WashU IT became the first department at WashU to adopt Microsoft 365 (M365) Apps, Washington University’s cloud-based productivity platform. All the latest productivity apps are included in M365, such as Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneDrive.
Microsoft has made a major change to the branding of its Microsoft Office product. Microsoft Office is being renamed “Microsoft 365” to reflect its growing collection of productivity apps. In addition to Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint, Microsoft will now refer to these apps as part of Microsoft 365 rather than Microsoft Office.
This new branding has been in the works for years, following the renaming of Office 365 subscriptions to Microsoft 365 in April 2020, but the changes are now much deeper. “Office.com, Office mobile, and the Office app for Windows will become Microsoft 365 apps, with a new icon, new look, and even more features,” says a Microsoft FAQ.
Office products have been a mainstay of WashU IT for many years. M365 includes everything you know about Office 365. M365 is designed to help people and businesses achieve more with innovative Office apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security.
WashU IT will be the first department to use M365 operationally as WashU, with plans of migrating the rest of the university to the platform throughout 2023 and 2024. To get started, users can find the M365 KB instructions for PC and Mac for building user knowledge of the platform. There are a range of Microsoft training resources available to steadily build your knowledge of M365, including a short video overview from Microsoft and a brief course on LinkedIn Learning to learn more about how to access your M365 account and work with both desktop and browser versions of the apps. To learn about specific applications, search and select the application on the M365 Quick Start Guide.