Using Email in MS365

The Onboarding page should have got you up and running with your basic login and access to Co-op email account. However there are a number of other steps and considerations to starting to use email on MS365.

Once you have gone through the onboarding process, you likely will also want to install desktop clients, which are available for email (Outlook) as well as all productivity apps (Word, Excel etc) and the Teams client for collaboration. These are all available as part of the Co-op's license and can be installed on up to 3 computers if need be. Instructions on how to install the thick clients are available at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/download-and-install-or-reinstall-microsoft-365-or-office-2021-on-a-pc-or-mac-4414eaaf-0478-48be-9c42-23adc4716658?WT.mc_id=365AdminCSH_SupportCentral

Learning to Use Outlook Every Co-op staff member is hopefully a member of a public library. For those in BC, libraries have licensed LinkedIn Learning which is full of helpful tutorials to help you learn how to use both Outlook and MS365 better. Here are some links to helpful tutorials to get you started:

1. Getting Started with MS Outlook

(more menu options are available by clicking on the three dots)

• on the View menu you can unselect "Show Focused Inbox" which will give you one Inbox instead of Focused and Other
• on the View menu if you go to Layout → Layout you can change the display of the Folder Pane and Reading Pane (I like my reading pane on the bottom instead of the default Right)
• on the Home menu Rules → Create Rules is where you can set up filters for automatically moving emails into specific folders (among other things)
• on the View menu Current View → View Settings → Conditional Formatting is where you can change the colour and font of messages that meet certain criteria. (For example I've set up formatting so all my listservs come in as green and Launchpad comes in as purple.)
• Your address book does not migrate. You will need to add your contacts.

One of the big advantages of MS365 is very active spam and phishing protection at a level that is challenging for any indivual small business to sustain themselves. However, it is not perfect and can result in "false positives," i.e. messages marked as spam that aren't.

If you are expecting a message but it has not arrived, one step is to check your Junk Email folder. If indeed the message is located in there, right click on 'Report Junk' and select the option 'Not Junk.' This will move the message back into your inbox but also help the anti-spam algorithm know this is not a sender to be as concerned about.

It is HIGHLY recommended to go through your 'Junk Email' folder on a weekly basis and scan for messages that have been false flagged as spam. These false positives should reduce over time but especially in the first months of adopting the system it is a critical step in training the system.

Similarly, some junk email may still get through. Rather than just deleting this, it is important to right click and under the 'Report Junk' menu item and mark the item as 'Junk.' this will greatly increase the ability of the algorithm to detect similar messages in the future both for you and the rest of the organization.