Defence O365 is coming to a device near you

April 29, 2020 – Defence Stories

To support the Defence Team to continue working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, ADM(IM) is rolling out Defence O365, a Microsoft Office 365 platform, to all personnel.

This unprecedented time highlights the importance of our digital environment to work with timely, trusted and secure information. It will continue to change the way we work.

Benefits to the Defence Team

The suite includes familiar products like Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as collaborative and remote working tools to support chat and video conferencing, like Teams, Planner, OneNote and OneDrive.

The innovative, cloud based platform will enable the team to work on both personal and work devices with information up to Protected A and ease the strain on our more protected internal networks, where we continue to manage classified information. This is a proven solution that balances the need to innovate and continue working with the need to maintain security and accountability.

Defence O365 and the Transparent - Defence Virtual Private Network Infrastructure (T-DVPNI) are the primary DND/CAF supported and approved tools to enable remote work in support of Defence activities. Defence O365 is available from both personal and work devices (with the exception of Blackberrys.)

Once you are set up with Defence O365, you will receive a new Outlook email address with the extension @ecn.forces.gc.ca. Your existing @forces.gc.ca email will not be accessible through Defence O365.

Rollout plan

The dedicated team in the IM Group saw the opportunity to rollout this powerful suite of tools to over 100,000 users within weeks, which would be a huge challenge for any IT organization. Currently they have successfully provisioned over 26,000 accounts.

If you haven’t already, you will soon receive an onboarding email from your L1 representative with instructions on how to activate your account. You will also receive information on how to get support from your organization’s Power Users.

BE CAREFUL: Don’t fall for phishing emails posing as DND/CAF messages on this subject; your onboarding email will come from a trusted source such as a supervisor with a forces.gc.ca email address. 

Support and training

Once you’ve received your onboarding email and have activated your account, you can log in at Defenceo365.forces.gc.ca (link accessible only on the National Defence network) to access our support portal. This tool will help you get set up, answer any questions you may have, and provide self-guided training resources.

For those still waiting to be receive your onboarding email, we invite you to visit the Defence Team's Working Remotely page on Canada.ca for more information and updates as they become available.

IM Group is proud to serve the IM/IT needs of our Defence Team so you can continue to serve Canadians. We are confident that the ultimate success of the platform will come from our engaged and innovative Defence Team members who embrace the technology and demonstrate, as you so often do, your ability to work in a whole new environment.

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