Top reasons for choosing Teams

We know other products are available, but Nexus365 (Microsoft) Teams is the University’s approved, preferred, and supported software for conferencing and everyday collaboration at Oxford.

Microsoft releases new functionality regularly and over the summer we have seen a considerable amount of development, including responses to requests suggested by the University.

Teams now rivals other suppliers, and these are the main reasons why we recommend it:

• All staff (and students) at Oxford already have access to Teams for free.
• Ongoing costs associated with Teams are already covered by the
  
  

  University site licence, so there are no additional monthly or annual fees.

• Teams is already set up and ready to go – nothing special (such as purchase orders) is needed in order to use it – and is available through the University’s Single Sign-On.
• Teams is fully integrated with other Nexus service resources such as calendars, notifications, Microsoft Forms for surveys, SharePoint and other apps and features.
• Teams also comes with an embedded online version of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel) allowing you to work collaboratively on documents.
• Teams works with simple ‘app’ integrations – join the Nexus365 User Group and tell us what you’d find useful e.g. we are currently looking at bringing in a better Whiteboard app.  
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  Integration with Canvas allows teaching staff to quickly and easily create a link to a Teams meeting and share it with students. This meeting can be recorded and shared with the students using Panopto.

• Other Oxford colleagues are already using Teams, so it is easy to collaborate on a common platform without buying other products.
• Meetings can accommodate up to 300 attendees which is suitable for most events.
• For larger events/conferences, Teams Live Events can accommodate up to 10,000 attendees – this is also a free resource.
• Large gallery, where you can see up to 49 people at one time is now available, and also comes with ‘Together Mode’ which some people prefer. 
• Teams is easy to use with lots of useful inbuilt features such as screen-sharing, ‘chat’ and ‘put your hand up’, as well as the ability to mute your microphone or turn your camera off easily.  You can also blur or change your background, and change the way you view others.
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  Our IT Learning Centre offers courses and video tutorials to help everyone at Oxford get the most out of Teams. There is also an active Nexus365 User Group which any member of the University can join for advice, information on features, and tips.

• Teams has easy-to-use accessibility features including live captioning.
• Teams has been approved by our information security colleagues and we are confident in its security.

More features that you’ve asked for are coming soon including break-out rooms and improved whiteboards. Updates are regularly posted on our IT Services news pages.