Email Service

Aug 20, 2002- always a Working Draft--G.B. (9/2012)

NOTE:   

On January 11, 2012, we brought down the old RSMAS email system and started a new Exchange email server.  You will need to make some changes, perhaps minor, for this cutover.  This affects all RSMAS users and email applications, no matter what client you use; Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or RSMAS Webmail.

1. YOUR INITIAL PASSWORD ON THE NEW SYSTEM IS YOUR UM-Id, your CNumber.  This password controls access to your email account, RSMAS network shared folder, and Wireless network access via WirelessCanes. You should change the password by going to http://webmail.rsmas.miami.edu and following Password link on the login page. If you ask us to look at any of these functions, we may need to reset your password to your CNumber.
2. webmail.rsmas.miami.edu will take you to the new exchange web mail service.
3. Your folders and messages have been transferred from the old mail server to the new.   Trash, Junk, Draft and large  (>50M) messages were not transferred, everything else should be there. If you did not get a clean transfer, send us email with a subject of Sync email messages.
4. You may need to reconfigure your mail client to use the new server.  See the links to the right for instructions.

EMail Accounts

Every member of the RSMAS community is eligible for an electronic mail (email) account. To set up an account fill in this account request form, or pick one up from the RSMAS Computer Facility (RCF), MSC227. Contact RCF at 305-421-4026. Staff and students should have the form signed by their supervisor. Read and sign the policy statement on the back of the form and turn the completed form in at the RCF. You will have a username and password assigned when your account is installed on the mail server. You will need to use this information to pick up your email. You will need to retain this information, but keep it secure. Anyone who knows your username and password information can access your email.

EMail Archives

As of May 12, 2009, a one-year archive has been started that will hold copies of all RSMAS emails. The archives are held at your spam filter account at http://login.postini.com, Your Postini username is your email address and your password is initially set to your UM ID number, your C-number with a capital "C". You can see your archived messages and recover them from the archive if you need. You cannot remove them from the archive. This is a Board-directed UM policy.

EMail Address

If it is unique, your assigned email address will be

FLastname@rsmas.miami.edu

where FLastname is your first-initial-last-name (e.g. fsmith). If the email address is not unique Firstname.Lastname@rsmas.miami.edu (note "dot"), or whatever it takes, will be assigned-- we have had up to four jbrowns. Please do no use any other email address form at RSMAS. Configure the mail agent on your computer or workstation to use a return address of this assigned email address.

You will also have a UM email address managed by main campus [YOURNAME@miami.edu].  To set up your UM email address or get an additional @miami.edu addresses, go to http://www.miami.edu/it/index.php/services/enterprise_email/ .  You will need your Cane ID and C number. Most RSMAS folk have the email sent to their UM address delivered to their RSMAS address.

Restrictions

Our email server restricts certain attachment types to prevent virus transmission. If a piece of email has an attachment that can be executed by windows- *.exe, *.vbs, *.bat, *.com, or *.dll and a few others  our mail server will strip the attachment from the message before delivery. This is true for in-bound email. If you need to exchange restricted attachments the RSMAS Computer Facility (RCF) recommends you use FTP. You can set up a RSMAS Shared Folder to make files available for pickup with FTP by those outside of RSMAS.

Mailing Lists

When you get an email account at RSMAS you will be added to a number of mailing lists. Note: all email lists are restricted to messages no larger than 750K bytes for the message and all attachments.

INFO: info@lists.rsmas.miami.edu

The RSMAS "INFO" list is a general mailing list for the RSMAS community. There should be no seminar notices or commercial traffic, and e-mail contents are moderated for proper content of interest to a broad RSMAS community. Proper content is defined as Anything that could be brought up in polite conversation: no discussion of religion, politics, social status/relations, or wealth/money. Any discussion that could be considered profane, inflammatory, offensive, or of marginal interest to the RSMAS community will be rejected. Anonymous postings will be rejected. Members of the list can post directly to the list, subject to moderation. Non-member e-mails to the list will be rejected. Membership is generally approved by the moderators for all well-behaving members of our community.

[Un]Subscribe: email to info-[un]subscribe@lists.rsmas.miami.edu
Archives at http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/info/info-archive

SEMINAR: seminar@lists.rsmas.miami.edu

The RSMAS seminar list is only for seminar announcements. Members of the list can post directly to the list.
[Un]Subscribe: email to seminar-[un]subscribe@lists.rsmas.miami.edu
Archives at http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/info/seminar-archive

NOTICE: notice@lists.rsmas.miami.edu

The RSMAS notice list is for official notices and RSMAS business. This includes coursework information, policy announcements and notices from RSMAS service facilities. The list is moderated.
Unsubscribe: NOTICE is an official RSMAS communiction. You cannot unsubscribe without permission from the Deans office. Contact RCF staff if you have such permission.

