ISG Blog

Todays Tip is in answer to a comment made on the Training Surveys and how to open the Territorial Calendar

The Office 365 training sessions begins today.

The general plan is that users will be migrated as iSG move from training centre locations. What this means is, for example, training at Wellington City Corps this morning included staff from Wellington City and Central Divisional Headquarters and all staff at these sites have now been migrated.  The intention is so that after training, users can start using O365 straight away.

As we contact centres to confirm the training location we will be confirming the list of staff and officers to be migrated.  No replies to this request will simply mean that users will be migrated to the E1 (online version only) licence. 

The training is expected to be no more than an hour long and is set to update users with the upcoming changes to how to use emails and calendar and also provides an overview on MS Teams and the great functions available through this system.

ISG will be providing training geographically by divisional areas and so for ASARS and other centres that are not managed by DHQ's, you will be contacted to inform you of when we will be in your area and when migration for the users at your site will be happening.

This week sees the ISG team training at:

Monday - Wellington City and Newtown hub

Tuesday - Newtown hub

Wednesday - Tawa

Friday - Upper Hutt

We envisage the email, calendar and instant message migration to be complete just before Congress (with only one centre to be done after this event).

Thank you for your ongoing support of the work iSG are involved with and we look forward to working with you to enable the mission.

With the introduction of Google apps to TSA, one of the apps that may be very useful to Corps and centres is the Google Calendar.

Did you know that within the Calendar you are able to create a publically shared calendar.  This could be useful to Corps who wish to share the upcoming events to their congregation, but also really useful to set up for a team you may manage to share overall events that the team need to be aware of (eg. staff on leave).

To create this "shared" Calendar, simply:

1. login to Google with your TSA account (ie. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) ;
2. then in Google Drive, select the icon on top right corner of window;
3. select Google Calendar  and your calendar will appear;
4. On the left hand side column you can select the drop down arrow next to "My calendars", then "Create a new calendar".  
5. Fill in the necessary information on screen and then "Create Calendar".  If you are creating this to share with external emails (i.e. not TSA emails) then ensure when you select "Share this calendar with others" that the box marked "Make this calendar public" is ticked and that the selection is to "See all event details".  This allows you to share it with
6. Under "Share with specific people", you can then select who you wish to share the calendar with by typing their email address and selecting the appropriate permission settings.

You can always go back to share the calendar with more people if you wish to, or to manage any required removals etc. 

Most of us know that we can create calendar entries within Lotus Notes, but did you know that when you invite someone to the meeting you have just created you can also stay on top of who has replied to you and who hasn't?

In Lotus Notes this is a very simple process.  First you create your meeting invite as per your normal process and under 'Who: Required:' you would enter the email addresses of those you wish to have present, so if a staff meeting, you would enter your staff group name, or individually those in your staff you want to attend.  Remember to check their calendar to minimise the backwards and forwards of having to sort out the right time (this is under 'Find available times' at bottom of screen) and then 'Save and send invitations'.

To check on who has replied to you or not, you simply go back into the meeting entry on your calendar and at the top you can:

• 'View invitee status' - this shows you has accepted the invited who haven't and who you are still waiting to hear from;
• Go to 'Owner's actions' and select from the drop down list what you would like to do.  Reschedule, Cancel, Send message to invitees, Send message to invitees who have responded or Send message to invitees who have not responded

This is also an easy way to send an email to the various invitees with all the information already in the calendar entry and means you only do a job once rather than send an email enquiring about a meeting, and then having to send a calendar invite.

We thought it timely to remind all users who have a smartphone on the TSA mobile plan that one of the good applications to load on your smart phone is Lotus Traveler. We do have a tip sheet with some brief instructions on how to load it, but to assist you we have provided below the steps you need to follow to get this operational:

1. Open the internet browser on your phone.
2. In the address bar enter type “traveler.sarmy.net.nz”.
3. Use your lotus notes logon (e.g. FirstName [space] LastName, i.e. ‘Joe Blogg’) and then your current lotus notes password.
4. Then select ‘Sign In’.
5. On next screen, select ‘Configure your Android’.  A download of Lotus Traveler should begin downloading.
6. Once download is complete, select it to install it.  Depending on your current settings your phone may get this message “Install Blocked: For Security your device is to block installation of applications not obtained from Google Play.”
7. Go to settings and then tick the box to allow unknown sources of apps to install.
8. On the following screens simply select ‘Next’, then select ‘Install’, then select ‘Open’, and lastly ‘Accept’
9. Enter your Lotus Notes Credentials First Name – Last Name and pass word and click next.
10. Select Activate
11. Choose between your phones internal or removable memory and then select finish.
12. Select Ok in the next screen.  Your phone will now sync with the server and set itself with your data.  This may take a few minutes.

As with your normal Lotus Notes account you have to change your password every 90 days / 3 months. Every time you change your Lotus Notes password you also need to change the password on your mobile phone.

To do this you need open the actual Lotus Traveler icon on your phone.  Once done you will get options on the bottom of screen.  Open the settings menu, then to update your Lotus Notes password select ‘Account’.

To select items like notification sounds and other settings select ‘Applications’.

To download the tip sheet simply go 'Department and Services' on Intranet menu, and select ISG Tip Sheets.

Our grateful thanks to Anthony McFarlane for his assistance in the writing of this blog entry.

There are times when you will need to provide access to your mail file to others in the office (eg.  your assistant, when you are on leave for an extended period and someone is looking after your role, etc).

So this blog entry is to assist you with doing exactly this.  Often we will receive a request for this in ISG, and we thought it may be easier if you learned how to do this yourself, which would then make the process quicker for you, and ISG is then given more time to work on the various other jobs we get.

So here are the steps to follow to do just that:

First you need to open your mailbox. Once there select ‘Preferences’ from the More options button. 

Click the ‘Access and Delegation’ tab. 

This allows you to add/remove users who can access your mail, and change what access they have. 

If you are giving someone access for the first time they will need a link to access your mailbox. The easiest way to do this is to email them a link for their workspace. 

To do this simply right click your mailbox (on your workspace) and select application – copy as link. 

You can now paste the copied link into an email and send it to the appropriate person. 

They simply need to click on the icon and the link will be automatically added to their workspace and it will also open the Inbox/Calendar on their screen.