Office 365 rollout begins for USA Health

In an effort to make group collaboration and communication more efficient and secure, USA Health is installing Office 365 on computers, cell phones and tablets throughout the health system.

Starting at University Hospital, members of the IT department have begun assisting employees in accessing Office 365 applications, including Outlook. “The main change staff will experience is going to a new website to access their email,” said Steve Travers, Ph.D., M.B.A., chief information officer for USA Health.

With Office 365, employees will have access to Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, PowerPoint, Planner, Sway, SharePoint, Forms, Video Stream, To Do and Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is a particularly useful software that promotes business communication by combining video conferencing abilities with HIPAA-compliant messaging, file saving and sharing.

Employees also will be able to install Office 365 applications for PC, Mac, iOS and Android on up to 14 personal devices (four computers, five smartphones and five tablets).

Travers said that USA Health employees can go ahead and use other Office 365 applications while they wait for their email to be converted to the new Outlook app. Employees can visit http://portal.office.com to log in and access those apps.

Starting in February, the IT department will begin conducting webinars on Office 365 using Microsoft Teams meetings, which works similar to Zoom. For more information, look for webinar topics, dates and times on the Employee Hub intranet.