Purchase Transitioning from Zoom to Teams for Faculty in Fall 2024

MS Teams is a pillar of the Microsoft collaboration and office suites. At its most basic level it provides Videoconferencing, breakout-rooms, chat, and file sharing tools to enhance interactions with colleagues and students across the college. Teams has a simple and intuitive interface, and you can instantly use it effectively. There is little to no learning curve for the activities you use the most, and there are abundant self-paced tutorials available.

For the Fall 2024 semester the majority of Faculty Zoom Pro licenses will not be renewed. Your existing licenses will continue to function normally for the entire Summer 2024 semester. But as you prepare for your next term’s sections, I encourage you to start getting familar with Teams functionality.

In an effort to help ease this transition, Faculty teaching online classes may be able to retain their Zoom Pro licences.

If you are teaching sections that are “Hyflex”, “Online - Synchronous”, or “Online - Combined” you can request to keep your license for the 2024/25 academic year. Those teaching sections that are “Hybrid” or “Online - Asynchronous” will require their Division Director’s approval to be granted a license. For those that would auto-qualify for a Zoom Pro license, CTS will email you in the coming week requesting that you confirm your wish to keep a license.

All Faculty Zoom Pro licenses will not be renewed for Fall 2025.

This past September, all staff were transitioned from Zoom Pro licenses to Teams. This provided the school with approximately $13,000 in annual saving this year and this next step in the transition, will save an additional $20,000 next year.

Everyone will continue to have a Basic Zoom account associated with their Purchase College accounts. These basic Zoom accounts can join any Zoom meetings hosted by others and can even host short zoom meetings on their own – up to 40 minutes. Basic Zoom accounts are free. Our students already use basic Zoom accounts.

For additional information please see the CTS Wiki article for MS Teams.

For additional training please book a Teams Training appointment.

Thank you for your assistance and support during this future transition.

Ryan Nassisi

Interim Director of Campus Technology Services

Purchase College - SUNY