"Hot Desking" setup in a small office

[bertie40]

Hi Guys.
I appreciate its been a while,...... and you have probably benefitted from the absence of my inane gabble.

I've been asked to setup a "Hot Desk" system within a small office. 4 desktops laptops with 3 laptops.

I'm sure I'm going about this the wrong way....

1. Create individual Microsoft accounts for the users
(Using the @outlook email domain, ie Jackazz@outlook.com)
(The users have Microsoft Office 365 via charity pricing).

2. Add each Microsoft account,.... to each PC,... using OneDrive to sync the documents.

3. Manually add the individual email address to Outlook,..... in each profile, each time.

4.... and repeat and repeat until i go blind and lose the will to live.

5. The network does have a Synology Box, used for shared file storage.

Q.. (finally), Is there a better way of doing this ?
Clone each profile, and copy it to each machine ?

Cheers and Big hugs.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Hey Bertie....wow, long time no see. And your odd twisted humor is missed here...at least by me!

So charity pricing....what licenses? Microsoft will do up to 10x free licenses of M365 Biz Premium for free for non profits, only $5.00 user/month after that.
And at least 25 licenses of Office 365 E3 for non profits.

Setup the laptops to boot up with a local account.....just a generic user.
Have users launch a browser, and go to www.office.com and log in, and use apps via browser. Store files in teams/sharepoint.
Works quite well in a browser...and keeps the computers...nice and simple!

 

[nlinecomputers]

Damn, I thought you were dead. LOL Nice to see ya again. Don't be a stranger.

I'd go with the all browser approach as Brian recommends.

 

[bertie40]

Nah.... Still kicking about and abusing small defenceless kittens in my spare time.
(obviously joking, welcome to the 21st )

This is an "Older persons" charity, whom I help set up over 5 years ago.

I got them charity / nonprofit status with Microsoft, which indeed get them the discounts you described.

Ill run the browser idea off the manager. I always had this down as " inferior" but maybe I need top re-evaluate this approach.

Moggs need feeding. They eat better than I do !

Cheers Guys

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

You still banned from the nursing (care) home after those incidents with the old ladies?

But in all seriousness....using a modern browser to log into office.com is really quite good.
User can launch Teams...the browser version. Heck you could install the full Teams app on the local computers, and they can sign into that, the Teams app supports logging in and out. BUT...chances are someone will just leave it logged in when they get up to leave, thus the next person see that persons stuff, so...I encourage the browser approach. Showing them how to properly "log out" of the browser...never "remember" my login.

Running Word/Excel from within the Teams app....to get to files, is great!
Can still access their OneDrive through the browser. Modern office apps (Word, Excel, etc)...are all "cloud site aware"...so when doing "File..Open, or File..Save As"....you have choices such as your OneDrive, or the Teams file sites, to save.

 

[bertie40]

You still banned from the nursing (care) home after those incidents with the old ladies?

But in all seriousness....using a modern browser to log into office.com is really quite good.
User can launch Teams...the browser version. Heck you could install the full Teams app on the local computers, and they can sign into that, the Teams app supports logging in and out. BUT...chances are someone will just leave it logged in when they get up to leave, thus the next person see that persons stuff, so...I encourage the browser approach. Showing them how to properly "log out" of the browser...never "remember" my login.

Running Word/Excel from within the Teams app....to get to files, is great!
Can still access their OneDrive through the browser. Modern office apps (Word, Excel, etc)...are all "cloud site aware"...so when doing "File..Open, or File..Save As"....you have choices such as your OneDrive, or the Teams file sites, to save.

What can I say,... I have a thing for surgical stockings.

Admittedly they were quite good about it, and offered to give me their old ones.
I washed and saved half of them for myself,.....and the other half I vacuum sealed and sold on eBay.