All About Exchange E-Mail

Getting an Account

All employees of the University of Cincinnati (defined as those who recieve a paycheck from the university) are eligible for e-mail accounts. Affilliates of the university who do not fit the above definition of an employee must be sponsored by a university department to an have an e-mail account. Please see the Affiliates page for more information.

When a new university employee's information enters the HR system, the university's Identity Management System generates a userid, and the Exchange e-mail system automatically creates an account. Typically, the 6+2 userid is the first six characters of a user’s last name the user's first and middle initials. However, this is not e-mail policy, and you cannot assume it will always hold true.

Protocols Supported

The Exchange e-mail system supports all of the major access protocols.

The instructions for most clients are here.

Aliases

On request, UCit will create alternate aliases for users.

Size Limitations

An Exchange account is limited to 500 MB. Once a user has reached 460 MB, the system will generate a warning message. At 470 MB, a user will not be able to send any additional messages until the inbox is reduced. At 500 MB, a user will be unable to send or receive new messages until the size of until the inbox is reduced to less than 500 MB. 

An individual message from the Exchange server may not exceed 30 MB, including text, headers, and attachments. A user will be unable to send a message exceeding 30 MB. We cannot grant exceptions to this limitation. Like most e-mail servers, the Exchange server will not support messages exceeding 30 MB. 

Extended Storage       

Extended storage increases mailbox size from 500 MB to 1000 MB. This is ideal for anyone who sends or receives a lot of e-mail, or who frequently needs to attach large files to messages.

The cost for this service $15 per month per mailbox. Additional storage is available for $10 per month per 500 MB increment. 

Spam and Bulk Mail

An Exchange user may send an e-mail message to a maximum of 250 recipients. If you need to send a single message to more than 500 recipients, please use bulk mail procedures. If E-Mail Services detects a single user sending multiple messages to many recipients, we will contact the individual and remind him or her to follow the bulk e-mail process. 

The UCit spam filter classifies e-mail messages with an algorithmic score of 300 or greater as spam, and automatically drops them. If you are a member of a large circulation list from which you suspect that you are not receiving legitimate e-mail, please contact E-Mail Services, so we can add the sender's address to the “white list.”

To create new filters, please see the InfoSec web page on spam filters.

Account Deletion and Removal

Account deletion and removal policies are outlined here.

Forwarding

The Exchange system does not allow a user to set a rule to automatically forward all e-mail to an account outside the UCMail Exchange system. This is to enhance the security of the information contained in the e-mail messages. For more detailed information about the reasoning behind this see this document.

For people who are concerned about having to access multiple e-mail accounts, most e-mail client programs allow you to configure them to gather mail from more than one account at the same time. Under the account configuration setting you can set up UCMAIL as an additional account using the information for the POP3 protocol as outlined in the Client Configuration document.

PDAs, Smartphones, Pocket PCs, and Other Electronic Devices

Exchange users may synchronize their accounts with Windows-based handheld devices, Palm devices, and  iPhones. These devices use the Microsoft Active Sync process for the synchronization.

UCit has a Blackberry enterprise server to support Blackberry devices of users with valid UC Mobile accounts.  Please visit the Blackberry page for more information on mobile devices. 

Encryption

The ZIX appliance can encrypt only messages you are sending from the Exchange server using the Outlook MAPI or the Outlook Web Access client. For more information, please see Secure E-Mail.

Accessing Accounts

In an attempt to protect each individual’s privacy, UCit works with UC Information Security to define acceptable terms for granting the ability to access another person's e-mail. We accomplish this by granting permissions for one account to open another. We do not change a password and give the new password to the requestor.  

A dean or director level staff member may approve the granting of rights to an employee's account. But this must be processed through the UC Information Security team.

The sponsors for affiliates such as contractors, must approve affiliates' access rights.

Backup and Restoration

A user should first try to retrieve the deleted items.

• Open the deleted items folder.
• Select Tools, Recover Deleted items.
• Search for and select the item or items you want to recover.
• Click on the icon of the envelope with the arrow about it.
• The items will now be in the deleted items folder. You can move them to another folder.

UCit retains 30 days of Exchange e-mail backups. A mailbox restoration within that 30 day period costs $375. We cannot fulfill requests for restorations of mail deleted more than 30 days prior to the request date.

Public Folder backups can only be used for disaster recovery requiring a full restoration of all Public Folders. Recovery of a single public folder is not available. Please see Back-up policy.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the UCit Help Desk at 556-HELP (4357).