108th Wing migrates email to Cloud Hosted Enterprise Service

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Julia Santiago
  • 108th Wing

Starting in July 2020, the 108th Wing is migrating their legacy office services to the Cloud Hosted Enterprise Service (CHES). The Air National Guard is adopting the CHES environment to better align with the U.S. Air Force who has been on CHES for several years.

 

“CHES, allows us to free up valuable storage space on the network,” said Senior Airman Richard Jankowski, a systems administrator, and Senior Airman Nicholas Roesch, a client systems technician both from the 108th Communications Flight. “This allows our users to execute the 108th’s mission more efficiently by reducing user downtime and creating a highly reliable enterprise email service.”

 

Users will need to take action between July 28 to Sept. 30, 2020 to migrate to the new system. After September 30, all Defense Enterprise Emails (DEE) and personal drives will be decommissioned.

 

“As long as Users create a Personal Storage Table (PST) file of their old emails using the ‘How-To’ located in ‘00CommHelpDesk’ on the Y drive and backup their personal files to a CD and/or their desktop, they will be prepared for the migration.” said Jankowski. “I strongly suggest that end users complete the checklist as soon as possible to reduce the risk of losing any important data.”

 

Here is a list of capabilities that will come with the implementation of CHES:

  1. Mailbox size will increase to 100 GB from 4 GB.
  2. Email addresses will go back to ending with “@us.af.mil”.
  3. Similar to the Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) Work Environment, Microsoft Teams will replace Skype with the ability to call, video all, and share screens and documents with team members.
  4. Wings will be able to utilize the SharePoint Online sites with 25 TB of storage available.
  5. Each user will have 1 TB of cloud storage in OneDrive. Each user will be able to control with whom they share what content they produce.

The transition to using CHES will come in four phases:

  1. Phase 1: Users will not be impacted.
  2. Phase 2: Users will log into the  application using their new “@us.af.mil” account.
  3. Phase 3: Initial migration to CHES. If a user does not complete the checklist during the initial transition week, there is no risk.
    1. Click here for CHECKLIST!

            -Access to “@us.af.mil” mailbox.

            -Users will need to follow a checklist to set up CHES email in Outlook.

            -The CHES email will be available immediately to all members via CHES Outlook Web Access (OWA), regardless if the checklist is run or not.

            -Access enabled for OneDrive.

 

  1. Phase 4:

            -The Defense Enterprise Email (DEE) “@mail.mil” mailbox will be decommissioned Sept. 30, 2020.

            -L or P drives (personal drives) will also be decommissioned Sept. 30, 2020.

 

All information about CHES can be found on the 108th Communication Flight’s sharepoint page located here: https://org2.eis.af.mil/sites/34150/CF/_layouts/15/start.aspx#/CHES1/Forms/AllItems.aspx .