RCF: rcf-note@lists.rsmas.miami.edu

The RSMAS Computer Facility list is for distribution of information about computer/network operations at RSMAS. Announcements of outages, updates, and service changes for service facilities. The list is moderated, posting is open to all RSMAS community members, but must be on topic with an adequate subject line.
Unsubscribe: contact RCF staff.

GROUPS: GROUP@lists.rsmas.miami.edu

A GROUP is an email-address constructed of an administrative unit and position. When we install mail accounts, the AdminUnit and Position of the account holder are recorded. AdminUnit is the RSMAS phone book code for administrative units (MGG, LIB, ADM, AMP, ...); Positions are STUdent, FACulty, STAff, RESarch staff, and LECturer. For example, mbfsta@lists.rsmas.miami.edu goes to all MBF staff.
Unsubscribe: GROUPS are official RSMAS communiction. You cannot unsubscribe without permission from your Division. Contact RCF staff if you have such permission.

VERITAS

Veritas is UMs official email news brief and is sent to all UM faculty and staff twice weekly (not students). News items and queries about the list may be submitted to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

The RSMAS lists above are served by computer "lists.rsmas.miami.edu". This is a function separate from the mail server at "rsmas.miami.edu" and mail-list addresses are sent to @lists.rsmas.miami.edu. There are aliases that forward postings to info, seminar, and notice via LISTNAME@rsmas.miami.edu to list server. There are also aliases for the Group-related addresses that are sent to @rsmas, not @lists.rsmas:

• faculty@rsmas.miami.edu -        all faculty
• students@rsmas.miami.edu -     all students
• staff@rsmas.miami.edu -            all staff
• research@rsmas.miami.edu -     all research associates
• DIV-all@rsmas.miami.edu -        all faculty, staff, stu, res, lec for the indicated DIV, e.g. MPO, AMP

To send email to all of MPO, mail would be sent to mpo-all@rsmas.miami.edu. There are not aliases for any of the other list functions, such email needs to be directed to the appropriate @lists.rsmas.miami.edu address.

RCF can create skeleton email lists for you to manage. Management means you have to read some documentation and manage the traffic in the list. Good for handling large mailing lists. Contact Grant for more information.

Note that all email to RSMAS lists should be appropriate for the list, in good taste, and nice. Be sure the Subject: line contains enough information so people can decide whether they need to read it or not. "Seminar" is a terrible subject. "Wednesday, 2pm, MBF student seminar" is informative. Up to 600 people, depending on the list, spend time to read your message. Look it over and think before you hit the send button.

Retrieving Your Email

Your email will be delivered to a mail server, mail.rsmas.miami.edu, where it can be retrieved from RSMAS login accounts or personal computers and workstations on the Internet. You can get your mail with any mail client (e.g. MS. Office Outlook, AppleMail, or Thunderbird) or with webmail, accessed with any web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape) at http://webmail.rsmas.miami.edu/. You need your username/passwd from your email account to access your email.

Note that all email for all of RSMAS is stored in limited disk-space. If you dont regularly delete your email on the hub, the disk will fill up. If this happens we will have to impose quotas that limit your ability to receive mail after your storage quota is exceeded. There is sufficient space available to store active email for most any working project, but not to serve as an archive for years of email.

Mail Clients

Mail clients are programs that retrieve and send email from your personal computer or workstation. Incoming email is retrieved from a mail server using the IMAP or Exchange protocols.  For any of these protocols, the client must be configured to use secure connections (STARTTLS or SSL). RCF requires that you use secure such secures protocls to retreive your email. Secure connections encrypt your username and password before they are moved over the network; it is more difficult to steal your authorization information with a secure connection. These protocols leave your messages on the mail server until you explicitly delete them or transfer them to folders on your local machine; your email inbox resides on the mail server.

Outgoing email is sent through an outgoing mail server (SMTP server), which will be mail.rsmas.miami.edu for computers on the local RSMAS net. If your computer is not on the local RSMAS net, you should either use the mail server provided by your Internet service provider (AOL, BellSouth, etc.), or configure your mailer to use smtp.rsmas.miami.edu for SMTP as directed in the Client Setup documents. Contact your external Internet service provider for the name of a non-RSMAS mail server.

RCF has good success with the Thunderbird mail client, which is a mozilla.com package. The client will run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Source is available for builds on other Unix systems. A RSMAS Thunderbird configuration document is available for Thunderbird. We have also had good success with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or later. Configuration information for Outlook and Applemail  available. Eudora and Outlook Express are not supported or recommended.

