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Updates are being made to the licences that are granted to Alumni for Microsoft 365 products.
During the first quarter of 2023, Microsoft 365 licences for alumni who have no other active association with UCL will be changed to give access to email only. Any other Microsoft 365 online services and data, such as OneDrive, will no longer be accessible by alumni from their UCL account. If access to data needs to be retained, steps as detailed below must be taken to ensure that data is not deleted. All alumni who are affected by this change will be contacted directly via email.
What impact will this change have on Alumni?
Alumni will retain access to their email accounts, as detailed on the Alumni support pages. This includes their Microsoft To Do, contact and calendar data.
Alumni will lose access to other Microsoft 365 online services and data. This means:
- All data associated with their student account will be held for 30 days* after the date that the licence is removed.
- After the 30-day grace period, the data will be deleted and can’t be recovered, except for documents saved in SharePoint Online sites.
- Alumni who have installed Office for Windows/Mac or Office Mobile as part of UCL's Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise offering will experience reduced functionality
- Unlicensed product notifications will pop up within applications such as Word and Excel until they activate a Microsoft 365 subscription.
*The exception to this is data held with Legal Hold, which is kept for the duration of the hold.
What action do Alumni need to take?
There will be no change to the email provision for alumni, therefore no action is required.
OneDrive
Move any personal documents from your UCL-provided OneDrive, to a location that you manage. This could be a local drive, a USB drive or another OneDrive. If you do not have another account which has OneDrive, you can view OneDrive plans and pricing options (Microsoft page). For further information on OneDrive, see OneDrive help and support (Microsoft page)..
Microsoft Teams and SharePoint
For any Microsoft Teams or SharePoint sites that you are an owner of, you should transfer ownership to another UCL student or member of staff:
- Add an owner to a Microsoft Team (Microsoft page)
- Add an owner to a SharePoint site (Microsoft page)
If you wish to continue using Microsoft Teams, you can use your personal Microsoft account to access Teams for free however note that this will not give you access to your UCL Teams.
Microsoft Stream
Files within Stream are stored in two different locations. Files within Stream (Classic) have a URL beginning web.microsoftstream.com. These files will need to be downloaded individually from Stream (Classic) and stored in a location that you manage.
Files within Stream (on SharePoint) should be dealt with in the same way as any other files within OneDrive, as above.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Alumni will still be able to access and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files by using free Microsoft 365 for the web
Microsoft Forms
For any Microsoft Forms that you are an owner of, you need to transfer the ownership to a group (Microsoft page).
Microsoft Planner
For any Planner Plans that you are an owner of, you need to transfer ownership to another UCL student or member of staff, so that any changes to access that are needed in the future can be made.
If the Plan is connected to a Team, follow the Microsoft instructions to Add an owner to a Microsoft Team.
If the Plan is not connected to a Team, an owner will need to be added from within Outlook to the group which is associated with the plan. Follow Microsoft's instructions on adding a member to a group. You will need to ensure that you select the owner privilige to ensure that any access changes that may be needed in the future can be actioned.
Sway
Sways which need to be retained should be shared with the relevent UCL student or member of staff. If you wish to continue using Sway, it is free to use for anyone with a Microsoft Account (Hotmail, Live, or Outlook.com) via sway.office.com
Why is this change being made?
This change is being made to ensure compliance with Microsoft licensing.