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Q8 Which Collaboration IS Is Right for Your Team? 65

and video virtual meetings, and you will also have support for concurrent access to document,
spreadsheet, and presentation files. You will not be able to support surveys, wikis, and blogs
and share pictures and videos with this set. If you want any of them, you will need to search the
Internet to find suitable tools.
The Comprehensive Collaboration Tool Set

The third set of collaboration tools, the Comprehensive set, is shown in the last column of
Figure 2-25. You can obtain this tool set with certain versions of Office 365. However, Microsoft
continually revises the versions and what’s included in them, so you’ll need to investigate which
version provides the features of the comprehensive tool set. Look for a version (perhaps a free
trial) that includes all the products shown in Figure 2-26. If your school has adopted Office 365
for Education, then you should be able to obtain these features for free.
This set is the best of these three because it includes content management and control,
workflow control, and online meetings with sharing as just described. Furthermore, this
set is integrated; SharePoint alerts can send emails via the Microsoft email server Exchange
when tasks or other lists and libraries change. You can click on users’ names in emails or in
SharePoint, and Office 365 will automatically start a Lync text, audio, or video conversation with
that user if he or she is currently available. All text messages that you send via Lync are auto-
matically recorded and stored in your email folder.

Choosing the Set for Your Team
Which set should you choose for your team? Unless your university has already standardized on
the Office 365 version you need, you will have to pay for it. You can obtain a 30-day free trial, and
if your team can finish its work in that amount of time, you might choose to do so. Otherwise,
your team will need to pay a minimum of $10 per month per user. So, if cost is the only factor,
you can rule out the comprehensive tool set.
And even if you can afford the most comprehensive set, you may not want to use it. As noted
in Figure 2-25, team members need to be willing to invest something on the order of 3 hours to
begin to use the basic features. Less time, on the order of an hour, will be required to learn to use
the Good tool set, and you most likely already know how to use the Minimal set.
When evaluating learning time, consider Figure 2-27. This diagram is a product power
curve, which is a graph that shows the relationship of the power (the utility that one gains from
a software product) as a function of the time using that product. A flat line means you are invest-
ing time without any increase in power. The ideal power curve starts at a positive value at time
zero and has no flat spots.

Component Features

Lync Multiparty text chat
Audio- and videoconferencing
Online content sharing
Webinars with PowerPoint
SharePoint Online Content management and control using libraries and lists
Discussion forums
Surveys
Wikis
Blogs
Exchange Email integrated with Lync and SharePoint Online

Oce 2013 Concurrent editing for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote‡
Figure 2-26
Office 365 Features You Need for Hosted integration Infrastructure built, managed, and operated by Microsoft
the Comprehensive Tool Set