ISG Blog

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.

You will have recently started receiving the Cortana daily briefing emails.

The Briefing email helps you stay in control of your calendar and be intentional about your day. Within two hours of your workday (as set up in Outlook), you'll get an email about any relevant items to help you better prepare for the day ahead, including:

• Outstanding commitments, requests, and follow-ups to and from other collaborators in email that might have fallen through the cracks.
• Documents related to today’s meetings that you might want to review beforehand.
• Suggested focus time you can schedule to help get independent work done.

If you don't want to receive these, you can unsubscribe by following the link in the email you received.

If you want to know more about it, then follow this link for a little more information on the daily briefing emails.

For the video, click here

If you need to have focused, private conversations with people on your team, create a private channel. Most channels are standard ones — everyone on the team can see them as well as view and participate in conversations, share files, and more.  With a private channel, members of a team must be specifically added to it to participate, see content, and to see the channel appear in their list of channels.

For the video, click here

Working in Microsoft Teams lets you work on files together at the same time. Also, messages about the document stay with it and will show up in your team conversations.

For the video, click here.

In Microsoft Teams, teams are groups of people brought together for work, projects, or common interests.  Every Corps and Centre already have a Teams group set up for their location.

Teams are made up of two types of channels — standard (available and visible to everyone) and private (focused, private conversations with a specific audience). Each channel is built around a topic like "Team Events," a department name, or just for fun. Channels are where you hold meetings, have conversations, and work on files together.

The tabs at the top of each channel link to your favorite files, apps, and services.

We see an ever increasing use of Microsoft Teams within the Salvation Army, and we are excited at the various possibilities of its use for collaboration in the workplace, and success in the delivery of our mission (to care for people, transform lives, reform society).

There have been a number of tips already provided through this blog on useful features in Microsoft Teams and you can search the blog for these.

However as is common with all things IT, features are often getting updated and its hard for us to keep this information up to date.

However, we have good news.  If you want to know more of what's available in Teams, or need a training video on what's available in teams, you already have this accessible to you.

When the Teams app is open on your screen just click on the "?" on bottom left corner of the window...

That will give you some options...

Selecting Topics will give you a list of various features you can choose to read how best to use them. Selecting Training will provide with a list of short videos where you can see how to perform certain tasks (working in Teams and channels, uploading files, managing chats and calls, etc).  Really useful when you have a few minutes spare in your day to watch and learn how to best use the tool that you have at your disposal.

Over coming weeks, we will highlight some of the ones we believe will be useful to you, but don't wait for us to show you.  Take the opportunity to learn from here.

Thanks for all you do in the mission of caring for people, transforming lives and reforming society.  We hope the tools TSA provides you (O365, Teams, SAMIS, etc) help enable that mission.

It has been good to see the increased use of Microsoft Teams around the territory, and one could say this has been one of the silver linings of our lockdown period. Microsoft Teams is a great tool for collaborating with each other particular when you are unable to be in the same location but even for sending quick messages to colleagues no matter where they are.  Video conferencing has also been used to a much greater extent in the last few months.

But much more than this, there are a number of useful applications within Teams that are often not used because many don't know about it.  Today we want to show you a simple tip that will help you be more effective and productive when using MS Teams.

The search bar in Teams can be used not only for searching through any chat, or collaboration thread for previous information, but it can also be used as a command line.  If you type "/" on the search field you are given the following list:

You choose whichever option you wish by simply typing the remainder of the command. For me the ones I find really helpful in this list include:

/org - which provides the line management for a specific person in our TSA directory

/dnd - quickly sets my status to 'Do Not Disturb' when I'm working on a project and don't want any interruptions, or find myself in a meeting doing a presentation and don't want my chat notifications popping up on screen

/chat - which saves me searching a previous conversation to add to it, I can just use this to quickly send a message to a specific person

Why not take the time to try some of these?  You may, like me, find this a really useful way of quickly finding or sending information.

It has been a while since ISG provided any tips on our blog and so we want to help you be more productive with the tools you currently have as well as learn some tips on some of the features that are available to you within O365.

Over the next few weeks we will be looking at MS Teams and help you make the most of this fantastic O365 tool that all TSA users have access to.

