We utilise industry leading Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise for Non-Profits platform for our email, document storage, collaboration and online conferencing tools. With the features that Office 365 provides, we’re eager as a District to expand the platform to our Groups and Units.
Equivalent business tools and hosting would normally cost thousands of pounds year but we are delighted to be able to offer it to Groups for free.
What is Office 365?
Office 365 provides anywhere access to professional email, calendar, HD video conferencing, and more. Designed to help nonprofits do more good, this global offering provides groups with access to Office Online, Microsoft’s best-in-class cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools.
What will my Group get?
By hosting your Group’s email with us, you will receive for FREE:
- a free sub domain name provided by us or use of @cdscouts.org.uk
- Secure personalised business class email, calendar, and contacts with a 50 GB inbox (Microsoft Exchange)
- Personal File storage and sharing with 1 TB of OneDrive storage
- Collaboration services to securely store & backup documents (SharePoint). Essential for succession planning.
- Unlimited online meetings, IM, and audio, HD video, and web conferencing (Skype for Business)
- Secure social media and networking platform (Yammer)
- Microsoft Flow for Automation of processes and integration with third party services.
- Microsoft Forms for secure data collection.
- Web versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and more
- Work management tools to help teams create plans, organise, assign and collaborate around tasks (Microsoft Planner)
- Professional digital storytelling tools to create interactive reports, presentations, newsletters and more (Microsoft Sway)
- District-based technical support when you need it
- Access to the district members area based on SharePoint
- Access to the District Email Directory
- Full GDPR compliance & alignment
What are the advantages of using privately hosted email?
- All emails are hosted on a private enterprise class server meaning potentially sensitive information is kept safe. Free email accounts are consumer products and do not provide users with the same level of privacy, protection or support.
- Data is backed up so you can retrieve something you may have deleted by mistake.
- With a custom domain name such as [email protected], Parents and outside organisations can be a lot more confident of your identity when receiving emails. Anyone can set up a free Gmail or Hotmail account with something similar to [email protected] and pose as a leader. We want to make sure our adult members are protected from identity theft and safeguard our young people from imposters.
- A Scouting email address allows you to manage and maintain a Scout-Life balance by keeping your Scouting mailbox separate from your personal inbox.
- It looks professional. Quite often Scouting will lead you to have contact and dealings with public officials, MPs, large corporations, Business leaders and having your own custom scout email address will give a much better impression.
- When your group sign up for the system, you will automatically get a address book of all the people in your own group and the district which will update as people join the organisation and leave – so you can always get hold of the people you need to.
- Centrally managed distribution lists can be setup so that you can be confident everyone who needs to, receives your email.
If you would liek to find out more, please raise a support ticket here.