San Diego Community College District

All San Diego Community College District employees will soon be migrating to Microsoft Office 365 (O365), a cloud-based software system that will provide a full-featured email and productivity suite. Benefits include improved security, expanded storage, and direct integration with apps such as Adobe, Canvas, Zoom, and many more.

The migration will start on July 18 and continue over three weeks until all employees are moved to the new system. Users will access their email using their same credentials but will experience a new interface and enhanced features.

O365 integrates with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft Office tools. Employees can use a single sign-on (SSO) to access the programs to other 3rd party resources.

With O365, the District and colleges can better digitally connect with others through collaborative tools and support enhancing the District and college's digital assets.

"This project implementation by District IT went very smoothly and quickly. The online services will tremendously benefit instructional services here at Miramar College, including access to all of Microsoft O365 tools and single login credentials. We look forward to integrating with software tools for campus image management." – Kurt Hill, Instructional Computing Support Supervisor.

Monica Romero, Dean of Business and Technology at San Diego Mesa College, was part of the pilot group testing O365. She said the transition had gone smoothly.

"Everything has its icon on the desktop," Romero said. "Everything is in one place, making it much easier to navigate."

Jacqueline Sabanos, VP of Administrative Services at the College of Continuing Education, said, "It was a seamless transition to O365, and I look forward to the expanded storage, collaboration, and efficiency improvements on the new platform."

This employee conversion to O365 paves the way for another significant improvement for students at the SDCCD colleges, who will get a district email account with the .edu extension. The student accounts will be put into place for fall 2022 and will also give students access to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

A web page with more information about the conversion is available at here.