Email technical guide Page 1 19/02/2014 Branch email technical guide This guide is designed to give you an understanding of how Outlook Web App (OWA) works, to enable you to use your MS Society branch and support email accounts. You should use this technical guide alongside our other branch email resources: How to be easy to contact by email, which includes: why being easy to contact by email is an essential requirement practical suggestions for publicising your branch email addresses why keeping track of emails is important the support available to help you MS Society branch and volunteer email use policy, which includes: our email policy and procedures confidentiality, copyright and security MS Society standard email format Branch email support If you have problems or queries that aren’t answered in this technical guide, the How to guide or email policy, you can contact our branch email support line or email the Volunteering team. Tel: 020 8438 0818 [email protected]
Transcript
Email technical guide Page 1 19/02/2014
Branch email technical guide This guide is designed to give you an understanding of how Outlook Web App (OWA) works, to enable you to use your MS Society branch and support email accounts. You should use this technical guide alongside our other branch email resources: How to be easy to contact by email, which includes:
� why being easy to contact by email is an essential requirement � practical suggestions for publicising your branch email addresses � why keeping track of emails is important � the support available to help you
MS Society branch and volunteer email use policy, which includes:
� our email policy and procedures � confidentiality, copyright and security � MS Society standard email format
Branch email support If you have problems or queries that aren’t answered in this technical guide, the How to guide or email policy, you can contact our branch email support line or email the Volunteering team. Tel: 020 8438 0818 [email protected]
Email technical guide Page 2 19/02/2014
Authorised users You will be able to specify two authorised users for both your branch and support email accounts. There are restrictions on who can use each email account:
• To use your branch email account, you must be a branch committee member.
• To use your support email account, you must be a member of the support team who has ideally attended all 4 days of support volunteer training.
Before you start using your email accounts, we will contact the branch to agree the authorised user for each. The authorised user will subsequently be able to nominate a second user for their email account and must contact us with details of this volunteer. Only named authorised users will be able to raise requests for technical support or a change of password for the email account. We will maintain a list of all authorised users. You must contact us if any users or user details change.
Your user name and password When your email account is ready to use, we will send authorised users their user name and password to access the account. Passwords are case-sensitive, so please don’t ignore capitals where given. When you log in for the first time, you will be prompted to change your password for security reasons. Please note that passwords must: � be at least 8 characters long � not contain your user name � include at one upper case character, one lower case character and one
number When you have changed the password, please share it with your second user if you have one.
Forgotten your password? If you forget your password, please contact us. As long as you have been logged as an authorised user of the account, we will reset the password for you and confirm when this has been done. Upon logging in again, you will be prompted to change your password again. Please ensure you keep your password safe.
Email technical guide Page 3 19/02/2014
Password expiry All branch email accounts will receive an email based password expiration reminder, at which point you will be prompted to change your password. If your password has expired and you cannot access your email account, please contact us.
Accessing your email account Your email accounts are accessed through Outlook Web App (OWA). Using OWA means authorised users can access email from any computer and makes it easy to transfer responsibility for the address if need be. You should use your computer to access emails – more information about using a mobile device can be found on page 10 of this guide.
Connecting to OWA Click onto your web browser - we recommend Internet Explorer. Type this web address to access OWA -
https://owa.mssociety.org.uk or visit the volunteer website and click on the link http://volunteers.mssociety.org.uk/branch-email
You’ll be asked for your MS Society user name and password to log in.
You also need to click to choose whether you are using a public or private computer. If you are unsure what this means, click show explanation.
Email technical guide Page 4 19/02/2014
Every time you log in, you will be presented with the following message:
Automatic replies relate to your standard automatic response message, more details for which can be found on page 6 of this guide. Please select no to ensure your automatic replies remain active. This is what you will see when you have logged on:
Email technical guide Page 5 19/02/2014
How to create a new email Click the drop down arrow next to New and choose Message.
This will open a new window where you can type your email.
When you are happy with your email, click send.
Email technical guide Page 6 19/02/2014
How to reply to or forward a new email When you are viewing an email, you will see the following icons:
From right to left, they are:
• Reply – when you only wish to respond to the sender of the email
• Reply to all – when you wish to respond to everyone
• Forward – when you wish to pass the email on to someone else. When you click on any of these icons, a message box will appear as on page 5 when you create a new email, with any recipients included as appropriate.
