Using Online Office Suites - M365

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)

• Microsoft 
• Google Docs
• Apple iWorks
• OpenOffice

There are more!

The Open Source Community has several products that are available:

• Calligra
• LibreOffice

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.

~ 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

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

Google Documents

Screen recording info:   

Microsoft Office 365

Screen recording info:   

Google Document Quick Sheet