Volunteer Account/Email Provisioning Project

 

The Volunteer Account/Email Provisioning Project Reference Group met for the first time on Thursday 21 July 2022. So what is its role?

 

Managed by ICT in Burwood HQ, this project has two phases. As announced on June 28, the first phase involved the streamlining of members being granted a Members Online account including a '@members.cfa….' email address and instantaneous password updating that removed the onerous 24 to 48-hour delay.

Members also now have the ability to submit a request for a Microsoft Office 365 account via their Members Online profile, including MS Teams and web based MS Office applications including Outlook, Word and Excel.

Email distribution lists will now be populated automatically from RMS data and include personal emails where a member has opted to not use a @members.cfa… email.

Phase two, which is what the Reference Group will be specifically advising on, is the further expansion and capability of the above improvements to help brigade and group management with CFA administration. This will offer brigades standardised role-based accounts for official messaging, MS Teams brigade templates with channels pre-set for BMTs, training, events, Juniors, FEM, etc.

A specific goal of the project is to grant access to various shared mailboxes automatically, based on the members role, which will save the district office administration a large amount of time.

Along with external VFBV members, the Reference Group currently comprises Warracknabeal Hub Secretary Sharon McLean, D17 BASO Louise McGillivray, D16 DBM Kelly Cass, D16 DSO Nicole Bendelle, RBASO Shannon Arnott and RBASO Shane Cramer.

Over the next few months the Reference Group will reconcile the project goals with how brigades and groups actually work, and develop strategies to accommodate known anomalies such as acting OICs, leaves of absence, extraordinary elections, etc. When this is achieved the improvements mentioned above will commence with pilot brigades.

Secondary benefits of the project include increased brigade document security, enhanced ability to share documents, single point of access to brigade information which is platform agnostic (ie Windows, Apple, tablet, phone or PC) only requiring an internet connection, and continuity of information when a person takes on a new/different role.

There will undoubtedly be some inconvenience to members, but it is the intention of the Reference Group to ensure these are minimised to the greatest extent possible, and the benefits to members, brigades and groups maximised.

 

Submitted by	Shane Cramer