How to view the MS Society address book The MS Society address book can be accessed from your main screen as shown on page 4 of this guide. The address book looks like this:
Email technical guide Page 7 19/02/2014
The address book allows you to access the email addresses for all other MS Society branches. You can send an email to any branch by right clicking on the branch you would like to contact and selecting New Message. You are also able to access the address book by selecting new message a clicking To… as shown on page 5.
How to review long email conversations Outlook Web App enables you to review all emails sent during a long conversation from the latest email sent or received. However, older emails are hidden and only shown as bars at the bottom of the email conversation. To view these emails, simply click on the bar to reveal the whole email.
Standard response messages and automatic signatures Your branch email accounts are equipped with two features that only your recipient will see. When a person sends an email to either of your email addresses, they will receive a standard response message to reassure them that they have reached you and that you will be in contact soon. This is the standard response message they will receive: Thank you for emailing our branch of the MS Society. We have received your message. Although this inbox may not be checked daily, we aim to respond to you as soon as possible. If you have questions or concerns about MS, you can also contact the MS Helpline on 0808 800 8000. The Helpline is open Monday to Friday from 9am to 9pm (excluding bank holidays). All MS Society email addresses also have an automatic signature block that doesn’t show when you send an email. Your automatic signature follows this format:
MS Society Anytown Branch Phone: 01234 567 890 www.mssociety.org.uk/near-me | Find us on Facebook | Follow us on Twitter
Email technical guide Page 8 19/02/2014
The Near me web address is specific to your branch and the Facebook and Twitter links are specific to your country. The banner below the signature block changes in line with key MS Society events and activities. The banner will only appear in newly created emails.
Managing your emails Managing the transition from your old branch email address We would like branches to make the transition from their existing email address as soon as possible. To facilitate this, we recommend that you:
• set up an automated response on your existing email address, asking people to contact you on one of your MS Society email addresses, and/or
• set up automatic forwarding on your existing email to your branch email. This will automatically send a copy of each email to your branch email address.
You are not able to set up automatic forwarding from either your branch or support email address to any other email address. This is for two main reasons:
• we have a natural turnover of volunteers at the MS Society and the security and risks involved make auto-forwarding unfeasible.
• if you use auto-forwarding, you may be sending emails from your personal account, which contravenes our branch and volunteer email use policy.
Top tips - managing your mailbox OWA has tools to help you create a system to help you manage your email account mailbox: Flagging By clicking on the flag icon next to the appropriate email, it will turn red. This may be useful to highlight an email that is yet to be dealt with. You can also right click on the flag, which will give you different flags to choose from depending on how urgent the email is. Categories Using categories is like using colour coding. By clicking on the square to the left of the flag icon, you will assign a default red category to the selected email. If you right click on the square, you will be presented with 8 colour options to choose from. You can also name the categories as you see fit by selecting “Manage Categories” from the right-click menu.
Email technical guide Page 9 19/02/2014
Creating inbox sub-folders By right clicking on the inbox icon in the left-hand menu of your main screen and selecting “Create New Folder”, you will be able to create and name a new sub-folder. This may be useful for organising emails into different folders.
Mailbox and email size Your mailboxes have a capacity of 50MB. When you reach 40MB, you will receive a warning email, giving you a chance to delete any unwanted emails. At 50MB the following warning message will appear in OWA:
If this happens, you will not be able to send or receive emails. If you would like to check how close to the limit you are, hover over the branch name in the left-hand column and the size of your mailbox will appear as below:
Please note also that there is a limit to the size of email you can send or receive, which is 20MB. If you are having problems sending an email, check the size of any attachments to ensure it does not exceed the limit. We recommend that documents are sent in PDF format, which will help with the size of the document.
Email technical guide Page 10 19/02/2014
Retrieving a lost email If you lose or accidentally delete an email:
• check your deleted items mailbox, listed in the left-hand column
• check any sub-folders in case the email has been incorrectly filed
• use the OWA search tool
• contact us, as MS Society emails are backed up centrally and we may be able to assist.
Accessing emails from a mobile device You are not able to access branch emails via the mailbox application on smartphones or tablets, though you are able to log in to OWA using your device’s web browser.
ICT maintenance The MS Society’s ICT team carry out essential maintenance fortnightly on Fridays. Because of this, between 7pm and 10pm you may not be able to use your branch email account. If you have had problems accessing your account during this time, please wait and try to log in again at another time. If the problem persists, please contact us.
How to log off When you are ready to log off, click sign out from the main screen as shown below:
