Bearcat Online (BOL) Guidelines and Useful Information
INTRODUCTION
YOUR BOL ACCOUNT
USING BOL FEATURES
YOUR RESPONSIBILITY IN USING E-MAIL AT THE UNIVERSITY
GETTING HELP
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION Bearcat Online (BOL) is the approved University of Cincinnati student e-mail service. It will be used for official university communications to students, such as:
- Registration procedures and deadline notifications
- Course withdrawal confirmations
- Financial aid requirements and awards
- Billing notices and due dates
- Emergency (e.g., snow closing) notices
- Information about programs, activities, sporting events and more
The Student E-mail Policy (PDF) provides an overview of the University's directive regarding Bearcat Online (BOL) as a comprehensive electronic student communication vehicle.
The University of Cincinnati Information Technology (UCit) department has developed Guidelines for Bearcat Online (BOL) as part of the deployment of the Bearcat Online (BOL) e-mail system at the University of Cincinnati. The primary intent of these guidelines is to insure system stability, availability, and continued functionality for all users. BOL is primarily an Internet-based E-mail System that provides anti-spam, anti-virus, auto-reply, calendar, user-defined filter, forward, IMAP, POP, and Web-mail services.
The system is free to students, faculty, and staff of the University of Cincinnati. Users who wish to download their mail onto their workstation and work off-line will find this system suitable for the majority of their needs. The centralized messaging system allows for state-of-the-art messaging retention/delivery; but to retain this high-level of service, messaging guidelines are necessary. We must assure adequate service for the number of accounts that need to be managed on the system.
UCit recommends that all BOL users review the enclosed material and abide by the guidelines stated within. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the enclosed, please feel free to contact the UCit Help Desk at 556-3785 or at helpdesk@uc.edu.
YOUR BOL ACCOUNT
Account Initiation and Access
All students and faculty are pre-issued a Bearcat Online Account. Accounts are initiated for students when they attend Student Orientation or when they first register for a class, whichever comes first. Accounts are initiated for faculty after they are added to the Employee Database.
Web access to your BOL e-mail account is available at http://email.uc.edu/ .You can determine your username and default password by entering requested personal information at the E-mail Services account verification Web site.
Passwords: Secure and Private
It is the responsibility of each user to change their password upon first use.
The default password for BOL is set at your full birth date (MMDDYYYY). Passwords are case sensitive and should be a minimum of 8 characters in length with no special characters.
To protect the privacy of an individual's e-mail account, the UCit HelpDesk cannot change a password from a phone or e-mail request. .If you have used your BOL account and changed your password from the default, and have forgotten your password, you will need to show a valid picture ID at one of the following locations to have it reset:
Main Campus Students:
- 630 Student Life Center
- UCit HelpDesk, 400 University Hall
College of Medicine
- AIT&L- IT Help Desk, E680 MSB SERV
Raymond Walters Students:
Clermont Students:
- Room 9 Peter Jones Building (PETE)
Distance Learning Students:
- Contact the UCit HelpDesk for password support. (You must call from the phone number on your student record.)
Message Quotas
Student quotas are allocated 15 megabytes of disk space on the server. Full-time faculty and staff are allocated 30 megabytes of disk space on the server. As a reference, a typical one page electronic message is 1,000 bytes, which would allow a typical user 15,000 pages.
Why can't the University support e-mail with similar storage capacity as commercial e-mail services, such as AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail? The University of Cincinnati does not provide equivalent amounts of storage capacity as the public e-mail providers because of the cost of providing such a service. Public providers sell advertising to support the capacity levels they provide and use part of that revenue to support the service. Their business model assumes that the more capacity they provide, the more subscribers they will have, thus the more attractive they are to advertisers.
The University provides a high quality, reliable student e-mail service that is intended to support the business and operation of the university. Since ultimately it is the students that must pay for this service it is approached in the most efficient and economical manner possible which in this case means that we limit the amount of space made available to what has proven to be a reasonable level to support the average student's needs.
Account Review and Removal
On a quarterly basis, accounts are examined on BOL for deactivation. If a student has not registered for courses for any of the last four quarters or a faculty member has not taught a class for two years, a memo is sent letting them know that their account is on the purge list. A website link is provided where requests to keep an account active can be made. In most cases, these requests are granted.
USING BOL FEATURES
Blind Carbon Copy Feature (Privacy)
The BOL system allows for the functionality of Blind Copies on messages. Blind Copies allow a sender to direct copies of a message to other users without the primary recipients' knowledge. The University of Cincinnati Information Technologies department (UCit) recommends that users use this feature with some discretion and control.
Auto Forwarding
The BOL system does support auto forwarding to a preferred e-mail account. That is, messages addressed to your BOL account are automatically sent (forwarded) to another e-mail address of your choice. However, there are certain risks associated with using this forwarding option:
- It is your responsibility to assure that your chosen e-mail account is working; the University cannot be held responsible for e-mail that was not accepted by the chosen e-mail service.
- It is your responsibility to be certain that messages from the University are not being considered spam or junk mail in your chosen e-mail account. Be sure to check your junk mail/spam folder periodically. Check your junk mail settings if you notice University messages are being flagged as junk mail
- There are certain communications, known as bulletins, which cannot be forwarded. Bulletins are used to communicate school closings, UC computer system virus notices, and University public announcements. It is advised that you continue to check your BOL account to retrieve these bulletins if you choose to have your e-mail forwarded to a public e-mail service.
