Using Online Office Suites

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Thomas McClain

Objectives

provide overview of traditional office suites
identify which office suites participants have at their disposal
correlate application to cloud service
identify the key reasons for online office systems

Background: the Elephant in the Room

Baseline: key applications included in a traditional office suites

Word Processing (WP)
Spreadsheet (SS)
Presentation (PT)
Database (DB)

~ Task 1 - consider the types of information you might use with each of the application types

The Big 3 + 1 Office Suites (3 Commercial + 1 Open Source)

There are more!

The Open Source Community has several products that are available:

Commercial

Corel Office

~ Task 2 - Identify what Office Suites you have at you disposal

Get off my Cloud

One more background concept each of the Big 3 have a service that provides storage on the Internet, affectionately known as a "Cloud." The concept of "Cloud Computing" is the enabler for Office Suites to move from your desktop to the Internet.

Before we discuss the fundamental elements of online office suites, lets take a moment to present all the concepts in one place.

Unraveling the Matrix

The correlation between "clouds," office suite applications, and providers.

	WP	SS	PT	DB	Cloud
Microsoft	Word	Excel	PowerPoint	Access	OneDrive
Google	Docs	Sheets	Slides	Sheets/Fusion Tables	Google Drive
Apple	Pages	Numbers	Keynote	FileMaker	iCloud
OpenOffice	Writer	Calc	Impress	Base	N/A

~ Task 3 - Print out the matrix and circle the items you currently use

Key Features of Online Office Suites

Agents of Change

Geographically dispersed workforce utilizing a myriad of devices and platforms
Collaboration (real time editing)

Despite the different appearances (user interfaces), the online office share a common feature set support their ability to be be Agents of Change.

Feature set

Sharing
Version Control
Commenting
On/off-line features
Desktop application functionality via a web browser

Rules of Engagement

There are several "rules" of access level controls (ACLs) associated with sharing documents. The "rules" are broken down into separate entities: "audiences," "roles," and "permissions."

Audiences

Audiences let you define the "who" the roles and permissions will be assigned. Audiences include:

Everyone
Any one with a link to you document
Everyone within your domain and directory (e.g. in www.tiu11.org, tiu11.org is the domain)
Groups
Individuals

Roles and Permissions

	Permissions
*Roles*	Assign	Create	Read	Update	Delete	Add Comments
*Owner*	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
*Editor*	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
*Viewer*	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes
Commenter	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes

The next module with provide an overview of Google Apps for Education and also Microsoft Office 365.

Google Documents

Screen recording info:

Recording Tool	Screenflow
Web browser	Google Chrome
Actions highlighted	* navigate to online site * create a sample folder (directory) * create a new document * enter sample text "Coffee Coffee Coffee" * share the document
Link to View	Click to View Video

Microsoft Office 365