Communications Standards

Telework

All employees must have a current telework agreement on file.  UW policies for telework and the agreement form can be found here: Telework policy - Hybrid work

The WSGC team started a hybrid schedule effective August 2021.  As of August 2022, this plan is in place at least through August 2023.

Phones

WSGC Team members should either have Extension Connect and/or Avaya Workplace set up in order to be reached by phone on remote working days.   

Email: Working with Our Shared Inboxes

Current shared inboxes:

• nasa@uw.edu — Student and public-facing WASGC inbox

• wasgc@uw.edu — Consortium and business-facing WASGC inbox

What to do when you’re checking the inbox:

• Emails that fall into your area, please answer, tag as appropriate, and archive.

• Emails that fall into someone else’s area:

  • Mark with the person’s “For [person]” tag

  • Mark as unread

    • If the email seems urgent/time sensitive in some way, either forward it to them as an FYI or ping them on Teams

If an email falls partially into your area but also includes a question for someone else:

Check in with that staff member to determine who will reply and with what information.  In some instances, it’s easiest to have one person reply with all information, but in other cases it will make more sense to send two emails.  An example of the latter is a Consortium affiliate with a question about both invoicing and reporting.

MS Teams

Employees are expected to be active on MS Teams during regular work hours for chat, audio call, or video calls.  Use the status feature as needed.

We also have a Team called “WA Space Grant” and use the following features:

• Posts: This is where chat items for the entire staff should go.  Items that are more conversational should remain in individual or other group chat threads.  We will add our student workers to this eventually so keep it relevant to the whole group/tasks

After being added to the WA Space Grant Team, please be sure to go to the “Posts” screen, click the three dots under your picture and adjust your Channel Notifications to “All activity.”

Trello

While tasks can be assigned to staff using Teams, we primarily ­use Trello for our events or activities that either occur regularly or occur at specific times each year.  Space Grant staff should check Trello once daily or once every-other-day and have notifications set to ensure you see updates, due dates, and assigned tasks.

Do not use Trello for:

• Urgent items

• Budget numbers or other approvals needed via email

• Student data

• Storing files (that are not linked or saved elsewhere)

Shared Boards:

Space Grant Project Management

Meeting Agenda