The university renegotiated its licensing agreement with Microsoft earlier this year to provide an expanded set of tools and services to faculty, staff and students.
Under Microsoft’s new streamlined licensing model, U-M will have access to Microsoft 365, an all-in-one service that includes the Microsoft Office 365 suite and potentially other Microsoft applications.
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“Our goal with this project is not to replace our current infrastructure,” said Deborah Gowan, director of application operations for Information and Technology Services. “The recommended collaboration suite for academic campuses is Google and Box and will remain so.”
The Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint academic campuses and Michigan Medicine will have separately managed environments that meet the unique needs of their academic, research and clinical missions. The rollout to the three academic campuses will begin June 28.
As part of the implementation of Microsoft 365, ITS has been assessing the usage of existing Microsoft applications and testing migration processes.
ITS will move all files stored in OneDrive to the new platform and inform those users directly. OneDrive contains the vast majority of data that exists in the current U-M Microsoft environment, including Office files such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
However, due to limitations of Microsoft administrative and reporting functions, ITS is unable to identify users or access the stored data for a handful of other existing Microsoft products, such as Forms.
“Because of these restrictions, we strongly encourage current users of Microsoft products on the academic campuses to visit our project site for a complete list of tools and applications affected by this change, as well as details on user impacts, migration paths and actions needed,” Gowan said.
Health Information Technology and Services is working on a separate implementation effort for Michigan Medicine, including the Medical School, that will guide its adoption of Microsoft products for the next two to three years.
“We are very pleased to partner with our U-M colleagues to renew the Microsoft contract,” said John McPhall, HITS senior director of architecture and operations management. “We’re confident that in the years ahead, our strategic partnership with Microsoft will enable us to provide a wider array of opportunities to integrate, collaborate, and communicate in new, and more powerful ways.”
