Canvas Guides

How do I create a Microsoft Office 365 collaboration as an instructor?

You can use Microsoft Office 365 to create a collaboration with a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file. You can select individual users, groups, or both as part of a collaboration. To alert invitees about collaborations, you can create course events in the Calendar.

Notes:

If you cannot create a Microsoft collaboration, this feature has not been enabled for the course.
Once you invite a user to a collaboration, the collaboration is available to the user in the user's Microsoft OneDrive. Uninviting the user or deleting the collaboration does not remove access to the collaboration once a user has been added.
When creating a collaboration you cannot link to a previously created collaboration.

Open Collaborations

In Course Navigation, click the Collaborations link.

Add Collaboration

To add a collaboration, click the Start a new collaboration button.

Note: If you do not have any existing collaborations, this button will not display in the Collaborations page.

Select Office 365

In the Collaborate using drop-down menu [1], select the Office 365 option [2].

Log in to Office 365

You may be asked to authenticate your account. Click the Log In button.

In an external window, enter your Office 365 email (or phone number) and password.

Select Type

In the Type drop-down menu, select the type of collaboration you want to create. You can select Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

Add Details

In the Document Name field [1], enter the name of your document.

In the Description field [2], enter a description for the collaboration.

Add People

The collaboration defaults to the People tab. If you want to collaborate with individual people in your course, click the name of a user you want to add to the collaboration [1]. The user's name will move to the right side of the window [2].

Add as many users as necessary.

Remove Collaborators

To remove a collaborator, click the name of the user [1]. To remove all users, click the Remove All link [2].

Add Groups

You can also create collaborations with groups. To select an entire group, click the Groups tab [1]. Select the group(s) you want to add to the collaboration [2].

Note:

You can select individual users as well as a group in a collaboration.
You can add multiple groups to a collaboration, but all groups will collaborate in the same document. For group-specific collaborations, consider creating a new collaboration for each group or creating a group collaboration from within the group.

Save Collaboration

Click the Save button.

View Collaboration

View your collaboration. To edit the collaboration, click the Edit icon [1]. To delete the collaboration, click the Delete icon [2].