Getting Started with Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 offers a suite of powerful productivity tools designed to make communication, collaboration, and idea sharing easier for all UT Austin students, faculty, and staff. With M365, you can use apps like Word and Excel plus services such as Teams and OneDrive to create and collaborate from anywhere. Most tools are offered at no cost, while some require additional licensing.
M365 is available to current students and University faculty and staff. This page includes knowledge articles to help you get started with Microsoft 365 apps and services.
Join the M365 Community by visiting the Microsoft 365 at UT Austin SharePoint site full of resources available to you.
Communication, Collaboration & Scheduling
Microsoft Teams
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Microsoft Teams, a collaboration platform that combines chat, video meetings, file sharing, and app integrations to help teams communicate and work together in real time. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
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Microsoft Teams Premium
| Available to Faculty and Staff
(add-on)
Microsoft Teams Premium is an add-on service for Microsoft Teams that delivers advanced meeting features, enhanced security, and AI-powered tools like intelligent recap and live translation to create more personalized, protected, and productive collaboration experiences. For more information, visit the knowledge article to see available add-on services.
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Microsoft Teams Phone
| Faculty and Staff
(A5 license required)
Microsoft Teams Phone is a cloud-based calling solution that integrates with Microsoft Teams to enable secure, reliable voice and video calls across devices, replacing traditional phone systems with VoIP and PSTN connectivity. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
*Requires an assigned VoIP number.
Microsoft Outlook
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Microsoft Outlook is an email and calendar application that helps you manage messages, schedule meetings, and organize tasks. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
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Microsoft Forms
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Microsoft Forms is a simple survey, poll, and quiz tool with built in submission reports. Easily collect data that can be transferred or exported for deeper analysis using other M365 tools. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
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Microsoft Bookings
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
(A5 license required)
Microsoft Bookings is an online scheduling tool that allows individuals, businesses, and organizations to manage appointments, services, and staff availability through a customizable booking page. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
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Microsoft Stream
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Microsoft Stream is an enterprise video management service integrated into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It enables users to create, upload, store, share, and view videos securely within their organization, while providing features like channels, watchlists, permissions controls, and closed captions to help organize and manage video content effectively. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
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Whiteboard
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft Whiteboard, a free-form digital canvas that enables teams to brainstorm, visualize ideas, and collaborate in real time across devices, with an infinite space designed for pen, touch, and keyboard input.
Microsoft 365 Tools Matrix
The suite of tools in Microsoft 365 are available to students, faculty and staff. There are levels of availability for faculty and staff, A5 or A1. If you are unsure of your level, please reach out to the Support Center for assistance. Visit the knowledge article to find a detailed list of what is available to you.
AI and Workflow Automation
Copilot Chat
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Unlock personalized support, insights, and productivity tools tailored to your work at UT Austin. Whether you're drafting content, organizing ideas, or navigating Microsoft 365, Copilot Chat offers instant, intelligent assistance to help you work smarter and faster. Sign in to explore how Copilot Chat can streamline your day. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
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Microsoft 365 Copilot
| Available to Faculty, and Staff
(add-on)
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a premium AI-powered assistant built into your favorite M365 apps and is available as an add-on. Copilot combines advanced language models with your organizational data to help you draft content, analyze information, and automate tasks across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. Designed for enterprise productivity, Copilot delivers real-time insights and intelligent suggestions so you can create, collaborate, and make decisions faster. Visit the knowledge article to see available add-on services.
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Microsoft Power BI (Pro)
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
(A5 license required)
Sign in to your M365 account to access Power BI Pro. It enables individuals and small teams to create, share, and collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, offering robust data visualization and analysis tools within a secure cloud environment.
Microsoft Power BI (Premium)
| Available to Faculty and Staff
(add-on)
Power BI Premium builds on Pro by providing enterprise-grade features like larger data capacity, advanced AI capabilities, paginated reports, and dedicated cloud resources for scalable performance and broader organizational sharing. For more information, visit the knowledge article to see available add-on services.
Microsoft Power Apps
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft Power Apps, a low-code development platform that enables users to quickly build custom business applications without extensive coding knowledge. It connects to data from Microsoft Dataverse, SharePoint, and other sources, allowing organizations to digitize processes and create responsive apps for web and mobile devices.
Power Automate
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft Power Automate, a cloud-based service that helps you create automated workflows between apps and services to streamline repetitive tasks and business processes. It supports triggers, actions, and connectors for hundreds of applications, enabling users to build flows for notifications, data collection, approvals, and more without extensive coding.
