Your Email Address and uniqname
Your email address at the University of Michigan is
uniqname@umich.edu.
Your
uniqname is provided by the central University technology
organization (ITS) and is yours for life. You can edit information about
your
uniqname, change your away message, and forward your email to
other providers through the
U-M Online Directory (referred to as UMOD).
Microsoft Exchange
All Ross faculty, staff, PhD, full-time
MBA students, Global MBA students, and MSCM students are provided with a Microsoft Exchange account that provides
you with access to email, contacts, personal calendar, tasks, etc. Exchange
email is accessed through the Outlook (Windows PC) or Entourage (Mac)
clients, or through the web (exchange.umich.edu)
You access your Exchange
account using your Windows Active Directory password - not your Kerberos
account. If you have never set this password before and/or you are having
trouble logging in, you should reset your Active Directory password. You can find more information about managing your accounts under
Services->Accounts.
ITS Email (IMAP/POP)
All students, faculty and staff are eligible
for IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP (Post Office Protocol)
offered by ITS. Several email clients are supported (see side bar) and the
service provides a generous amount of storage space. The client you choose
must support SSL (Secure Socket Layer), which provides a secure way to
encrypt, transmit and receive passwords and data over the Internet. If you
have a choice in clients, IMAP provides the better email option, especially
if you check email on several computers, because it stores your email on a
central server where as POP downloads email to your computer.
Your IMAP/POP email can easily be accessed over the web at mail.umich.edu.
Login with your UM uniqname and Kerberos password - not your Windows Active
Directory account and password.
Accessing Exchange over the Web
Your Outlook or Entourage client works away from
Ross depending on the characteristics of the host network you are using. Some
networks block Exchange traffic. Some networks may not allow you to access the
UM network without first launching a Virtual Private Network (VPN) client
installed on your computer. A VPN creates a secure connection between your
computer and our network, and treats your computer as if you were connected to
our services from your office or anywhere on the UM campus.
Exchange also offers secure, web-based access, which is useful for accessing
your account when not at Ross or when the Outlook application is otherwise
not available to you. The web application is designed to mimic Microsoft
Outlook closely.
Exchange Active Sync for Mobile Devices (Smart phones)
Some cell phones, iPods, PDAs and other mobile devices can download e-mail, calendar
and other data from the Exchange server. Your device must support the
Exchange Active Sync protocol, like those that support "Windows Mobile".
Some phones will explicitly list that they support IMAP email and, in this
case, will be able to access Exchange email.
Blackberry devices do not support Active Sync today. Faculty and staff can
request a connector license on the campus Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES)
that does connect your Blackberry to Exchange. Contact the HelpDesk for more
information.
Many mobile devices, especially those running Windows Mobile 5.0, have
mandatory security settings that require you, among others, to establish a
secure password in order to access the content of your mobile device.
Backup and Recovery of Email (Vaulting)
Both Ross (Exchange) and central University (IMAP) email is
archived and protected in the same careful and rigorous way as data files.
Email is only guaranteed for recovery within two weeks of being deleted. In
other words, as long as you keep an email on your email system, it is
backed-up and can be restored. Once you delete an email, it can only be
recovered within two weeks of the deletion. Files can be restored for up to
a year. Email can only be restored for up to two weeks per University
guidelines and policy. (ITS charges to restore files and email, so please be
careful.)
Ross Exchange email is stored on high-speed disk to give you fast access to
your email, calendar, contacts and tasks. All email that you have not
accessed (read) in 3 months is moved to a lower cost, lower speed disk. This
process is called "email vaulting". Vaulting allows us to provide you with
higher email quotas so you do not need to spend time archiving email into
.PST files that can become scattered over different computers, lost with a
hard drive failure, or can become obsolete as version of Exchange change.
Even though email backup is easy and convenient, never keep email you do not
need or want. Practice "green computing" by keeping your email account as
small as possible. Delete your "deleted" and "junk" email often.
Spam and Virus Control
The Exchange
service currently deploys McAfee's GroupShield for anti-virus and Brightmail
as the anti-spam solution. Brightmail tags mail suspected as spam, but it is
up to the user to set up rules that will direct this tagged mail into a
folder of their choice. All you have to do is access your Exchange email through the web,
Outlook, or Entourage. After the initial set up, there is nothing more to
Keep in mind that spam and viruses are a growing and evolving concern.
Brightmail, for example, is only as good as known spam threats. You will see
spam arrive in your inbox as new threats are created around the world. The
company behind Brightmail watches for these new threats constantly, and
regularly updates servers at the University of Michigan to stop these new
threats as quickly as possible.
Email Group Lists
When you need to send email to more
than one person on a regular basis, perhaps to the members of your group
project, consider creating an "email group". Most email clients, including
Outlook and Entourage, have the ability to create a private group list that
only you can use. Ross faculty and staff have special school and department
lists permanently created and maintained, like 'All Ross Faculty and Staff'
and 'All Marketing Faculty', that you can access from the Exchange Global
Address List on your client. CTools has a feature to send email to your
class and section. iMpact has special, limited tools to send personal notes
- a very limited form of email - to groups and subsets of groups, like 'all
2nd year students interested in finance'. Your iMpact MySite
space also allows the creation of email groups for collaboration and
teamwork.
Email lists are usually more useful when they are available to more people.
The
UM Online Directory,
the same place where you establish information about your electronic
identity, has features to allow to you create global email distribution
lists. You can use UMOD to create email lists available to anyone or just to
people specifically identified. You can create lists where all email is
delivered without review or create a 'moderated' list where message are
first reviewed by the people assigned to be responsible for the group before
it is delivered. You can create lists that require people to subscribe and
unsubscribe. You create the name of the distribution list and all email
takes the form 'groupname@umich.edu'.
ITS Targeted Data Requests
ITS also provides a targeted data
request service that is available to faculty and staff who need to send
email to a specific group that cannot be created from the UMOD. For example,
you may need to send an email to 'All Deans and Directors of Health
Sciences' and 'All UM students expected to graduate in April'. Information
can be found on
the ITS web page.