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General FAQs​

O365 is a collection of cloud-based services that work together to increase productivity through collaboration. The suite of tools includes email and file storage in "the cloud", which enables additional features and increased storage capabilities.

Since moving to O365, UHN Digital has received some reports of slow email performance. Further investigation has revealed that slowness within the Outlook desktop application or Webmail may be caused by a number of different issues. Some examples include WiFi connectivity, corporate network connectivity or antivirus software that may be slowing down your computer performance.

If you are running into any issues such as Outlook crashes or delays in receiving email, please contact your local Help Desk to kick off a formal investigation. All agents are prepared to assist with further troubleshooting to improve your UHN email experience.

UHN’s Privacy Office and IT Security team have conducted assessments, including a Privacy Impact Assessment and Threat Risk Assessment to ensure the use of O365 is compliant with organizational standards and policies. 
Based on these assessments, the teams have reviewed and updated existing UHN policies and created the O365 Best Practices
This will provide staff with the overall guidelines for acceptable use of O365, a to provide staff with guidelines on the acceptable use of O365 tools, like Outlook and Skype, in a manner which ensures protection of patient health information (PHI) and other sensitive information.

Office 2016 and O365 are two separate updates. The Office 2016 upgrade changed the look and feel of your Office tools, such as Word, Excel and Outlook, including your mail and calendar. The O365 upgrade did not affect the look of your mailbox. Rather it changed where your information is stored in the cloud.

A second factor of authentication is now required for Webmail access. This has been implemented to allow web-based email access from anywhere in the world and from any device.
Approximately 80% of all data breaches are due to compromised user credentials and it only takes one breach to compromise our confidential data - including patient and employee information. As a trusted health organization, we wanted to ensure we had this layer of security in place to protect the data we are all responsible for safekeeping.
If you are accessing the O365 Dashboard from off-site, you will be required to complete multi-factor authentication (MFA). Please note you will not be required to complete MFA if you are connected to the UHN network, using VPN or using a UHN-managed device (i.e., laptop or mobile phone) to access the Outlook application.

From a shared computer, you can log into the O365 Dashboard to access your email and calendar. Please note, if you use a shared computer to access the O365 Dashboard, be sure to sign out of your account as soon as you are finished and close your browser window(s). This will ensure greater privacy and security on your account.

For more information or any other Office 365 support, please contact the helpdesk at help@uhn.ca or ext.4357 (HELP)
Email FAQs

Microsoft helps to safeguard your data by hosting it in Canadian data centres, with continuous data backup and disaster recovery. We also maintain the latest defences against viruses and spam.

However, it is recommended you do not use electronic communication, like email, for delivery of sensitive information. For more information on UHN’s privacy and security guidelines, please visit our O365 Best Practices page.

At this time, Office 365 will not cause any FCC impacts. Note that any future changes to cost structures will be communicated to UHN staff when available.

If you use the Notes feature in Outlook, you may have noticed that it does not look the same in the new Webmail interface.

In Outlook, the notes appear in a 'post-it' style whereas Webmail notes appear like draft email messages.

From Webmail, pre-existing notes can be edited and saved to your Drafts folder, however new notes cannot be created.

As a workaround, you can consider creating notes in the Tasks folder or create an additional Tasks folder to hold all your Webmail notes.

If you decide to create notes in the existing Tasks folder, you can mark these with a Category or any other sorting or filtering method to differentiate from your regular Tasks. You can also mark them as 'Done' to prevent each note from showing up as a To-Do item or a pop-up reminder.

It is a good idea to periodically review your Junk Email folder to make sure you're not missing important messages.

If you find any messages incorrectly classified as junk mail, you can update your junk mail settings in the Outlook application and Webmail. This allows you to build a Safe Senders list and any email or domain on that list can come to your inbox..

To learn how to control these settings, please visit our O365 Outlook and Webmail Resourcespage.

 
OneDrive FAQs

Files and folders to be synced with OneDrive cannot contain the following special characters in their names: * : ? / |

Individual files are limited to 15 GBeach.

OneDrive files can be synced to any computerusing the OneDrive sync application, including personal computers at home. This sync app lets you save a local copy of your OneDrive files and folders to a computer, which is accessible from the Document Library. These files and folders will be accessible even when you are not connected to the Internet.

OneDriveis a personal file storage tool for your work documents and is only managed by you. It is recommended that you use OneDrive to store files which would normally be saved to your local desktop or network drive. 

You may choose to store a file on OneDrive when:

  • You do not plan on sharing the file
  • The file you are working on has limited scope and only needs to be shared with specific individuals
  • The file doesn't belong on a team site or another team network drive

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    SharePoint Online is used for team document storage and is managed by more than one individual.