Cloud Storage and Sharing
OneDrive for Business
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
OneDrive for Business is a secure cloud storage service that lets you store, share, and collaborate on files from any device, integrated with Microsoft 365 for seamless productivity. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
SharePoint
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
SharePoint is a web-based collaboration platform that enables teams to create, manage, and share content, documents, and resources securely within Microsoft 365. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
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Viva Engage
| Available to Faculty and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Viva Engage, formerly known as Yammer. Viva Engage is an enterprise social networking platform in Microsoft 365 that helps employees connect, share knowledge, and build communities to foster engagement and collaboration.
Documents and Productivity
Microsoft Office
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
(A5 license required)
*Available on the web, mobile, and desktop. Desktop version not available for faculty and staff at level A1.
Microsoft Office is a suite of productivity applications—including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more—designed for creating, editing, and managing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Learn more in the knowledge article.
Office Suite
Microsoft Word: Create and edit documents and collaborate with others in real time.
Microsoft Excel: Create spreadsheets from templates or from scratch and perform calculations with modern formulas.
Microsoft PowerPoint: Create and present slideshows using a plethora of design and editing features.
OneNote
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft OneNote, a versatile digital notebook that lets you capture, organize, and share notes across devices, supporting text, images, audio, and drawings. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365, enabling real-time collaboration and structured organization through notebooks, sections, and pages.
How does OneNote and Loop compare? When you need a structured, durable notebook for rich note‑taking (typed/ink, images, audio), organized for long‑term reference and light/asynchronous collaboration.
Loop
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft Loop, a collaborative workspace app that combines flexible pages with portable components—such as lists, tables, and tasks that stay in sync across Microsoft 365 apps like Teams, Outlook, and Word. It enables real-time co-creation, allowing teams to brainstorm, plan, and manage projects seamlessly in shared workspaces.
How does Loop and OneNote compare? Use Loop when you need live, flexible co-creation with real‑time editing and portable components like lists, tables, and task boards that stay in sync wherever you paste them (Teams, Outlook, Word, etc.).
Sway
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft Sway, a web-based presentation and storytelling app that helps you create visually engaging reports, newsletters, and portfolios without complex design work. Its built-in design engine automatically arranges text, images, and multimedia into responsive, interactive layouts that look great on any device and are easy to share via a link.
Visio in Microsfot 365
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
(Visio plan 1 and 2 available as an add-on service for faculty and staff only)
Microsoft Visio is a professional diagramming tool that helps users design flowcharts, organizational charts, network diagrams, and floor plans with precision and flexibility. It offers a rich library of templates and shapes, integrates with Microsoft 365 for real-time collaboration, and supports both web (web and plan 1) and desktop (plan 2) versions for creating visually compelling, data-driven diagrams. Learn more about the different Visio plans in the knowledge article.
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Lists
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign into your M365 account to access Microsoft Lists, an intelligent information tracking app that helps you organize, manage, and share data such as tasks, issues, and assets in customizable lists. It integrates with Microsoft 365 and Teams, offering ready-made templates, rules, and views to keep work structured and collaborative.
Project Planning and Management
Planner
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft Planner, a task management tool that helps teams organize work visually using boards, buckets, and cards for tasks. It integrates with Microsoft 365 apps like Teams and Outlook, enabling easy collaboration, assignment tracking, and progress monitoring across projects.
Microsoft To Do
| Available to Students, Faculty, and Staff
Sign in to your M365 account to access Microsoft To Do, a cloud-based task management app that helps you organize and track personal and work tasks across devices. It offers features like smart lists, reminders, and integration with Outlook and Teams, making it easy to plan your day and stay on top of priorities.
Microsoft Project Online Essentials
| Available to Faculty and Staff
(A5 license required)
The Microsoft Project Online Essentials is a lightweight, web‑only license for team members to view and update tasks, submit timesheets, and collaborate in Project Online without full project management features; note it does not include Project for the web. It’s designed to pair with Plan 3/Plan 5 tenants so contributors can report progress and time while project managers handle scheduling and portfolio work. For more information, visit the knowledge article.
Project Plan 3
| Available to Faculty and Staff
(add-on)
Microsoft Project Plan 3 (now “Planner and Project Plan 3”) — A full project management subscription for PMs that delivers advanced planning and scheduling (Gantt, dependencies, critical path), resource management, timesheets, and both web + Project Online Desktop Client access; it supports Project for the web and Project Online scenarios. Ideal for managing complex, multi‑team projects with richer controls than entry plans.
Project Plan 5
| Available to Faculty and Staff
(add-on)
Microsoft Project Plan 5 (now “Planner and Project Plan 5”) — The enterprise PPM tier that adds portfolio analysis/prioritization, demand management (intake workflows), advanced capacity planning, and additional governance/customization on top of Plan 3’s capabilities—built for organizations running project portfolios and formal PMO processes.