E-Mail Policies, Procedures, and Practices

General

• UC e-mail users are expected to manage their e-mail accounts by deleting messages no long needed, moving e-mail messages to personal folders and/or subscribing to the E-Mail Plus system to archive messages.
• E-Mail messages sent via the Internet are limited to 15 Mb (text, headers and attachments)
• An e-mail message cannot be sent to more than 500 recipients. If you have more, you can use the bulk mailer. E_Mail Services monitors messages with a large number of recipients. If we see one person sending multiple messages to groups of several hundred recipients, we will contact him or her about using the bulk e-mail process.
• If a new employee has a Bearcat Online account (because he or she is or was a student) a UCMAIL account will not be automatically created. A GETit order must be processed.
• UCit will not create an account until the IDentity Management system generates a userid. While not an e-mail policy, the UC userid or "6 plus 2," is based on a user's first and last name -  but unique user ids are preserved infinitely. A new user cannot make an assumption as to what his or her user id will be.
• Both UCMAIL and BOL accounts are accessible  via WebMail, POP3, or IMAP.
• UCit will create alternate e-mail aliases for university employees.
• Alumni e-mail accounts are provided by the Alumni Association, not UCit.
• UCit tries to preserve the privacy of individuals' e-mail. We have worked with the Information Security department to define the rules as to when we can grant someone access to another user's account:
  - If the person is an employee, we can grant access to the account with approval from the Dean or Director level.
  - If the person is an affiliate, approval must come from the account sponsor.
  - UCit does not change passwords on accounts. We can grant access.
• UCit has a vendor-provided solution to filter spam. This solution uses a proprietary algorithm to provide a potential spam score. UCit drops e-mail with a score of 300 or above. It is possible that legitimate e-mail messages do get dropped. If a user is not recieving expected e-mail, UCit will place that address or e-mail domain on the "white list" so that the messages can get through. 
• Bearcat Online
• Student accounts are created automatically. This process is triggered by the student confirming their attendence at UC or registering for a class. This process can take up to three days.
• Faculty can request BOL accounts
• UCit does not recover mailboxes from BOL
• BOL backups are preserved for 7 days.
• BOL accounts are removed after a student has not registered for 5 quarters or a professor has not taught a class in 2 years.

UCMail

• Staff and Faculty emails are created on Exchange automatically. When their data is entered into the HR system, the identy Management system will create the ID. The next day the account is created.
• Faculty accounts are created on Exchange
• UCMAIL (Exchange) standard accounts have a 100 MB storage quota
• UCMail account owners can subscribe to two different premium services in order to  increase the amount of space available for emails.
• Employees are defined as personnel who receive paychecks from UC in order to qualify for a no-cost email account (licensing issue)
• When staff and faculty leave the University, their accounts are disabled the first Monday after their status in the HR database becomes "terminated"
• The cost to restore a UCMail mailbox from backup is $375
• UCIT has disallowed users to automatically forward all emails sent to an Exchange to an outside email account.
• UCit retains 30 days worth of backups for UCMAIL
• UCit has a product (ZIX) that can encrypt email messages but it only applies to emails being sent from UCMAIL - using the Outlook MAPI client or Outlook Web access.
• UCit will allow UCMAIL users to synchronize a Windows-based handheld device with the Exchange server.
• Exchange accounts will be reviewed on the quarterly basis to determine inactive accounts based on their last activity date. Accounts inactive for six months will be disabled and hidden for one month prior to permanent removal from the system.