Setting up Duo 2FA

After being officially admitted to UW, the first thing you should do is log in to your account and take a look around. Around July (for me it was on June 28), you will see menus like Finances, Grades, etc., on Quest, while services like Learn, WatIAM, etc., will also become available.
It’s recommended to check out Learn first. When logging in, you may encounter this screen:

This doesn’t mean you haven’t enrolled yet, but rather you haven’t activated Duo 2FA (2 factor authentication) as per the instructions on Quest. Simply follow the website’s instructions to complete the setup.
Once in, there should be a Waterloo Ready Module, mine was “Engineering Ready Modules” since I’m in the engineering department.

There is an option for RSS subscription on Learn, highly recommend adding this source to your RSS feed reader so you don’t miss any announcements.

Exploring Waterloo Ready

This Waterloo Ready Module almost covers everything you need to do from receiving an offer to the start of the semester at Waterloo. It’s advisable to go through it carefully. The tutorials here detail what you can do each month and what you should do. This Waterloo Ready Module is Faculty Specific, so it should be more informative than my own experience.

Activating the school’s Microsoft account

Waterloo provides free Office365 suite and a 5TB OneDrive space. However, the key is to use the school email provided by Microsoft Outlook. The introduction to Office365 by Waterloo’s official website is available here (finally, you can proudly use genuine Office on your computer, and it even offers Minecraft Education Edition).

The school will also send an email prompting you to register the email, including a link like this with instructions. You can skip the third step, WatIAM.

Logging into WatIAM

WatIAM is where you manage your account passwords and personal information. An annoying thing about WatIAM is that the account doesn’t include the @uwaterloo.ca suffix, so when logging in, just use the part before the “@” as your username. In WatIAM, you can modify your Preferred Name; if it’s different from your current name, feel free to change it.

Registering for WatCard

WatCard is UW’s campus card, a must-have on campus. I am studying online this semester, so I applied for an electronic version to access library resources. When applying for a WatCard, make sure you have set your Preferred Name because once it’s printed on the card, changing it will incur a printing fee. Registration link
It took a total of 17 days from applying to receiving my electronic WatCard.