In April 2017, OneDrive for Business was made available to all Flinders staff. Since this time more than 1,600 staff have accessed OneDrive and over 2.5 million new documents have been added to the service since go-live.

OneDrive makes it simpler to access, share and collaborate with others. However, there are times when staff may need to work together on a collection of documents in a team or project setting.

‘Office 365 Groups’ extends OneDrive by enabling staff to create distinct spaces with a shared group mailbox (accessible via Outlook), OneNote notebook, calendar and document area.

Office 365 Groups provides a shared file storage space that is separate to the OneDrive allocation.

During group creation, groups need to be set to private to prevent accidental sharing of files, however, staff can invite colleagues, students and collaborators who are external to the University (e.g. without a FAN) to join a group via a self-service interface.

Office 365 Groups can be created by any member of staff as an alternative for a shared University drive (V Drive).

It is recommended that staff understand the guidelines for creating and managing groups, including its limitations, before creating a group.

To access Groups, staff should visit https://owa.flinders.edu.au and select ‘+’ to create a group or view the list of groups (for which you are a member) on the left-hand side of the screen.

Office 365 groups can also be accessed directly on mobile for Apple and Android.

Staff are encouraged to find out more about how to use Office 365 Groups and its benefits by visiting the support website.