Email

 

Email Consolidation for Faculty and Staff

Concordia is rolling out a new central email system designed to enhance communication and collaboration among Faculty and Staff. The new service will standardize Concordia's email naming convention – meaning that all addresses will now follow the format firstname.lastname@concordia.ca. Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) has begun migration to this new central email system - Exchange 2010. AITS has prepared a guide to assist Faculty and Staff in this transition.

Email Address

Every ENCS user has an email address associated with their ENCS account. The email address is: <your username>@<your department>.concordia.ca. The department names are currently:

However, you can always choose the suffix @encs.concordia.ca, rather than your department-specific suffix, if you wish. For example, foobar@ECE.concordia.ca is actually the same addess as foobar@ENCS.concordia.ca.

Email Quota

The incoming emails, by default, are sent to your INBOX folder. Be aware that your INBOX folder has a quota limit of 76.8 MB. If you exceed this limit, all incoming emails will be bounced back to the sender.

You can check your INBOX quota by clicking on Quota Check from the Quick Links menu on the left (opens in a new window). Alternatively, you can check it by the command quota at Unix/Linux prompt. Among the items of the output, the one labeled INBOX indicates your current INBOX quota usage.

The INBOX folder is only meant to receive new email before it is redirected to other mail folders. The INBOX folder resides in /var/spool/mail/first_letter_of_your_username/your_username, which can be accessed via login.encs.concordia.ca. All the other mail folders (e.g. Trash, Sent, Drafts, custom mailboxes) reside in the mail sub-directory of your Unix/Linux home directory:

Unix/Linux:    ~/mail
Windows:  U:\mail

The implication is that all your non-INBOX mail folders contribute towards your standard disk quota. You can manage to avoid hitting INBOX quota limit .

No Large File Attachments to Email

Sending or receiving large files via email attachements is not a good idea. It overloads the mail system and can easily overload the receiver's INBOX quota. Moreover, whenever you send an email, a copy of the sent email (including any attachments)is saved in your Sent mail folder, which eats up your limited network space..

To exchange large files with others, use the File Exchange tool (available from the menu on the left menu bar). With this tool you have the capability to:

• share your files with others
• get files from others

The file size can be as big as 1GB ! More detailed information is available by clicking on the File Exchange link from the menu on the left.

Configure your email program

The email program (Thunderbird) has been well configured for you on the analyst-managed machines. You need to configure the user-managed and personal computers by yourself.

Filtering Emails and SPAM

It is possible to redirect emails automatically to various mailboxes based on various criteria. This can be done on the client-side (i.e. by setting filters on your email client, like Mozilla or Eudora) or on the server-side (procmail filtering). The disadvantage of client-side filtering is that messages only get filtered by the email program where the filters have been configured. Server-side filtering is done by the mail server, so email is filtered no matter what email program you use.

See your email client help documentation for client-side filter configuration. For server-side filter configuration, you have to create a procmail filter in your Unix/Linux home directory which contains your filtering criteria.

IMPORTANT: Read all the procmail instructions so that your email is filtered to the correct destination

Note: If you need assistance in configuring your procmail filter, please contact Service Desk.