Today we want to focus on the latest update to the video capability in Teams.  A new feature called "Together mode" has recently been launched to all MS Team users and this is particularly helpful when you have a video meeting with a number of people.  The grid view is still available (up to 9), and an extended Large gallery is also now available (up to 49!) but the grid view can be a little hard to focus on who or what to watch.

The Together mode, using AI, merges all the faces into a single "room" and helps with focussing on the topic at hand.

This is available now to all TSA users. and to get this going you need to do a couple of things:

First, when in Teams, you may need to ensure you have the latest version of Teams, so go to the icon on top right of the Teams window and select "Check for updates"

then select Settings > "Turn on new meeting experience" by ticking the appropriate box

If the box has not been ticked, and you have now made the change, you will need to restart Teams to ensure this takes effect. Your pc may need a complete restart to ensure Teams is not still running in the background.

Then next time you are in a Teams meeting, and you have joined the meeting, you simply need to hit on the "..." (3 dots) on the toolbar and select Together mode.  Be aware that if there are not enough people in the group meeting, then this option may be greyed out but as soon as there are enough people to fill the "room" this will become available.

So next time you are in a video call with a number of people, why not try this.

ISG wishes to pass on a huge thank you to everyone in the territory who helped us complete Phase One of our Office 365 migration plan. 

Other than a little bit of “mop up” work, all our users are now using Office 365 for their email and calendar. 

After several months of planning, 32 training locations, 85 training sessions, near 1700 users and 200+ shared mailboxes migrated, more than 26,000 kilometres travelled, and hundreds of hours of work delivered by the iSG team in preparation, delivery, training (both at the time of migration and after in support calls), and all other support work for this migration, we can now take a five minute breather before embarking on Phase Two of our project. 

Thank you to all who made the effort to attend training (and some of you had to travel a fair distance). We trust that it was a worthwhile time and that you did pick up some good tips on how to manage your calendar and emails in a more efficient way so you can spend the time 'doing' the mission of caring, transforming and reforming.  Do remember there are a lot of tips in tricks in Supportal under Solutions, and subscribe to the iSG blog for regular reminder of some of these.

I want to specifically say a BIG thanks to the ISG team as they have travelled on this journey with us:

• To the service desk team capably led by Michael Cabatbat, always willing to assist our users with their many queries… thanks;
• To the back office team as they worked through the many possible pitfalls and navigated through all of them providing minimal disruption to our users during this time of transition… thanks; 
• To Robert McIlwraith who assisted our users with a smooth and mostly stress free change through his diligent training sessions and thorough notes (including all the new tips in the Solutions section of the supportal)... thanks; 
• To Ian Wood and Mark Whittaker who undertook the bulk of the load as they migrated each account and ensured what needed to be available to each user was made available when it needed to be… a big thanks. The number of extra hours spent outside of work hours to ensure there was minimal disruption to the users in the territory has been incredible, and the sacrifice given in this from them is something I am very grateful for.
• And finally to our families, for your patience, the endless long nights without us and your ongoing support and understanding of the fact we are "enabling the mission" for this wonderful organisation… thanks.

Congrats team on a successful delivery of Phase One.  

Bring on Phase Two 😉

So a little update for the territory...

The O365 migration is going well and all centres in the Central Divisional area have now been migrated.  iSG continue to work with Corps and Centres who are yet to be migrated confirming venues, dates and providing all the relevant information users need prior to attending the training we are providing.

From an iSG perspective, its great to meet so many of those who work day in and out of our "front lines" face to face.  We thank you for all you do in caring for people, transforming lives and reforming society.  And if we haven't seen you yet, we will soon! 

O365 is coming!!

As ISG migrates users to O365, a number of these users are being migrated to the E3 licence.  This is the licence that allows you to have the Office Products installed locally, rather than only having these available online (which is what the E1 licence offers).

As part of this migration, iSG needs to connect to each of the E3 machines to do the installation of the new software.  ISG have encountered issues when trying to connect to some machines as the power settings have been set to turn the machine off after a certain amount of time.  One really helpful thing iSG would like to ask our users to do, even if NOT going to the E3 licence is to take 3 minutes (maybe not even that) out of your day and follow the steps below.  This will be hugely beneficial to iSG but also to you for future updates that may need to happen with the ISG Rental machines.

