Microsoft’s Dictate tool is great for those who struggle to get their ideas down onto paper – it allows you to speak into your microphone and convert your speech to text on the screen. Dictation is available on all Microsoft tools that use text. It’s an excellent feature for both students and teachers, helping … Read more
A collaboration channel in Class Teams is a great way for students to communicate and collaborate on projects in a safe and controlled way. Teachers can create a workspace for group work and add resources so students can work on projects together. The collaboration channel allows you to oversee your students’ progress. How to add … Read more
In this guide, we show you how to add the Cloud Design Box Blog Posts Web Part to display our helpful guides and resources on your SharePoint sites. The CDB Blog Posts Web Part automatically pulls in our latest blogs, guides, podcasts, videos and resources to your school or trust’s SharePoint site. It would … Read more
Reflect check-ins in Class Notebook are a brilliant way for teachers to get a good understanding of which students may need additional support or guidance. Meanwhile, reflecting on learning is good practice for students to build self-awareness and take ownership of their own education. In this guide, we show you how to insert a … Read more
In this podcast, we spoke with James Emmet, Network Manager at Engineering UTC North Lincolnshire about how they use features in Office 365 to support students with Special Education Needs (SEN) and English as an Additional Language (EAL). “We have a high number of students who are EAL, SEN, dyslexic and have low reading ages. … Read more
This is a quick update from Cloud Design Box. Due to the current situation of social distancing being implemented across the world, we have had a lot of schools rushing to setup Microsoft Teams. There are a number of ways you can setup Microsoft School Data Sync to create Class Teams from your MIS/SIS data: … Read more
In this podcast episode, we’ve taken a different approach. Instead of focusing solely on a school’s user adoption methods, we’re looking at how the process can be made easier when you have a Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) in your ranks. But what exactly is an MIE Expert and how can your school, multi-academy trust or … Read more
In the video below, we look at the different ways of setting retention polices in SharePoint and Teams. Some takeaway points: Retention Labels allow more than one policy in a single site Users might not remember or know how to apply Labels Site policies work without any end-user action The document deletion experience is different
Managing document expiry can be time consuming and difficult to track. Maybe you have policy documents which need refreshing every year or machine calibration/certification documents which need to be regularly reviewed. It’s surprisingly easy to setup expiry notifications in SharePoint. Follow the simple steps below or watch the video for a walk through. Adding an … Read more
Cloud Design Box will be exhibiting at Bett 2020 from Wednesday 23rd January until Saturday 15th January 2020 on stand NQ21. Bett is the global meeting place for education buyers and it’s mission is to create a better future by transforming education and bringing together over 800 leading companies and over 34,000 visitors. We will … Read more
In our Office 365 User Adoption Podcast this month, Tony and Darren from Cloud Design Box talk about the benefits of tagging resources and discuss metadata vs folders. Why should we tag? SharePoint search is great out-of-the-box. It’s intelligent and searches not just the title of the document but also inside the contents. As people … Read more
Lots of new and exciting features are coming to Microsoft Teams this summer, so get ready for the new academic year in advance and resolve any issues before the students are back. I’m beginning the process of rolling over the academic year at many schools this month using Microsoft School Data Sync with the Cloud … Read more
In this video, I explore the new announcement feature in Microsoft Teams. It’s part of a big education release this summer, we will keep you posted on the latest developments!
Class teams are now available inside Microsoft Teams. These are created automatically using School Data Sync (SDS) or can be created manually in the Teams interface. Teams is a great collaboration interface that pulls together instant messaging, videos calls, SharePoint, OneNote and assignments into one place. It can also be extended with custom tabs. I’ve … Read more
Over the last few months, we have received lots of positive feedback about the new Microsoft Classroom Preview product. Today Microsoft announced in the Office 365 message centre that this would be replaced at the end of July 2017 with Microsoft Teams for Education. No need to panic, MS Classroom functionality will still exist but … Read more
I would like to thank everyone who took part in today’s webinar on Microsoft Classroom by Cloud Design Box. In the session, we covered: How to get Microsoft Classroom How to create a new class Using OneNote Class Notebook to enhance teaching and learning Setting assignments Marking and returning student work Using the mobile apps … Read more
Microsoft Flow is the new tool integrated with Office 365 which allows different services to interact. Such as social media providers like Twitter and Facebook or file sharing platforms like Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive, and many more services. I wrote a blog post earlier this year about integrating machine learning tools and another post … Read more
I’m often asked how to give the Microsoft Office 365 login page a branded and customised look and feel. It’s really easy so if you are using cloud only or AD synced users, you can apply branding to the login page. This method does not apply to ADFS as the login page is hosted on … Read more
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) allows your school/organisation to use your own Active Directory to authenticate users. While Azure AD Connect (formerly DirSync) seems to give this functionality, it is actually a copy of the usernames and passwords in Azure AD which authenticates the user onto the site rather than your own AD server. The … Read more
In this post, I wanted to show how you can modify the SharePoint framework Hello World web part and add other custom JavaScript libraries to create a simple slideshow. Prerequisites I’m going to start my tutorial after following these steps: Setup SharePoint Tenant Setup your machine HelloWorld WebPart HelloWorld, Talking to SharePoint Once that is … Read more
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