California’s Child Support Program Upgrading Microsoft Office Products

Beginning November 7th, the first of California Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) and Option One County employees began upgrading Microsoft computer programs to Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus. It’s a move that will affect every employee in California’s Child Support Program and while there is always a transition period, DCSS’s journey is full of benefits.

The first phase of the migration, the Office application suite, took place November 7th through November 10th for pilot users within State DCSS and Option One Counties. The second phase of the migration includes upgrading Microsoft Exchange email which will begin for pilot users on November 28th and the remaining users December 5th.

CA DCSS is assessing how to procure Office 365 licensing for Option Two and Three counties. Once CA DCSS acquires a solution then the information technology support for those counties will be authorized to upgrade. More information to come on those counties.

Microsoft 365 ProPlus will offer child support employees an opportunity to use instant messaging as well as have the program subscription follow each user to whichever device they’re using instead of limiting the license to a particular device. Each user will be allowed up to five licenses so their access to ProPlus programs may be utilized on workstations, tablets & handheld devices.

For those who like to store their emails for future reference, the allowable inbox size will be increased from five gigabytes to 50 gigabytes, a large amount of memory most users will unlikely exceed. The current 90-day retention policies for emails in a user’s email inbox will remain.

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