Your Digest

Friday April 14, 2023

Here are the latest updates from Canadian Blood Services. Every Tuesday and Friday we invite you to read important updates, valuable information, and inspiring stories from across our organization. Please reach out to communications@blood.ca with your questions and suggestions on how we can better inform and support you.

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Reminder: LOV deadline is Friday, April 21!

The deadline to submit your nomination for the Living our Values Award of Distinction is Friday, April 21. This is the perfect opportunity to recognize and celebrate a colleague or team that lives our values every day. The nomination process is easy, and the instructions and forms can be found on the LOV page on Connect. Need inspiration? Check out stories from previous winners Jennifer Pade, Caitlyn Quinn, Karina Arenas Torres and Arleen Asi, who demonstrate how to lead with integrity, collaboration, adaptability, respect and excellence.

Celebrating a new plasma donor centre in Abbotsford, B.C.

Plasma recipient Barbara Schmidt joined staff, volunteers, donors and members of the community on Tuesday for the official grand opening of our new plasma donor centre in Abbotsford. Barbara was born with a genetic immune deficiency and depends on regular injections of a medication made from plasma. In Abbotsford alone, Canada's Lifeline needs at least 225 new plasma donors every month to help support patients like Barbara. If you're eligible, you can donate plasma at our new facility in Abbotsford — or at any of our other plasma donor centres — by booking an appointment at blood.ca. You can also help by encouraging others to donate, and by sharing the news of our new centre on social media using the hashtags #PlasmaForLife and #CanadasLifeline.

Your Questions Answered

Should I always be signing into VPN when I’m working from home or only when I need to connect to certain apps like EDA?

If you are using Office 365 and other web-based resources, such as SharePoint, Connect or Teams, you do not need to connect to the Canadian Blood Services virtual private network (VPN) on a daily basis. If you need to access our internal resources such as EDA or Eprogesa, then you will need to sign in using our VPN.

However, we do encourage you to connect to our VPN a couple of days per month to make sure that your system receives any application, operating system and security updates. A good rule of thumb is to set calendar dates to sign in, such as the first and third Mondays of every month. This will give your devices the best chance to remain up to date.

Also, if you are working remotely and you must use public WiFi, please use your VPN to securely access your work files.

About Your Digest

This digest highlights the latest activity happening at Canadian Blood Services and features original content to remind us that what we do matters. Click here to read past editions of Your Digest.