As we all continue to work towards protecting the Salvation Army data and its networks, ISG will be implementing a change to incoming emails known as an external email banner or external email warning.  This system helps to alert users from clicking on malicious links, phishing emails sent by external senders.  It plays a vital role in protecting against spam and phishing threats.

What this means is that from Friday, 11 June, any emails received from senders outside of TSA NZFTS territory will contain a banner at the top of the message.  The purpose of this is to remind email users to be cautious of opening attachments or following links from external contacts, helping reduce the threat of phishing and malware.

On the Outlook client, the banner will look similar to this:

This banner will also appear in your Inbox on your mobile and will be similar to this:

Please note, that this will be for all emails sent from outside our Microsoft tenant (which includes other TSA territories).  It may also appear on emails that are created from within TechOne too.  The important matter is to pay attention to the banner and IF you are not expecting the email and it contains links, then check with the sender (if you know them) before proceeding.  

Should you have any queries on this, feel free to contact the ISG team and they will be happy to clear up any concerns with this.

Thank you for your assistance as we all work together to protect our client’s data and the TSA network.

Microsoft can analyze dangerous emails to determine why those messages made it past your spam filters.

When you receive an email that you find suspicious - potentially a phishing email - so you ignore or delete it.  Another option is to report the email to Microsoft for analysis using a free Microsoft add-in for Outlook called Report Message.  You can also use it to report a "false positive," meaning a legitimate email that was incorrectly identified as spam. Microsoft analyzes such messages to improve its spam filtering technology.

The add-in works with desktop and web clients, though the install is different.

If you use both clients, installing in one will make it available in the other however:

Installing for desktop

From your Inbox, select the Home tab then click on the Get Add-ins button

This opens the Add-ins window. In the search box type ‘report message’ as in the screenshot.

Select the Report Message add-in and install it.

For web client

From your inbox , select a message and from the right hand side of the message window click on the three dots

Scroll down to the bottom of the menu that appears and select ‘Get Add-ins’

Install is the same as for desktop client.

Using Report Message

Desktop – Select the message , then click on the ‘Report Message’. From the menu select an appropriate option. 

Web – Select the message , then click on the three dots in the message window and select ‘Report Message’ from the menu. Select an appropriate option.

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.

What you need to know!

This will happen next Thursday, 23 August 2018 from 6pm

Your email address will change to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and will become your primary logon to The Salvation Army (TSA) systems. (Note the underscore becomes a DOT and there are no apostrophes (‘) or spaces!).

All old email addresses will continue to receive email.

Continue to logon to your work PC with your SID (Sxxxx).

From Friday 24 August, please logon to all TSA web applications including Google applications and TechOne Finance and Payroll with This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The exceptions are:

• SAMIS – Continue using your SID
• iMIS – Continue using your current logon

Your Chrome Profile (logging into chrome browser) will continue to work with the old profile name however will eventually ask you to reauthenticate. At this point, you must change the name to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. format. We will send full details on this next week prior to the change.

On your mobile phone you will need to re-log on to your Google account with the new format. Full details will be sent next week prior to the change.

Why the change?

The International IT Council has made the decision that The Salvation Army globally are moving from IBM Notes to use Microsoft Office 365. As preparation for this we need to transition to use the primary email address for log in purposes.

Taking advantage of this change, a further decision was made to come in line with common email address format, using the dot “.” separator instead of the underscore “_”.

We will keep you all posted on further developments of this project as it unfolds. 

Why not encourage others to subscribe to the blog so they can stay on top of any impending changes? 

Next week we will publish some helpful trouble shooting details prior to change over.

From 10 WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ YOUR EMAILS 
(By Erik Sherman, business and tech writer for Inc, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and more.)

You still won’t get everyone to read your messages, but you can increase the percentage, which is only good for you and your organization.

From 10 WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ YOUR EMAILS 
(By Erik Sherman, business and tech writer for Inc, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and more.)

From 10 WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ YOUR EMAILS 
(By Erik Sherman, business and tech writer for Inc, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and more.)

With the continual bombardment of emails we all receive from day to day, we thought it would be helpful to users to read the following tips on how to manage emails more effectively.  It is a lengthy article, so rather than take up your valuable time and screen space showing you the whole article  in this one entry we will give 2 useful tips over the next few blog entries.

We trust this will be helpful to all.

10 WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ YOUR EMAILS
(By Erik Sherman, business and tech writer for Inc, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and more.)

Email is an efficient and effective form of communication. It’s also very easy to ignore. That’s because most email is spam, so people are primed to hit the delete button.

So how do you get people to actually read your missives? Try these:-

Set Importance to High

Email historically has been insecure, in that external email sent in and out of IBM Notes has been sent as clear text and can be read by anyone "listening on the wire".