    You may choose to store a file on SharePoint Online when:

    • The file is relevant to an ongoing team project and needs to be accessible to your team
    • Ownership of the file belongs to, or should be owned by, multiple people on your team
    • You want to co-edit a document with one or more members of your team

To ensure successful migration of all your files and folders to OneDrive, please plan to transfer your content in smaller sections rather than transferring large quantities of data in one move.

If you are using the Sync App to complete the transfer of many folders, we also recommend copy and pasting the items, rather than dragging the files to the folder.

Since launching OneDrive and testing with various UHN teams, there have been mixed reports related to issues when migrating many files and data sets in a single move. Initial investigation has revealed that this may be caused by poor network connectivity or latency.

Our team is continuing to investigate these reports. If you are experiencing any challenges, please contact your local Help Desk for additional support.

Multiple O365 accounts cannotbe signed in at the same time, from the same browser. Once you have signed into your UHN account, if you are looking to access another account on the O365 browser, please be sure to log out of your UHN account first.

Alternatively, you can open multiple O365 accounts on separate browser applications -- for example, open one account on Google Chrome and another account on Internet Explorer.

Data stored in your OneDrive library is private and only accessible to you. Please note, in the case of privacy or security investigations, UHN Digital is able to access your data if needed. In compliance with UHN's privacy policies, Microsoft has committed to ensuring your data is safe, secure and protected.

The OneDrive application has been tested and piloted by several teams at UHN since December 2017. From past pilot participants, the following known issues have been reported:

  1. From Internet Explorer, the process of uploading files through dragging and dropping files into OneDrive does not consistently work as expected. This process will work in Google Chrome, or alternatively, you may use the OneDrive Sync Application to upload your files.
  2. OneDrive files can be synced on computers with the Office 2010 suite. However there are functionality limitations within the Office 2010 products. If you wish to upgrade your Office suite to 2016, please contact your local Help Desk.
  3. After files & folders are uploaded to OneDrive, the total URL length cannot exceed 400 characters. An error message will appear advising that the folder be renamed or moved to reduce the character length.

Should any additional issues be reported, details will be provided on this Information Site.

 
SharePoint Online FAQs

Your current SharePoint Team Site (also called “SharePoint On-Premises”) resided on UHN servers and was available through the UHN Network only. Your existing SharePoint Online Site is available online, in the cloud which provides enhanced stability, accessibility and collaboration features.

These additional features include:

• SharePoint Online sites are accessible from anywhere and will not require a VPN token for remote access

• Files are editable through the browser with Office Online

• Real-time co-editing with your team members

SharePoint Online should be used for team document storage and for management of files by more than one individual.

You may choose to store a file on SharePoint Online when:

  • The file is relevant to an ongoing team project and needs to be accessible to your team
  • Ownership of the file belongs to, or should be owned by, multiple people on your team
  • You want to co-edit a document with one or more members of your team
On the other hand, OneDrive is for personal file storage. For more information on when to use OneDrive, please refer to the above OneDrive FAQs.

Teams are generally composed of Site Owners and Site Members.


Site Owners: (1-2 per team)
  • Managing access for team members
  • Maintaining and documenting any enhancements or customizations completed on the team's site.
  • Escalating issues to the Corporate Intranet or Office 365 teams as needed.
  • Ensuring a thorough understanding of SharePoint features by reviewing the Information Site and as needed, the Site Owner Manuals.
  • Establish a support structure and knowledge transfer for additional Site Owners.

Site Members: (all staff who have been granted access to your site)

Your files will be saved online and in the cloud when you use SharePoint Online. To keep your team's files and folders organized, you should follow the following naming conventions:

  • Names should be short and descriptive. Try simple or alpha-numeric lists for library, file or folder names.
  • SharePoint Online has a URL character limit of 400 characters. To preserve this, try to avoid using spaces in your file or folder names to reduce the URL character length. You can also use _ or - to denote spaces, if needed.
  • Avoid special characters, such as ` ~ ! @ # $ % &, etc.

Microsoft's data storage facilities comply with our digital security standards. The data stored within Microsoft's Data Centres are encrypted and physically secured to prevent loss or unauthorized access of data. Files that are transmitted using the SharePoint Online service over Internet are also encrypted.



In compliance with UHN's privacy policies, Microsoft has committed to ensuring your data is safe, secure and protected on its cloud-based applications, including OneDrive and SharePoint Online.

If you would like support for an existing SharePoint Online Team Site, please contact the Team Site Owner.

If you are a team site owner for an existing SharePoint Online Team Site, and you are looking for additional support, please contact sharepoint@uhn.ca.

For all other SharePoint Online support, please submit an EWS Request Form. A member of the Enterprise Web Solutions (EWS) Team will be happy to further assist you.

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