Most employees in roles which do not require near-constant computer use will soon access their Microsoft 365 Office apps exclusively via the web, rather than desktop apps. This change will be effective July 1.
Currently, all employees at Vanderbilt Health, regardless of their job roles, have a Microsoft license that lets them access Office apps, such as Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel, via both their desktops and the web. With the change, only those employees in jobs that require use of these apps throughout most of the workday (such as employees in IT, administration and finance) will have access to the desktop versions of Microsoft 365 Office. All other employees will have access to the web versions of Microsoft 365 Office.
The effort will reduce expensive licensing requirements for more than a third of Vanderbilt’s workforce, resulting in substantial cost savings for the organization.
A few things to expect:
- All employees will be able to access Office apps via both the web and their mobile devices
- The Vanderbilt Health Hub, VUMC’s new intranet, provides easy access to web Office apps
- The Vanderbilt Health Hub is the default home page for all employee web browsers
- Simply click the “waffle” icon on the top left from any page within the Vanderbilt Health Hub to access Office apps. The waffle icon looks like a grid of dots.
- Access to Office apps is also available by visiting https://m365.cloud.microsoft/
- Just as with the desktop versions of these apps, employees can read and send emails, use their Outlook calendars, and create, collaborate, review and edit documents and files on the web
- Employees with web-only Microsoft Office licenses will have access to a OneDrive folder, with up to 2GB of cloud storage
VUMC IT will communicate directly with employees who will be impacted by these licensing changes, as well as their managers. Communications will include education and directions to support and help navigate this change. There will also be instructions on how to request an exception if the employee’s role requires considerable use of Office apps.
Additional detail on this effort can also be found here.