BOL Backup/Recovery
BOL does not provide for a single mailbox recovery. BOL is client server based messaging system, which uses single message instance in a database storage environment. All messages for all users are stored within a single database, which is backed up on nightly basis. Backups of the BOL system are performed exclusively for disaster/recovery purposes in the advent that the BOL system needs to be rebuilt. The Database backups are kept for 14 days before the tapes are recycled and the contents are overwritten.
BOL backups are not incremental, but are snapshots of the messaging database at the time of the backup cycle. Mail that is taken off the server via use of the POP protocol or deletion of messages will not be included in the backup since the messages have been removed from the system prior to the backup activation.
Messaging Clients
UCit provides information on software that is available to use as messaging clients for your BOL e-mail account. See the Software Web site for the latest information.
YOUR RESPONSIBILITY IN USING E-MAIL AT THE UNIVERSITY
Checking Your BOL E-mail Account
It is the responsibility of each user to check their e-mail accounts on a regular basis for official University communications (registration information, billing information, instructor communications, etc.).
The Student E-mail Policy (PDF) provides the following guidance, "The University suggests that students access their Bearcat Online email accounts daily, or at a minimum, three times a week."
Account Privacy
It is the responsibility of each user to safeguard their e-mail account.
- Never share your password with another individual. Your e-mail account is for your eyes only.
- UCit recommends that users change their password every 180 days to insure account security.
- Develop a strong password by following these guidelines:
- Make your password at least seven characters where possible.
- Develop a mnemonic (i.e., use the first letter of every word from a simple phrase or sentence).
- Add numbers and special characters such as @, !, &,*.
- Alternate between upper and lower case letters.
- Use a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
- Make your password something not found in a dictionary.
- Do not use all numbers or letters.
- Do not use personal information that someone could easily guess or discover.
- Do not use the name of a sports team.
- If you must write down your password, do not leave it unsecured.
Mailbox Cleanup
It is the responsibility of each user to review their message directories and perform periodic cleanup.
The following methods can be used for managing large volumes of email and/or attachments:
- Install and utilize the Eudora client. This will enable you to download the messages to your local PC and remove them from the server.
- Store large attachments on your local PC and remove them from the email message, and thus, from the server.
- Be sure you have emptied your e-mail trash.
Note: Reaching the Maximum Quota inhibits both sending and receiving of messages on BOL. Not managing your account means you will miss important messages.
Mail Content (Legal-Ethics)
It is the responsibility of each user to abide by the University's General Policy on the Use of Information Technology.
Account Maintenance Requests
It is the responsibility of each BOL user to send any e-mail account maintenance requests to TECHNICIAN@UC.EDU via e-mail.
Information required for processing is name, phone number, birth date (MMDD), University username, and student or employee ID. This electronic form is kept for documentation purposes. Account maintenance requests will be processed on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Name change requests: A name change request is actually a request for a new account under a different name. These requests MUST BE sent by the individual who owns the account and must be sent from the BOL account that needs the name change:
- Make a request for an official name change with the University: a student must have the Registrar's Office change their name on their official Student record or an Employee must have the Human Resources department change their name on the Employee record.
- Send request for e-mail account change to TECHNICIAN@UC.EDU.
- A new account will be activated and the user will be notified.
- The user is responsible for transferring the mail from the old account to the new account or to a client on their workstation, such as Eudora.
- The old account will be left open for a two-week period. At that time, the old account will be deleted.
Account deletion requests:
- Send request to TECHNICIAN@UC.EDU.
- The account will be deleted and the user will be notified.
Note: Deletion of accounts is a permanent action. BOL currently does not allow for the restoration of a single mailbox.
Viruses, Worms and Trojans
It is the responsibility of each computer user to protect any PC with access to the University's network from virus infection.
Viruses are computer programs designed to cause trouble to your computer. Worms are programs that replicate themselves and look for holes in networks or send themselves via e-mail to cause trouble. Trojans are programs that carry hidden, malicious programs. To protect YOUR PC:
- Do not open e-mail files from anyone you do not know.
- Use extreme caution opening e-mail attachments containing executable files. Some file extensions to avoid include: EXE, .COM, .CMD, .PIF, .SCR, BAT, or .VBS.
- Keep your desktop anti-virus software up-to-date. Information on the University's supported virus protection software can be found at the McAfee Anti-Virus Software Web site.
Current information about the latest virus outbreaks can be found at http://www.ucit.uc.edu/helpdesk/virus.asp.
Additional information on virus management and protecting your computer can be found at the following links:
Computer Viruses - A Quick Tutorial
General Tips for Overall Computer Protection
Spam Management
It is the responsibility of each computer user to take steps to safeguard against increasing the amount of spam that comes into the University. A thorough review of "Keeping Spam out of Your E-mail" will help to understand the world of spam and how you can help to control it.
The University of Cincinnati Information Technology department has implemented several mechanisms for managing spam. A complete discussion of spam management can be found in the article "Keeping Spam out of Your E-mail."
GETTING HELP
Available Resources for Help
- Information about the specific use of BOL functions is available by using the online Help function (available in the Webmail Direct BOL) and in the following online documentation:
- UCit will support POP clients, such as Eudora, to their full functionality.
- Support for individual e-mail problems is provided by the UCit HelpDesk by calling 556-HELP or sending e-mail to userhelp@email.uc.edu.
SUMMARY
The messaging procedures/practices stipulated in this document have been implemented for the continued overall functionality and security for all users concerned. These procedures/practices will be reviewed periodically and are subject to change. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the UCit Help Desk by phone at 556-HELP or by e-mail at userhelp@uc.edu.
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