Purpose
This article provides some valuable tips and suggestions for ensuring business continuity — in other words, making your workflows independent of individual people so that you can still do your work even if someone becomes unavailable.
Best Practices
Shared Mailboxes
Consider using a shared mailbox instead of directing users to email a specific department member for help. By using a shared mailbox, you can ensure others with access to the mailbox can assist with answering email even if that department member is out-of-office.
A shared mailbox also includes an attached shared calendar that can be accessed by everyone who has access to the mailbox. Unlike events shared from an individual's calendar, events scheduled on the shared mailbox's calendar can be altered or deleted even if the individual who created them in the first place is unavailable.
For redundancy, always make sure there are at least two people with access to any shared mailbox/calendar. To request a shared mailbox, click here.
Teams & SharePoint
Microsoft Teams is a great way to communicate with your co-workers. It also makes it easy to share files and information. Files shared in a team are automatically stored in SharePoint, which any team member can access. To request a Team, click here.
Unlike sharing files through OneDrive, where only the owner of the OneDrive account can choose who has access, SharePoint allows all of the team's owners to manage file permissions. If your team has more than one owner, the business can continue as usual if one of them becomes unavailable.
OneDrive
OneDrive storage should only be used for files that are specific to an individual, as they will be removed when someone leaves UTD.
Box (CometSpace)
Box is an excellent alternative to SharePoint for sharing files. It is similar to OneDrive in the sense that it is not linked to a specific team; you can share files with anyone, even outside of UTD. However, unlike OneDrive, Box lets you add co-owners of files you share. As above, if you add one or more co-owners when you share a file, they will be able to manage the file access if you become unavailable. It is highly recommended that you transfer files from one individual to another if someone is leaving the university. To read how to do this, click here.
Box Shares: Box shares can be created so that the files are not tied to an individual. This is highly recommended for files needed if an individual leaves the university. To request this, please submit a ticket.
Network Drives
Network drives are another file-sharing solution. They are more restrictive than SharePoint or Box because they do not provide as much flexibility with setting permissions for who can access each file. UTD has several departmental folders within our main network drive, which staff and faculty can request access to by submitting an eCAT. Any file stored within a departmental folder is accessible to any other user with access to that folder. To request a new network drive or update an existing one, click here.