Encrypted communication is now enabled when sending or receiving email to external addresses, as our servers have recently been upgraded to utilise the latest encryption ciphers available.  It works in the same way, secure websites work - those with https:// at the beginning of the URL. This is great!

Unfortunately...!

Encryption is not available for some email destinations for many reasons including the use of older outdated ciphers or encryption is simply not enabled at the destination. Email will still be sent to these destinations, though unencrypted.

Note also that this utilises TLS - Transport Layer Encryption, which only encrypts the communication from one server to another, once the email has arrived at the destination it will again be unencrypted. Whereas encrypted email remains encrypted from when the sender encrypts it, and only the recipient decrypts the email when reading it.

So what do you need to do?  Almost nothing as encryption is enabled and works for almost all email destinations.  Do however consider what sensitive information is sent via email, such as credit card numbers or a client's personal information. If you do have highly sensitive information, you may want to talk to ISG to ensure your destination is enabled for encryption or use an alternative to email for sharing information.

There have probably been times you are waiting for an important and urgent email that does not come and ponder, has it been sent or has it been blocked? The Salvation Army like all reputable organisations protect staff by blocking emails that are malicious, offensive or simply annoying. The problem is that on rare occasions emails are incorrectly marked as spam!

Now there are two ways you can check for valid emails trapped in the spam filter!

Message Center:

Message Center is available at the following address https://email-quarantine.google.com/messagecenter.  Here you can view spam and if an email is genuine, click the Not spam (deliver) button to go to sent to your inbox.  You can also view all email in the last 30 days and even mark email that was sent through as spam.

Weekly Email Digest:

Starting this Friday, you will receive an email listing all emails received in the last period, with those marked as spam listed first. You can select the options to do the same as the Message center and send valid mail or mark it as spam.

Note:

• ISG can track email but can no longer release email, you will need to complete this yourself via the Message Center.
• You cannot view spam email for a shared mailbox, a ticket will still need to be logged to ISG to track undelivered email.
• This does not effect Tonga Region, please continue to check your spam folder.

This was the email message coming back to you on busy day when everything just needed to fall into place. You had previously forwarded an important email with attachments on your phone that needed immediate action.

This is a common problem that needs another three clicks to resolve.

In IBM Verse (Traveler) when you forward an email we need to ensure that the entire email is available locally on your phone / device before forwarding the email. To do this:

Click the blue download button on a truncated email and allow it to resync. Check another email rather than wait for it.

Next if there are any attachment(s) open them on your device.  You will likely be prompted by this message:

Attachment Unavailable!

Attachment_name.doc is not available locally.  Would you like to download it?

Select Yes and you will see a download progress screen, before it opens.  Note there is often a small pause before the download begins.  Select view to look at the attachment.  Repeat for each attachment.

Now you can forward the email and the attachments with confidence!

From time to time we all get unexpected emails. Maybe it is from a family member asking for a favour, but those aren't the ones I'm referring to. The emails I talking about are ones that invite action. They want you to click somewhere, or reply with certain information (yes I know emails from Team iSG do this at times).

The difference is what you're expecting! You should expect an email from Team iSG with information about a request. And you should expect to be asked to follow a link to update information in that email.

What if you get an email that looks like this?

My initial reaction to is simply delete this and NOT follow any of the links. Why? I wasn't expecting any files to be sent to me. So that sets off warning bells in my head (plus it means 1 less email to have to deal with).

Of course a little further down in my inbox there was an email from a friend telling me they were sending me some photos through a service called TrasferBigFiles.com. That gave me the opportunity to question them and verify that I was actually going to be getting files and not some malware or a virus on my computer.

Over the weekend we changed the delivery of email from the IHQ Barracuda to routing through a Google service. This means that we now have a lot more autonomy over both catching and releasing spam for people within the territory.

Google recently published that in Gmail it catches 99/9% of spam (see the article here). However the point of the change was to enable us to better diagnose delivery issues and release emails that are falsely classed as spam. The process through IHQ was laborious and time consuming while also being constrained by the 12 hour time difference and a limit on spam being held for only 48 hours.

From today we'll be working with a new process for releasing and incorrectly captured spam. Please be patient with us as we iron out the kinks in the process. The key details we require when looking for messages are sender, recipient, date, and time.  

May your week be empty of spam and filled with progress towards making our communities better places for everyone within them.

Did you know that according to The Salvation Army's Year Book, our territory has close on 3,000 people employed.  That does not count the hundreds of volunteers.  Trying to stay on top of what needs to be done when replacing a staff member, or training a new volunteer can be exhausting, and there are ways a manager can minimise all the 'added extras' that come up as you train a new person at your centre.

For example, most managers know what access a user requires on their servers, and all the applications of Lotus Notes.

