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Office 365 is building integration into educational open source software

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Published onJuly 2, 2015

published onJuly 2, 2015

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After a few decades behind the iron wall of anti-open source sentiments, it would appear Microsoft is finally open (all pun intended) to the benefits and extended possibilities open source implementations have to offer. Last Friday at Microsoft’s Open Tech, the Office team announced a handful of open source integrations. Among the new integrations wereOpen edXand Office 365, and an update to the open sourceMoodle integrationwith Office 365.

Today, the Office team isgoing into further detail on their blogabout how those integrations fit into Microsoft’s broader trend of more openness and interoperability.

Whether you’re a fourth grader at your local elementary school, a forty-year-old working on an evening MBA, or a fourth year associate enrolled in training at your company, there’s a good chance that you use a popular LMS (Learning Management System) or MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform such as Moodle, Open edX or others for submitting homework and managing your education. There’s also a good chance that you use Microsoft Office 365—the world’s leading productivity suite—for creating content and collaborating with others.

With regards to the Office Teams new integrations,single sign-on(SSO) is what will help instructors and students navigate between Office and the new integrations without a login request each time. UsingLog in with Office 365, users become authenticated in a singular experience for Moodle or Open edX while still retaining full access to Office 365 documents and services. The Office team is further streamlining their process by allowing teachers and students the option to put Moodle or Open edX into the My Apps launcher in Office 365. With this addition, users LMS or MOOC is now just a click away when working within Office 365.

The use of SSO is backed by Azure Active Directory and uses the OAuth2 standard as well as OpenID Connect (OIDC). The Office team went a step further and enabled a variety integrations with Calendar and OneNote into both Open edX and Moodle. Using the Calendar API as well as the OneNote API, students can now choose to synchronize their calendars with Outlook to Moodle’s course schedules seamlessly. The integration results in real-time updates and notifications on class scheduling if need be.

While the Office team continues to find many benefits using open source, they also wanted to contribute to the open source effort. According to the team, “OIDC support has been implemented for Moodle and Open edX in a manner that allows use by any OIDC provider—not just Office 365 and Azure AD. We’ve done the same for OEmbed support, so you can use the new OEmbed plugin for Moodle to embed an Office Mix, or to embed any other OEmbed source such as YouTube, Slideshare, and many others.”

For those interested, the Moodle plugins have been available since January for Office 365. The plugins include SSO, OneNote submissions and feedback, OneDrive integration, Outlook calendar sync and Office Mix (OEmbed) integrations. As for Open edX, integrations should become available in early July. With the release of Open edX “Cypres”, users will find integrations that include SSO and OneDrive integration.

Kareem Anderson

Networking & Security Specialist

Kareem is a journalist from the bay area, now living in Florida. His passion for technology and content creation drives are unmatched, driving him to create well-researched articles and incredible YouTube videos.

He is always on the lookout for everything new about Microsoft, focusing on making easy-to-understand content and breaking down complex topics related to networking, Azure, cloud computing, and security.

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Kareem Anderson

Networking & Security Specialist

He is a journalist from the bay area, now living in Florida. He breaks down complex topics related to networking, Azure, cloud computing, and security