions > Start recording.
Open up MS Whiteboard through O365 or open the Windows MS Whiteboard desktop app (click here to download). (Fig. 1 Compares Whiteboard O365 vs Desktop App )
Select the Share screen button in your meeting controls. Then, choose to present your entire Desktop (where the Whiteboard application is open ). This way the recording will capture the Whiteboard activity.
Note: To incorporate a collaborative component in the recording, you can use the Post to Teams option in the Windows MS Whiteboard desktop app to post a link to the board as a message in a selected channel. (Fig. 2 Post Whiteboard to Teams)
At the end of the meeting, click More Actions > Stop recording.
How can I bulk add group members to a MS Class Team ?
Microsoft Teams can use Azure AD groups to help in bulk adding members to a team. Adding members to a team using the method below will COPY the group's membership to the team; it will not create a synchronized relationship between the team and the group. Therefore if the Azure AD group membership changes, the team membership will not change. Please refer to the following tutorial for instructions: Bulk adding group members to an MS Team
How can I Report Suspicious Emails with the Outlook Feature, "Report Suspicious Email"?
Have you received suspicious emails in your inbox? If so, you can report potential spam and phishing messages using the Microsoft's "Report Suspicious Email" tool within Outlook (desktop or online). This feature notifies both Microsoft and the University’s Information Security Office that a suspicious email made it through our security filters. If the message is confirmed to be malicious, Microsoft will add this email to its filters to prevent it from reaching other people, and the UH IT Security team can research and remediate any potential threats. You are always welcome to report any suspicious activity on your computer to security@uh.edu.
For those who read email via the Outlook desktop mail client:
Identify and select the Report Suspicious Email tab located on the upper right-hand corner of Outlook, as shown in Fig. 1. Then confirm your selection.
For those who read email online via Outlook on the Web:
Log in to your Office365/Outlook email at UH access. Within the suspicious message, click the ellipses (…) and select "Report Suspicious Email" from the drop-down menu, as shown in Fig. 2. Finally, select "Report" to confirm your selection.
For more information, please feel free to contact the NSM Information Security Officer (ISO) at: nsmit@central.uh.edu or contact UH IT Security at 832-842-4695 or security@uh.edu.
Fig.1 Report using the Outlook desktop mail client
Fig.2 Report using Outlook on the Web
You can remove a large number of members from a group or remove all the students currently listed in Group associated to a class team by using a comma-separated values (CSV) file to bulk remove group members. For more information visit the Bulk remove group members in Azure Active Directory.
