FAQ: Office 365 Email Account  

What am I asked to do? 

Girl Guides the organisation is asking that all Guide Leaders wanting to run online Unit meetings activate a Girl Guides NSW, ACT, & NT email account for their use as a Girl Guide Leader. 
 

Why has Girl Guides NSW, ACT, & NT as an organisation decided to introduce this? 

1. Enables a safe electronic platform for Leaders to interact with girls. 
2. This enables Guides to deliver a virtual Guiding program, which is now an essential dimension of Guiding in these pandemic-affected times. 

How and Why will this help me as a Leader? 

1. This will allow me to communicate with members through an official Girl Guides email account without using my personal email account. 
2. This will allow me to set up and hold video conferences via Microsoft Teams for the Unit or District, or with other Leaders in a safe Girl Guides-controlled virtual meeting setting. 
3. This allows one central account for my Unit which means I can keep all of my Girl Guides communication in one place, making it easier to manage and plan for transitions of Leadership. 

How and Why does this enable a safer environment for our girls? 

This allows Girl Guides Unit Leaders to set up virtual Guide Halls using Microsoft Teams. 

Parents and members can rely on receiving Girl Guides communication from an official email account. 

This account is the necessary next step towards setting up the Girl Guides' cloud-based secure electronic data storage and system for your Unit and your District. 

Can I use my personal Gmail or yahoo or Hotmail or similar account to set up Teams virtual meetings with my members? 

No. Only official Girl Guides email accounts, like [email protected] will have the functionality to access Microsoft Teams and set up Teams meetings for members within the Girl Guides environment. 

Why should I use a Guides email account to set up meetings 

Girl Guides as an organisation has a legal responsibility, and Guide Leaders have a role and a process to follow, to ensure we deliver a virtual Guides program in an officially recognisable way, in a controlled and safe virtual environment. 

This responsibility involves providing a child safe environment and protecting the privacy of Members' personal details. This can include personal home addresses or locations and times of meeting with girls face-to-face.  

Additionally, it’s important that as a volunteer,  personal devices are not compromised or vulnerable to cyber-attacks. 

This mechanism enables Girl Guides as an organisation to meet these real legal responsibilities and I as a Guide Leader to ensure that I am following the guidelines and process that have been set out for my role as a Leader.

Can I share my Girl Guides email account with other Leaders? How and when and under what circumstances can I do this?  

Your work computer and mobile devices provide access to highly confidential and critical information. Therefore, passwords are essential to ensure that confidential material and critical information are protected from unauthorised access. To protect your password, you should:  

Choose suitable and strong passwords 
Keep your passwords secure 
Be careful when recording passwords 

It is preferable that you do not share your login details at any time for any reason. This ensures the security of your account as well as the security of information within it.

Login information should only be shared where absolutely necessary – i.e when it cannot be avoided. In these cases, please do not share passwords over text or email as this further compromises the security of your account. Please endeavour to pass on this information over the phone or in person. 

NOTE: Sharing this information is temporarily permitted. 

We will be implementing a solution soon where you will be able to share inbox access securely without the need to share passwords.  

This solution will also allow access to multiple Girl Guide accounts at once should you wear multiple hats within Guiding.

What other benefits of this email account will I be able to access? 

This will allow me to use Microsoft Outlook. In addition to managing emails, Outlook also has a calendar function, it has a “to do” list function, and it can also manage a “contacts” list for you. 

Microsoft Teams will be automatically connected to Outlook. As we had alluded to in the sections above, the most significant feature of Teams is that it enables me to make Video Calls or set up Video Meetings with any individual or any group of individuals. 

This email account comes with licencing to use common applications namely, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. These applications are probably the three most common productivity tools in use today. 

What other features of this email account am I unable to access? 

This email account will allow you to see other applications of the Office 365 suite of products.  

However, Girl Guides has to do a lot of work behind the scenes so that this can be used with the appropriate privacy protections and protocols. For example, some of this set up work includes setting up “access rights”, developing naming conventions and filing systems and filing protocols. This work is under development but has not yet been done, consequently: 

Please do not create Teams, Channels, Sites, or Groups – even in Outlook as this can slow down the rollout of these features and our digital transformation 

Please do not upload files  

Please do not use other parts of Office 365  

There may be other features we have not listed here. Essentially, the rule of thumb for now is that if you are not setting up a meeting in Teams or sending an email in Outlook. Anything created outside of this rule will be deleted. Please refrain from using those functions or applications until we can roll them out to you securely and with the appropriate framework. 
 

Why can’t I download Outlook Desktop Application as well as Teams with my Girl Guides account?  

With the exception of Teams, our volunteer accounts can access web apps only, which means that you can access all your Girl Guides emails, office documents and spreadsheets etc. from inside any web browser and with mobile apps.  

If you have an existing licence for Microsoft Outlook, we can help you add your Girl Guides account to your Desktop app. 

If you would like to purchase a licence for Microsoft Office apps including Outlook, there is a Microsoft Home Use Program that you can take advantage of though your Girl Guides account that gives you 20% discount on a home use subscription for Microsoft 365. 

How many Leaders need to be present in an online Unit Meeting? 

As per the Supervision & Ratio policy on Guide Lines, a minimum of 2 adults including 1 qualified Leader are to be always present during any Guiding activity. This includes digital interactions, and extends to  online meetings. 

Do I have to use a Windows PC or can I use an Apple computer? 

You can use a Windows PC or an Apple, but there might be a little more set-up to do on an Apple.  

If you have any issues getting setup, email the team at [email protected]