WebMail

The RSMAS mail server will accept web browser connections to your email account at http://webmail.rsmas.miami.edu. You do a secure login with your email username/passwd and are placed in a utility that allows you to read and send email. There is extensive help available in the utility. You can do it from any computer with a web browser.

Forwarding Email

If you wish to have the email that is delivered to your RSMAS address forwarded to another email address, go to http://webmail.rsmas.miami.edu and go to the Options link to set your address to redirect to your alternate address.

All forwarded mail is copied to your "Deleted Items" folder on your webmail account.  Clean this folder up on a regular basis if your are forwarding your email.   Note that this keeps your RSMAS email account open.  If you are no longer at RSMAS, please use this just for the time required to inform your correspondents of your new address and then ask us to close your RSMAS email account so we can free up the resources a local account consumes.

Email Security

Email often bring spam, viruses and other "malware" which can annoy you and even corrupt or damage the files on your computer or worse. RSMAS does several things to help diminish the chances that viuses will destoy your work.

• Antivirus software is available for you to install on your computer. Dont even think about running a Windows computer without antivirus software. Not really needed on Unix based systems (Linux, Macs, etc.)
• RCF strips attachments from any inbound email with attachments which can be executed automatically in Microsoft mail clients. This includes *.exe, *.htm, and *.html files. Contact RCF if you must transfer such an attachment via email.
• Make sure your email client software is current, and that your Windows operating system is regularly updated with Microsoft patches. RCF recommends that you configure your windows systems to automatically check for operating system and antivirus updates.
• RCF uses an external service at Postini to handle email security and archiving.  You can log in with your email username and C-number to retrieve quarantined items and adjust your security filters.  Documentation is at the Postini site.

EMail while Traveling

• Many of you have access through Internet service providers that allow Internet access on your lap-top computer while traveling. You can use Thunderbird/MSOffice/Applemail with the same configuration you use at RSMAS. This is a change (1/2005) from prior mail servers at RSMAS. The RSMAS mail servers are now authorized to relay off-net email when you enter your username/password to pick up your email.
• If you have access to the web, you can read/send RSMAS email from http://webmail.rsmas.miami.edu. You must enter your RSMAS mail account username and passwd to access this service. Mail you delete/store from your RSMAS inbox is gone (or stored on your local system). Mail you leave in your inbox will be available to you thru your normal mail channels when you return.
• You can set up a "vacation" message to tell people you are out. Do this at the Options link at http://webmail.rsmas.miami.edu.
• You can cut down on your email traffic while traveling by unsubscribing from the INFO and SEMINAR email lists.  Send an empty message to, e.g., info-unsubscribe@lists.rsmas.miami.edu.  The message must have your RSMAS email address as a return address or a Reply-To address. You will be sent a confirmation message. To resubscribe, simply send an empty email to info-subscribe@lists.rsmas.miami.edu.

Retired EMail Accounts

There is no formal RSMAS policy about the disposition of RSMAS email accounts for those who have left RSMAS. RSMAS email accounts and any archived email on RSMAS computers are the property of UM/RSMAS administration. There is no policy that RSMAS will provide any forwarding information or access to stored email for any departed RSMAS students, faculty, or staff. You can use a separate personal email account with a private provider for personal email and archive any personal email from your RSMAS account on your personal computer/media if this is an issue for you.

In the past, departing students and faculty have been offered the opportunity to have their RSMAS email address forwarded to another address, or to retain their RSMAS email address until they are settled elsewhere. This service is offered at the discretion of RSMAS administration. Those who are offered this service are contacted annually by the RCF to confirm that the forwarding information is correct and the account is still used. Check with RSMAS administration about your eligibility for this service.

Email Truths

• Email is not secure.
• Email can be read by email administrators all along the route. If there is a delivery problem, I receive a copy of the message in many cases. RCF Staff can access the email storage area and read the messages there.
• The University of Miami owns the email messages delivered and stored on its systems. They can call for copies of it at any time and we must turn it over.
• Email can be faked to look like it came from anywhere/anyone by almost any kid with a computer.
• Email list messages are generally seen by some folks that might not obviously be in the list category.
• Email can be generally be traced to its account of origin (with enough work), but there is almost no way to tell who was actually logged on the account when the mail was sent.
• You almost surely will send something you really didn't wish to send some day. I can't get it back for you.

Dont Run a Local Email Server

Groups may not set up their own email server on their own computer without permission from the RCF and demonstrable need to do so. Our firewall blocks outbound email traffic, so it will fail.