Once logged in, go to "Start" and:

1. Select Control Panel
   
2. Then select Power Options
   
3. On left hand side of the window, click on "Change when the computer sleeps
   
4. A new window will appear and under the "Plugged in" column click the down arrow and select "Never"
   
5. Then just select "Save changes" and that is all iSG needs.  
   

Thanks for your help in helping us help you.  

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.

The long awaited Office 365 is finally here!

This post serves to update the territory on what has been happening over the past few months, and where we are heading over the next few weeks.

Phase one of O365 is about to start, moving TSA users from using IBM Notes to Microsoft O365.  This is primarily with regards your emails, calendar and instant messaging.  So far iSG have migrated a couple of pilot sites (Rolleston Corps Plant and Samoa RHQ), and have also recently completed the migration of all THQ (Cuba Street) users.  Overall, most have been migrated successfully, but it is fair to say some users encountered some disruption to their routine work as iSG assisted them with their move.  iSG have focussed their efforts in sorting any issues and putting measures in place to ensure we eliminate them from reoccurring with further migrations. 

Over the next few weeks each Corps/Centre will be contacted by someone in ISG to confirm details on current staff, what licence is to be assigned to them and what assets (SARMY machines) are at the various locations.  This will help us with a smooth transition for all users.  It is our intention to cover a region at a time and so iSG will let you know when your Corps/Centre will be migrated.

iSG will provide introductory O365 training sessions around the territory and in subsequent communications we will confirm where these are to be held.  Plan to be there!

We are keen to make this transition as smooth as possible, so stay tuned as we will be providing further communications on a number of related matters.  

There are some financial implications to centres with the implementation of Office 365 and as centres are finailising their budgets for the year, we thought we should explain this in detail.

So the easiest way to explain this is from the beginning of the New financial period (1 July) the following changes will occur:

• As we implement o365 we will be removing Microsoft Office 2010 from all desktops and laptops. Due to this, rental charges of desktops and laptops will drop by $5.00 (less $5.00 per device);
• Notes user charges will no longer be made against individual so this charge will also be stopped (less $4.50);
• As we start the new financial year we will start charging users for their o365 license of choice:
  • E1 (online only version) comes at a monthly charge of $6.50 and is the default for all staff (not officers);
  • E3 (fully installed version) comes at a monthly charge of $12.00. Officers have been automatically approved by TMB for this license. It is up to the centre manager/budget holder to decide which license all other staff should get and iSG will be requesting confirmation of this prior to the roll over.

So if we take the information above, the summarised version is, from the beginning of the new financial year:

• Centres will have $5.00 per device and $4.50 per user stopped;
• Centres will begin being charged for o365.
  • If users are given E1 licenses then this is $3.00 less per month, and
  • if on an E3 license then there will be a slight increase of $2.50 per user per month.

We hope this is helpful to those preparing their budgets.  

We are now entering the transition phase of the Office365 project.

Centre by centre will be moved from Notes to Office 365.  Again it's important to highlight that we are simply talking about emails and calendars in the main.  Storage of files is part of phase two, and all other Domino/Notes applications TSA currently use (eBoards, BiAS, SABS, Connected, etc) will continue to be accessed the same way as per normal.

Below is what has been organised and we list this to help you understand what process iSG is following:

BEFORE THE ROLLOUT:

1. Corps Officer/Centre Managers will be contacted by iSG with a list of all staff currently in our records for the site, and a full list of all rental machines being charged against your cost centre.
2. This information needs to be checked by the site (either by the Corps Officer/Centre Manager or a person of their choosing) and a response sent back to iSG.
3. Part of this process is also about confirming to iSG whether users are to have an E1 or E3 licence.  If no reply is received, users will be provided with an E1 licence by default.

 What are E1 and E3?

This is not a April 1st joke.  Change is on the horizon!  

In June last year IHQ made the announcement that all TSA territories would be moving away from using IBM Notes (Lotus Notes) to Office 365 worldwide.  Since then iSG have been working hard in getting all the information we need up to date, systems in place, training the iSG staff ready for this change, and organising the documentation for the rollout and preparing for the territorial training that will be happening.

Over the next few weeks we will be getting in touch with the budget holders at all centres to confirm who works at the site, what machines are currently in use there and what licences are to be given to whom. It will be vital that we get the responses as promptly as possible so that the rollout goes without a hitch.

Over the coming weeks we will be posting further blogs to keep you informed of what will be happening.

Stay tuned...

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.