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Undergraduate students, staff, faculty, and graduate students can sign in to https://www.microsoft365.com/ with their username (userid@uwaterloo.ca) and WatIAM password.

All University of Waterloo undergraduate students are provided a Microsoft 365 account.

Waterloo alumni will receive a Microsoft 365 email account that will provide anywhere access to a more secure, reliable, and much improved email experience.

Undergraduate and graduate students:

• Microsoft 365 applications will be licensed for approximately 16 months after your last registered term. Your email account will work indefinitely, if you graduate from the institution (see 'What happens to my Microsoft 365 account (email and apps) after I graduate?' for more info).

• If you do not graduate from the institution, you will retain access to your Microsoft 365 account (email and apps) for approximately 16 months after your last registered term. 

Staff and faculty:

• Staff and faculty will have access to their Microsoft 365 accounts for the duration of their employment or enrolment.

The mailbox quotas are as follows:

• Shared mailboxes: 50GB

• All employees/students/A3 licensed email accounts: 100GB

• Accounts with A1 full licenses: 50 GB

• Accounts with A1 mail and calendar only licenses (e.g. retirees, former students): 50 GB

Undergraduate and graduate email: You will keep your Microsoft 365 email account after you graduate.

Microsoft 365 Applications: You will keep your account for approximately 16 months after your last registered term. In order to keep any files, they will need to be saved to a new location. (See also FAQ entitled "How can I transfer files from my undergraduate OneDrive account to a secondary account (personal, staff, faculty, graduate student, etc.)?"

Staff and faculty will have access to their Microsoft 365 accounts for the duration of their employment or enrolment. In order to keep any files, they will need to be saved to a new location. (See also FAQ entitled "How can I transfer files from my undergraduate OneDrive account to a secondary account (personal, staff, faculty, graduate student, etc.)?"

Apps from Microsoft 365 such as Microsoft Teams and OneDrive can be installed onto your work computer.

The use of Microsoft Office 2016 on University computers should continue to be accessed only through the IST Webstore.

No, the full Microsoft 365 suite is only available to current staff, faculty, and students. An A1 mail and calendar only license is available to retirees. See also, access to M365 apps and email by audience.

Please see the Terms of Service and Service Level Agreement from Microsoft.

Data stored in this service are subject to Microsoft data retention policies which may change from time to time. There is no capability to restore deleted data beyond the user-accessible facilities (e.g. versions and recycle bin) provided by Microsoft. Currently, Microsoft maintains a file history for 30 days.

• Staff and student OneDrive accounts are identical in terms of storage size and access.

• Students will use Microsoft 365 to access their UWaterloo email account and will have access to the full suite of Microsoft 365 apps.

• Staff, faculty, and grad students will have access to the full suite of Microsoft 365 apps and email.

• If you have both a student and a staff account, you should use your primary account to access Microsoft 365:

  • If you are a student on co-op, continue to use your student account to access Microsoft 365/OneDrive.

  • If you are a staff member taking classes, continue to use your staff account to access Microsoft 365/OneDrive.

A Microsoft 365 mailbox gives you 100GB of storage. 

Please fill out the Microsoft 365 change request form.

You can select a 'friendly' email address (firstname.lastname@uwaterloo.ca) by updating your profile WatIAM.

Instructions to create a friendly email address:

1. Once you sign in to WatIAM, select "Manage Familiar Name".

2. You can change choose your "familiar name" to whatever you would like as shown below:

   

3. Select “Submit” to save your “Familiar Name”. 

4. Select "Manage Email Settings" 

5. Select your friendly email address, and select “Submit”.

   

Yes. However, you need to change your familiar name in WatIAM. The familiar name change will be reflected in your Microsoft 365 account. 

1. Go to WatIAM.

2. Select "Manage Familiar Name".

3. Enter your familiar name.

   

4. Click Submit.

Yes. See these steps for forwarding email from your student Microsoft 365 account. 

Please refer to information on recovering deleted items or email in Outlook Web App.

When setting up your new Microsoft 365 email account on your Android device you should be aware that if you use the ActiveSync method, it asks you to allow the following: 

"Remote Security Administration: The server outlook.office365.com requires that you allow it to remotely control some security features of your Android device. Do you want to finish setting up this account?"

Spam filtering is managed by Microsoft. Please see the documentation for anti-spam and anti-malware protection. You can report spam messages to Microsoft to help them to improve their services.

Microsoft 365 physical and logical security is managed by Microsoft and their service and data center staff. UWaterloo manages the authentication and login credentials. Microsoft is the hosting service and does not get user IDs and passwords. UWaterloo has administrator access to our instance of Microsoft 365. The University is the service provider to the community and we control our data.

No. Users gain access to Microsoft 365 by logging on to our standard University web login screens. When a user wants to access email, Microsoft 365 sends a request to the University’s authentication system (CAS) asking for UWaterloo credentials. This takes the user to the University’s web login screen, on equipment hosted by the University. When log in is successful, a token is sent back to Microsoft 365 that verifies the user’s identity. This is part of the separation of duties designed to better protect the privacy and confidentiality of community members.

In our digital world, most forms of communication are potentially exposed to electronic surveillance regardless of where they are hosted. Microsoft has stated that they do not provide back doors to their servers to governmental agencies. The University’s instance of Microsoft 365 is fully hosted on Canadian servers.

Yes, two-factor authentication (2FA) is currently available via opt-in for web-based logins only.

Microsoft will remove support for these protocols. Disabling these protocols in April 2020 is part of the @edu.uwaterloo.ca migration to the @uwaterloo tenant/domain minimizes future disruptions.

Please see the Secretariat's Information and Privacy website for:

• Privacy and Remote Meeting guidelines

• Privacy and Remote Teaching & Learning guidelines