Microsoft 365 (For Staff)

In May 2014, the staff email system was upgraded to Microsoft 365 (hereafter referred to as M365), a cloud-based messaging solution provided by Microsoft for the education sector.

M365 delivers Microsoft’s powerful suite of office productivity and collaboration tools to any Internet-connected computer. M365 is the same Office you already know and use every day. As M365 is powered by the cloud, you can get to your emails, applications and files from virtually anywhere - PC, Mac, and mobile devices.

What does Microsoft 365 include?

M365 includes Exchange Online for email, calendar, etc. and the popular Office features online, allowing users to better prepare coursework, collaborate with colleagues & students, and share curriculum and calendars, etc.

Microsoft 365 provides the following services to staff:

Exchange Online Cloud-based email service hosted by Microsoft	Features: It gives users single point of access to email, calendar, contacts, and tasks using: Microsoft Outlook or other email software on PC or Mac (Note: VPN is not needed for using Outlook outside campus network.) Web browser (Outlook Web App - OWA), or ActiveSync on mobile devices. Provide 50 GB of email storage quota for each user. Message size can be up to 25 MB in size.
Microsoft Teams A digital hub for teamwork that brings conversations, content and apps together in one place. Teams built on capabilities of SharePoint and Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams makes collaboration easy. You can share ideas anywhere on your desktop or mobile devices and have instant access to everything your team needs.	Features: Chat - It is a persistent chat workspace to store threaded conversations, including private chats with classmates/colleagues/guests or group chats among team members. Chat history can be reviewed by any current and new members. Conference Call – Audio/video conference and screen sharing are available. Channel - A channel is a discussion topic in a team. You can create channels for different subjects, projects and etc. Tab - Teams also allows you to add Tabs to frequently used files on OneDrive document library, OneNote Online, SharePoint as well as other cloud services and external websites. Multi-platforms – You can use MS Teams on Outlook on the Web (web browser), MS Teams client as well as mobile devices running on iOS, Android OS and Windows Mobile. For details, please visit Microsoft Teams.
OneDrive A personalized web storage option which enables users to keep synchronized with their hard-drives for off-line access	Features: Provide 5 TB of storage quota for each user. Each file stored in OneDrive can be up to 250 GB in size. Share documents with anyone within and outside EdUHK. Create and edit files (e.g. Word, Excel) with Office Web Apps. You can access OneDrive using one of the following ways: Web access - Login to your EdUHK account via http://portal.microsoftonline.com and select ‘OneDrive’ from the top menu bar. PC/Mac access - For automatic synchronization of your files against a directory in the local hard drive or multiple devices, you need to install the OneDrive desktop client. Please download the "OneDrive client" for your system and view the system requirements. For iOS - Microsoft OneDrive For Android - Microsoft OneDrive For more information, you can go to OneDrive for Work or School Help.
Microsoft 365 Apps (formerly Office 365 ProPlus) for Staff	Starting from February 2015, EdUHK staff can enjoy Microsoft 365 Apps, a full version of the Microsoft Office suite, which includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, and more on up to five home or personal PCs/Macs and up to five mobile devices. Please visit FAQ: How to install Microsoft 365 Apps to your personal computer? for details.
Microsoft 365 Web Apps Web-based version of Microsoft Office productivity suite	Features: Provide web-based versions of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Allow users to access their documents using a web browser and collaborate with other users online. Work tightly with OneDrive.

How to access Microsoft 365 through the web?

By simply using a Web browser (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, etc.), you can access Microsoft 365 through the web, and access your Microsoft 365 mailbox with Outlook Web App - OWA, and other Microsoft 365 services with the following URLs:

https://portal.microsoftonline.com

Note: At the "Account" field in the Sign In screen, please enter your login name in User Principal Name (UPN) format. UPN format is in the form of full email address (e.g. userid@eduhk.hk).

You are strongly recommended to use the following Web browsers that support all or most of the Microsoft 365 and OWA features:

For computers running Windows Operating System:

Internet Explorer 10 and later versions
Firefox 17 and later versions
Safari 5 and later versions
Google Chrome 24 and later versions

For computers running Mac OS X 10.5 and later versions:

Firefox 17 and later versions
Safari 6 and later versions
Google Chrome 24 and later versions

For computers running Linux:

Firefox 17 and later versions
Google Chrome 24 and later versions

Note: If you use Web browsers that are not listed above, you may access your Microsoft 365 mailbox with the light version of Outlook Web App, which provides fewer features.

Limitations

While Microsoft 365 provides many useful office productivity and collaboration tools for your work, it has some limitations that you need to bear in mind. The followings just give you a few limitations that you may encounter. More limitations with Microsoft 365 can be found at Microsoft 365 FAQs.

For mailbox:

There is "Recipient rate limit" of 10,000 recipients per day - After the limit has been reached, messages can’t be sent from the mailbox until the number of recipients that were sent messages in the past 24 hours drops below the limit.
The Recipient limit is 400 recipients per email (Distribution group counted as one)
Message sent out rate limit is 30 messages per minute.
Retention period for items removed from the Deleted Items folder is 30 days. (Warning: We cannot recover any deleted items more than this range)
Time for download and update the Offline address book is around 9 to 33 hours.
Outlook on the web (OWA) displays up to 250 items in the search results only. User are advised to search by: Reducing the scope of the search to only specific folders and subfolders; Use more-specific search terms; or Use Microsoft Outlook in Cached Exchange Mode to search the mailbox.
Outlook Address Book shows up to 500 objects.

For OneDrive:

Support up to 400 characters for file and path lengths.
File upload limit is 250 GB per file.
Some types of Files cannot be added to OneDrive e.g. *.tmp or *.ds_store extension, desktop.ini, thumbs.db, or ehthumbs.db (Please refer to here for a full list of file type cannot be added). Any file that’s currently open by an application. Invalid characters in filename/folder " * : < > ? / \ |
No. of Items (files & folders) can be synced to OneDrive is up to 20,000 items

Please also see Microsoft 365 FAQs for more related information about the Microsoft 365 services.

Known Issues

Microsoft confirmed that the following features are not available on the Microsoft 365 platform.

Global Email Address Book

The ‘Title (e.g. Mr, Miss, etc.)’ of user is missing.
Only one ‘Job Title’ is displayed for each user.

Ambiguous Name Resolution (ANR) search is not supported in Microsoft 365.

ANR allows user to enter partial data in the From, To, CC, or Bcc fields to find the best matches in Active Directory. For example, you could use the office telephone number (e.g. 29486601) to search for the person. However, ANR does not work in Microsoft 365.

Distribution List memberships could not be changed in Outlook.

You cannot edit the Distribution List (e.g. Departmental Add. Members of Staff Mailing List) directly in Microsoft Outlook client. In order to modify the list, you need to use the tool "AD Group & User Object" which is available from Network Application (NA). For detailed procedures, please refer to FAQ - FAQ: How to update membership on departmental mailing list/AD group?