From an ISG perspective, completing the EDP3 form (found under ISG forms on the intranet) gives us all the information we need to ensure users have the right access, but you as the manager can make the process easier during the induction by creating an "Induction email" template.  (Lotus Notes 8.5 Series - part 1: Mail (Stationery)).  In this induction email you could add the links to the various mail files they need access to, and the databases as well (Giving access to your Lotus Notes Mail and/or Calendar to others).

You might even want to provide them a link to this blog (https://intranet.sarmy.net.nz/index.php/departments-a-services/isg-help-desk/isg-blog/latest) so they can search the various tips and tricks available here, and suggest they subscribe.  

And when you have a new staff member or volunteer arrive, once their account has been created, you simply need to go to your saved stationery and send them a copy.  In one quick method, you can inform them of a bunch of links, which they can study at their leisure and the various links provided will add them to their workspace ready for future use.

Adjusting font size in Lotus Notes

Depending on your monitor screen size and preference adjusting your font size in Lotus Notes can be something consider.

To do so (while lotus notes is open) simply click “File – Preferences” then select “Fonts and Colors “. By default the size it set to normal, you can change between Large and Extra Large. Have a go at each setting and see what works best.

Bonus Tip: You can also change the unread mail marks to “red” if you prefer the old school look of Lotus Notes 7.

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.

We all know about the "Out of Office" function in Lotus Notes, and how useful a function it is to use when you are away either on holiday, at a conference, on sick leave etc.  It helps those who have sent you an email to know when to expect a response from you.

But did you know that you can send different messages to different people with this functionality? For example, you may be away at a course or conference, and you want the generic emails to simply be told you are out of the office, and that you are unable to check on emails, but you want those in your team to know in urgent cases they can text you.  Or you are on holiday and again generic users just need to be notified when you will be back, but you can send a response to your team that says "Haha I'm on holiday and you're not" :-) or maybe something a little more professional.

To do this is very simple.  Simply follow these steps:

1. Go to your Inbox, and select 'More' > 'Out of Office..'

2.  The window that opens allows you to set your out of office for all incoming emails.  Set the date you are 'Leaving', 'Returning' and the 'Additional Body text:' is for what you want the reply email to say.  If you don't want to set a separate message to a select few, then just click on 'Enable and Close' and your out of office is now set.

3.  However, if you do need to have a separate message for the select few, then before "Enabling" select the 'Alternate Notification' tab, and in 'To' field enter the group, or individual email address to whom the message will relate to, and under  'Additional Body text' type the relevant information necessary. then 'Enable and Close'.

4.  A third option is to stop the out of office email being sent to specific groups or emails. This would be used for the likes of ISG Job Track notifications etc.  In the 'Sent by' field, enter the email address(es) which you do not want notified of your leave, as shown below.  Once done 'Enable and Close'.

Hope you have found this useful, and remember its common courtesy to let people know you are away and give them options of who to contact while you are away, or that you will respond to them on your return.

If your computer has recently upgraded itself to the latest version of Internet Explorer (IE11) then the webmail page may not display correctly.

If it looks similar to below - fear not there is an easy fix!

We need to tell Internet Explorer to "pretend" to be an older version of itself for this website to display properly.  This function is known as Compatibility View.

To do this, you need to go into the Tools menu (cog icon in the top right-hand corner, or ALT>Tools), then choose Compatibility View settings

You should see a screen like this:

Note how that window already has "sarmy.net.nz" in the "Add this website" box.

Click the [Add] button.

(if by chance that box is empty, then manually type 'sarmy.net.nz' into the top box then click the [Add] button).

Now that the website "sarmy.net.nz" is in the larger middle box in that window click the [Close] button.  That will make Internet Explorer automatically refresh the webmail page, and presto! Your webmail should now display correctly.

Note that this list of websites to display in "Compatibility View" is a per user & per computer setting.

SO you may well have to repeat these steps for YOURSELF if you use other computers.

And other people who use the same computer as you may also have to repeat this procedure.

Or you could use Google's Chrome as an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer.

Does your Inbox fill up with emails that you don't want to see (junk) or that you file in a specific folder to be read later (i.e. newsletters etc).  Then Quick Rule is what you need.

Create rules more quickly by basing them on the characteristics of a selected message.  Use them to trap junk mail or to assign high importance to messages.

The following steps will help you create it.  First go to your Inbox, then:

1. Select a message that has the characteristics you wish to use in the rule (eg. sender, subject, etc)
2. [Click] 'More' and choose 'Create QuickRule...'
3. Select and set the conditions for the rule. Choose whether one or all conditions must be met.
4. Choose the action to perform, such as 'Move to folder','Change importance to High' or 'Do not accept message'. Complete information as per screen request then [Click] Ok.

These rules are visible in the Tools > Rules view.  This is found on the left hand side of the Inbox screen, below the list of folders. To modify any rule, simply double click on the rule and make the necessary changes.