Office 365 control over student access...

[PHAICT2]

We have setup office 365 in our school and we are in the testing stages.

 

A few things I've noticed is that - as well as standard office apps (word, excel etc.) - you get Delve, Sites, People and Newsfeed etc.

 

Now, I don't know exactly what these all do, however what we would like to achieve is a complete restriction these apps. Students here (given any slack) will undoubtedly use them to slate each other on the net and before you know it, parents are involved asking why 'John Anybody' from year 7 is slagging off 'Justin Nobody' from year 8 regarding a fight they had at break time. There's enough risk in letting them have email, let alone any watered down profile/ sharing page.

 

We want the most basic level of access - all the normal office apps to use for school work - and an online drive to store it... end of.

Can you please tell me if this is possible ?

 

I tried disabling Delve by using the Sharepoint admin centre setting,' hide Office Graphs ' but I found that there is a work around if you click your avatar then 'about me' so that solution seems more of a hide, than a disable.

[round2it]

Im at the same stage as you with exactly the same problem

[Jawloms]

What do you do for email? Assuming you don't use Exchange on O365 then you can disable it on O365 and that will get rid of the People, Calendar and Email icons. You need to use the "-DisabledPlans EXCHANGE_S_STANDARD, MCOSTANDARD" switch in PowerShell to get rid of it.

[PHAICT2]

We have onsite exchange but we keep our kids away from this obvisouly... and our main requirements from O365 was to give students email access, word app, excel app, etc.. and an online drive to keep their files one. Nothing more.

 

Seems very ' fiddly '. It's almost like you've got to disable something - which when will remove something else. But it seems there's a lot of 'hide' options.

 

I just wish there was a simple ' Student mode' where kids can only access exactly what you want them to. Having said this i'm assuming there's a powershell way.

 

Kids only have the ' Office 365 Education for students ' license.

[MrFrostmaul]

Under sharepoint admin on settings within, you can disable the sites, delve, video tiles from showing.

[PHAICT2]

Under sharepoint admin on settings within, you can disable the sites, delve, video tiles from showing.

Messed about with some of the settings and ended up with ' no office apps ' showing. Which is not good. Got it back now by retracing my steps but i can't seem to see how anything in there is specific enough to achieve the result I want... and if it is, it's worded very funny.

 

Would be so great if there was a ' Show apps on home page '

Word

Excel

Newsfeed

Powerpoint

People

Tasks

Sites

Sway

Calendar

Mail

Onenote

 

With a simple tick box. Problem sorted.

[round2it]

Aim gonna have a go at this during the weekend if you come up with a usable solution please post.

[round2it]

Only way to get rid of them that i can see is remove sharepoint and office online this only leaves sway from the users licence

[MrFrostmaul]

I have managed to get Sites, Video, Delve and those ones removed from all users but Sway, even with it disabled it does not want to go away so I just have it enabled.

 

It can take upto 48 hours for the tiles to be removed from all users when changed and for the user to log off from Office 365 and logging back in (that what Microsoft support said a few weeks back)

Edited October 17, 2015 by MrFrostmaul

[EduTech]

Hi,

 

I just wanted to let you know that we have a work item in our backlog to improve this aspect, we have received good feedback in regards to 'management' over the Default Applications within the Application Panel so expect this to maybe get some improvements in the near future. In terms of 'Sway' there is a known issue at the moment with that being removed from the Application Panel after being disabled: there is article stating such here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3075256

 

Hide Sites, Video & Disable Delve

 

 

Disable Video - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-your-Office-365-Video-portal-c059465b-eba9-44e1-b8c7-8ff7793ff5da?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#BKMK_Disabling

Disable Delve - https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Office-Delve-for-Office-365-admins-54F87A42-15A4-44B4-9DF0-D36287D9531B

 

** NOTE: The following side affects of disabling Office Graph - https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Office-Delve-for-Office-365-admins-54F87A42-15A4-44B4-9DF0-D36287D9531B#BKMK_EffectOfficegraphOnOff

 

Heather Soloman did write an article on how to customize the App Launcher:[again use under caution as this UX does change often] Customizing the SharePoint Online App Launcher | Our SharePoint Experience

 

Disable MySite NewsFeed https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Manage-My-Site-settings-for-SharePoint-Online-EC8C588E-28FD-4724-A8CB-85426869CE8A#__disable_or_enable

 

People This one is tricky, I believe you have to do it via the OWA policy. Go to Exchange Admin > Permissions > Outlook Web App policies. Create a new policy or/ modify the default and enable/disable the features you want, including Contacts and/or All address lists.

 

I think that just about covers everything...

 

FYI - Be careful removing licenses, as in your initial post you said that you wanted them to use OneDrive... If you remove SharePoint they will loose access to OneDrive.

 

James.

[MkII]

 

I just wish there was a simple ' Student mode' where kids can only access exactly what you want them to.

 

 

Absolutely.

[PHAICT2]

Thanks for the help guys - all of you. Very informative. I'll probably have another go today.