Tech Onboarding Process for New Employees

OVERVIEW

This article describes the process the tech department follows when onboarding new employees. If you ever wondered...

When is a new employee's account(s) created?
How do they order their device(s) and what device(s) does a new employee receive?
When do they receive these new devices?
When do they hear from the tech team?
What training do they receive?

...then this is the article for you!

Included below are:

the TL;DR timeline
a long explanation of the of the process
the email we send to all new hires in template form

TL;DR

Here is the process at a glance:

Step Time Frame Description 1 March - June HR completes an onboarding request for each new employee with name, personal email, job title, and start date. 2 May Welcome email sent by Tech Team. Explains when accounts are created and procedure for requesting a laptop. 3 Late June Laptops are purchased. ETA is mid-July. 4 End of June / Mid August The Monday before their start date, employee email and MyMA accounts are created and emails lists updated. 5 July New devices are received and prepped by the Tech Team. For staff starting July 1, they will be given spare laptops until their new devices arrived. 6 Late August New employees will receive their devices during new hire orientation, which also includes cybersecurity training. 7 Ongoing Ongoing support as needed.

NEW HIRE EMAIL TEMPLATE

This is the email to new employees from the tech team:

Hello XXXXX and welcome to MA!

My name is Kyle Vitale and I am the Director of Technology here at MA. There are two things I will cover in this email: First is your email account. We will activate your MA email account on the Monday before your start date of July 1; this year that is June XXth. You will receive an email notification from Google at your personal email address with instructions on how to fully activate your account. This email will include a link that expires after 48 hours, so please activate it within that time. Additionally, 2-factor authentication (sometimes called 2-step verification) is required on all MA email accounts. You will have two weeks from the day you activate your email account to also activate 2FA. Google will prompt you to set up 2FA when you first log into your email, but you can also head over to myaccount.google.com/security and follow the instructions at a later time.

The second item is your laptop. Every employee receives a computer when they start at MA. We offer a wide variety of laptops in a variety of sizes including the Apple MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Microsoft Surface Laptop, and Microsoft Surface Studio Laptop. For those that choose any MacBook Air, an external monitor, keyboard, mouse are also available. You can find more details on the available laptop options here, and you can use this link to place your laptop order. Please order your laptop and any accessories ASAP.

And finally, I want to introduce you to the other members of the MA Tech Team. Richard Masland is our Design, Tech, and Curriculum Innovator. Richard manages our Design Lab, and the TLP program. Noah Orgish is our Academic Technologist and handles tech integration, Canvas, and the BlendEd program. Remy Mansfield is our AI specialist. You can find Remy and Noah in the Tech Office (Library room 107) and Richard in his office in the Design Lab. I'm in Library room 110. Be sure to stop by and say hello!

That’s all for now. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. And we’ll see you in July!