Office 365 for Education

User Scenario:
Creating a subsite

Thandi Bongani is a teacher at her local High School. She has been made an administrator of her school site because she is the Head of the Art Department. She wants to set up a site collection for her department staff. Her school Office 365 working group has decided on a vertical site hierarchy with all sites being subsites of the main site collections for staff and students, and so her new site will be a subsite of the Teaching Staff site collection.

Subsites have exactly the same functionality are the same as other SharePoint team sites with.

The Teaching Staff site collection in Thandi’s school site is going to be the parent site to her Art Department subsite and all the other department subsites. Thandi’s colleagues, the Department Heads for other subjects, will also set up their own sites as subsites of the Teaching Staff site collection at a later stage.

• Thandi logs into Office 365 and goes to her admin center page.  Clicking on Sites in the top menu bar takes her to a list of the sites she is following (she can search for other sites that she in not following in her institution here as well).
• From the list of sites, she clicks on Teaching Staff.  This takes her to the main screen for this site, and she is now able to set up her subsite.
• She clicks on site contents on the left menu. At the bottom of the site contents page that opens she clicks on the + New Subsite link. This opens up a New SharePoint site window. It looks like this:

• Thandi then fills in the empty boxes with information about her new subsite. She gives the site a name (Art Department Staff) and a short description. She completes the URL by adding ‘ArtStaff’ to the URL name box.
• As this is a department site that will serve as an ongoing information hub for her department staff, she selects the Team Site option from the template list.
• Scrolling down the page, she comes to the User Permissions section. Deciding that she wants just her department to have access to the site, she selects the Unique Permissions option.
• The next options are about how users will find her subsite. This is known as Navigation. Thandi decides that she would like a link to her site from the left hand menu on the main Teaching Staff site collections page. She selects this option from the choices, choosing No for the option of the top link bar.
• Finally, Thandi selects Yes from the Navigation Inheritance options. This means that users will be able to see that her site is a subsite of the Teaching Staff site collection on the top link bar of her subsite. She then clicks Create.
• The next task is for users to be added to her subsite. Thandi is now asked to create three new groups of users. Her screen looks like this:

• The first box is for Visitors. These might be staff members who are not teachers in the Art Department but who might be interested or need to be able to read the content on the subsite. Thandi decides to give her school leadership team Visitor permissions.
• Going to the browse command (the grid icon at the bottom right side of the box), she types their names in the find box and clicks the search icon, repeating this until all her school leadership colleagues’ names are displayed. She then highlights them and clicks on Add.
• These names now appear in the Visitors box of the People and Groups screen.
• Thandi repeats these steps for both the Members and Owners sections on this screen, adding her department staff as Members and herself and her deputy as Owners. Having two owners is always a good idea, in case of unforeseen absence or other circumstances.
• She then clicks OK and waits for her site to be created. A link to Thandi’s subsite will appear in a list of subsites on the left side menu of the main Teaching Staff site collections page.
• She can now use the site as a ‘virtual staffroom’ for her staff team. She reminds herself to post regular updates for her team in the NewsFeed.
• Office 365 will help her team to connect, collaborate and create.
• Some of the apps and tools Thandi intends to use on the Art Department team site are:
   
  • A Team Calendar to coordinate all Art Department-related activity such as assessment dates, examinations and coursework deadlines.
  • Newsfeed for messaging and keeping up to date with changes to collaborative documents.
  • A Site Mailbox app so that emails about Art Department business will be collected in the mailbox and can be accessed by everyone in her team. Important documents can also be emailed to and from this team mailbox.
  • A Tasks app so that her team can see progress and deadlines on group projects at a glance on a timeline.
  • A Discussion Board app so that her senior students can have subject-related online conversations with their Art Department teachers within the safe and secure environment of Office 365.
  • A Document Library to store student reports and other administrative material. She thinks this will help her teachers collaborate on writing student progress reports for parents and caregivers. Another separate Document Library app could act as a repository for useful professional development resources for her team.
  • An Image Gallery app for keeping a digital record of coursework from her students. She thinks she might allow other staff members to access this app and view the artwork.

SharePoint Guides - Further Reading

Setting up Sharepoint
» Setup guide for SharePoint for Education
» Scenario: Setting up a public website
» Scenario: Creating a subsite

Download the full guide

Using SharePoint in education
» Setting up a personal SharePoint site
» Scenario: Using the Survey App
» Scenario: Using a team site in SharePoint
» Scenario: Setting up a student site
» Scenario: Class projects & assignment submission

Download the full guide