Having to use Office for work (multiple organizations) I’ve found it’s very frustrating with how fractured the Office 365 set up is.
One of my accounts is so locked down I can’t share PowerPoints (or anything) outside of my organization, while another one only has a few of the apps I really want/need and won’t let me use the desktop version of PP, Word, Exel. Nothing I’m trying to do needs to be locked down or non-sharable.
I’m trying to bring technology and integration into a field that hates the way things are but also hates change just as much, and Office isn’t making it easy.
What do you know about the security environment of these organizations? What intrusions or threats have they dealt with? What damaging or secret information has been taken out of the organizations? What policies have external authorities imposed in response to perceived or real security issues? Just a few of many possible questions, the answers to which might explain your situation.
Agree with @rms on this - sounds like these restrictions are enforced by policy. O365 can be nice enough, but it also includes a lot of options for their customers to lock it down tight.
Yes, it’s super frustrating. Dealing with many of the same issues on a daily basis.
I can download it and email it but that defeats the purpose of the collaboration and synced updates. I tried sharing an “anyone can view” link but that’s restricted by my organization too.
One is a city government that is overly protective. I’m on the Fire/EMS side that doesn’t have access to any of the city documents or anything important.
The other is a fire district that I’m teaching for which I just think doesn’t want to pay any more money than it has to for this stuff.
I just want to be able to create trainings/classes, share them, and create Teams with people outside of the organizations. I can’t even add “guests” to Teams teams they are so locked down.
It’s so locked down that it won’t even sync my Edge information between computers that have my account info logged in.
Yes, but I can’t add guests to any of my teams, I and have people outside of the organization without an organization email that I need to add to the team since they will be contracted instructors, and students.
I just want to be able to access the business apps and services, which I would happily pay for, without a business account. I would love to have access to Windows 365 but you need a business account for that too.
This sounds like something you could maybe solve with a cross-department/cross-functional team that gives IT an opportunity to present fixing the settings as if it is their idea and a new solution. If you can get these teams to coordinate the changes as some sort of joint policy, it could really look good for them.
If you approach them directly about fixing their settings, they’ll probably become defensive and entrenched.
In a similar municipal IT situation in which I participated, we were able to solve this by offering additional training at a low cost and expanded access once enough of the training had been complete. IT management was willing to negotiate once we had a representative from the county and a public-private non-profit join the conversation.