05 Jan Ring in the New Year with OneNote Class and Staff Notebook updates!
It’s the New Year and in many parts of the world a new semester, quarter or school year is beginning. We have schools using OneNote Class and Staff Notebooks in over 105 countries, with more students, teachers and faculty discovering the benefits of OneNote in education every day. In the spirit of a Happy New Year, today we are starting to roll out a set of improvements to OneNote Class Notebooks and OneNote Staff Notebooks as well as a few top requested and education-related improvements to OneNote Online.
Summary of our January 2016 updates
- Class Notebooks—Co-teachers can now add or remove students to a Class Notebook.
- Staff Notebooks—Staff leaders can now remove staff members or notebook co-owners and co-owners can now add or remove staff members to a Staff Notebook. In addition, Active Directory security group and Office 365 Group support is now offered.
- Legacy SharePoint Store app for the OneNote Class Notebook Creator—Ability to remove students.
- Legacy SharePoint Store app for OneNote Staff Notebooks—Ability to remove staff members.
- OneNote Online—The top requested feature, Image crop, was added as well as the ability to unpin notebooks from the notebook list.
These changes are rolling out starting today and will be enabled worldwide over the coming weeks.
Class Notebook updates
Co-teachers can add or remove students—One of the top requests we’ve heard from schools and teachers is the ability for a co-teacher to add or remove students. A scenario might include a teacher who is out for an extended period of time and the class roster changes. With this new capability, any person designated as a co-teacher can add or remove students to the Class Notebook. This capability is now built in, so any co-teacher can choose Add or remove students, select the Class Notebook that they are designated as a co-teacher and make the updates.
Class notebook with ability for a co-teacher to add/remove students.
One important note: Starting in January in 2016, this capability will only exist for new Class Notebooks created with the app called “Class Notebook.” To enable this ability for previously created Class Notebooks, remove the co-teacher from this old Class Notebook and then re-add the co-teacher to the Class Notebook. This enables the new functionality for the old Class Notebooks.
Staff Notebook updates
Remove staff member and co-owners—Similar to our October updates to Class Notebooks, we added the top-requested Add or remove staff member/co-owner functionality to the Staff Notebook app. To try it out, go into the Staff Notebook app that has existing staff members and click the new Add or remove staff members button and select the Staff Notebook that you want to add or remove staff members.
Updated buttons allow the removal of staff members or co-owners.
Ability to remove staff members.
Active Directory security group and Office 365 Group support—In addition, we’ve also added support for Active Directory security groups and Office 365 Group support when adding Staff members to a Staff Notebook.
Adding an Active Directory security group to a Staff Notebook.
Co-owners can now add or remove staff members—Similar to the Class Notebook updates mentioned above, Staff Notebook co-owners now have the ability for a co-owner to add or remove staff members. A scenario might include a principal who is on vacation but a new staff member needs access to the Staff Notebook. With this new capability, any person designated as a co-owner can add or remove staff members to the Staff Notebook. This feature works in the same way as the Class Notebook capability described above.
One important note: Starting in January 2016, this capability will only exist for new Staff Notebooks created with the app called “Staff Notebook.” To enable this ability for previously created Staff Notebooks, remove the staff member from this old Staff Notebook and then re-add the staff to the Staff Notebook. This enables the new functionality for the old Staff Notebooks.
Legacy SharePoint Store app updates
OneNote Class Notebook Creator updates—Based on customer feedback, we have added remove student or co-teacher capabilities to the old SharePoint Store app. If your school uses the original app titled “OneNote Class Notebook Creator,” then these updates apply to you. Schools that have deployed Class Notebooks using SharePoint Team Sites are often still using the older version. Although we no longer have this app available for new installations in the SharePoint Store, customers using the old OneNote Class Notebook Creator can still receive these improvements, which will require an IT admin to update. Details on how IT admins can deploy the updates are in the Class Notebook Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
OneNote Staff Notebook updates—Based on customer feedback, we have added the Remove staff member or co-owner capabilities to the old SharePoint Store app. If your school uses the original app titled “OneNote Staff Notebook,” then these updates apply to you. Schools that have deployed Staff Notebooks using SharePoint Team Sites are often still using the older version. Although we no longer have this app available for new installations in the SharePoint Store, customers using it can still receive these updates, which will require an IT admin to update. Details on how IT admins can deploy the updates are in the Staff Notebook Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
Note: Support for Active Directory group or Office 365 Group will not be added to the old OneNote Class Notebook Creator or the OneNote Staff Notebook Creator apps.
OneNote Online updates
Image crop—A top UserVoice request from our OneNote Online customers has been the ability to add image cropping to OneNote Online. We’ve granted that New Year’s wish to our customers! To try it out, just select any image in OneNote Online, click the Format ribbon tab and then click Crop.
Image cropping in OneNote Online.
Remove previously used notebooks—OneNote Online customers can now remove a notebook from the list of previously viewed notebooks on the online “Notebooks” page by hovering over the notebook and clicking the X that appears. This feature can be used to remove notebooks that are no longer relevant or no longer exist.
Remove previously viewed notebooks.
We hope that teachers, students and schools around the world enjoy these updates in the New Year. Stay tuned for more exciting things coming your way in 2016!