In February 2020, we announced that work had started to make SharePoint Online, the cloud-based version of SharePoint, available to members of Oxford University.
Plans for delivering SharePoint Online
The plan for the rollout of SharePoint Online follows:
End of July until Michaelmas term 2020
- We are working with a small group of early adopters who are creating sandpit sites and will help shape best practice for use of SharePoint Online
- We are developing the governance for SharePoint Online, including compliance and retention policies
Michaelmas term 2020
- SharePoint Online will be available for people to create new sites and it will be the responsibility of Site Collection Administrators (SCAs) and site owners to move their sites to the new platform
- Online training will be available for technical owners and site owners, with a video for general users
- A separate Committee solution will be delivered
Why are we moving to SharePoint Online?
The original drivers for this project - to decommission the hardware for on-premise SharePoint and WebLearn in 2020 - have been postponed. The main driver now is that on-premise SharePoint goes out of support in April 2023, which is when users must stop using it. However, we encourage you to move to SharePoint Online well before this deadline.
Next steps and further information
One of the things we are encouraging site owners to do now is to review and tidy up your sites so that only relevant materials are carried over to new sites on SharePoint Online. The Focus team has carried out a 5S initiative, a system for organising workspaces, on their SharePoint site and has produced some advice and suggestions for doing this on other sites.
You can find out more about the SharePoint Online project webpage, where you will also find frequently asked questions (FAQ).
You might like to join the Nexus User Group (NUG) on Teams (use code: LNJVOFR) for the latest news as well as hints and tips for using Nexus365 tools, including SharePoint.
If you have questions about SharePoint Online, please contact the SharePoint Online project team.
