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Email Information

mail.med Features

Mail.med is upgrading to the Zimbra Collaboration Suite on July 25th 2008.

Zimbra FAQ can be found at http://www.med.upenn.edu/zimbra/

A list of features available on mail.med can be found at http://www.med.upenn.edu/somis/mailmedfeatures.shtml

Requesting a mail.med e-mail account:

The School of Medicine provides a mail.med e-mail account for all students, staff and faculty with a PennKey. Students must be actively working towards a degree in a School of Medicine academic program. Faculty and staff must be in Penn payroll with the School of Medicine as their primary affiliation.

Some staff who work outside of SOM buildings (HUP, CHOP, Wistar, Presbyterian, etc.) may be eligible for mail.med accounts. We highly recommend that you choose an account that your computer support providers will support. For example, those working in HUP space who do not receive support directly from a School of Medicine Local Support Provider should use a uphs.upenn.edu account.

To apply for your mail.med account use the School of Medicine New E-mail Account Application at http://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/my/eam.

Do not try to log into webmail until your request for a mail.med account has been completed.

Checking the status of your account request:

Once you have submitted your application, you can check the status of your request by logging back in to http://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/my/eam. When your acount has been created the status of your request will change to "Request Completed."

New mail.med e-mail accounts are generally created no later than one business days after the e-mail account request form has been submitted online. If your account request has not been processed one business days after you submitted your application please call Information Services at (215) 573-INFO.

Getting help with your mail.med account:

If you have questions please contact your department's Local Support Provider.

If you do not know who your Local Support Provider is, or if you do not have a Local Support Provider, please call (215) 573-4636 during regular University hours, 9AM - 5PM Monday through Friday. You can also send an e-mail message to medhelp@mail.med.upenn.edu.

If your department does not have a Local Support Provider please consider using ISC's Support-On-Site services (This service is charged at an hourly rate).

Neither UPHS, CHOP, nor the VA will support mail.med issues.

Choosing your e-mail client:

There are several supported methods for checking your mail.med e-mail account. For help installing or configuring your e-mail client please contact your Local Support Provider (LSP).

IMAP/POP Clients - Stand-alone programs that are installed and configured specifically for you on computers you plan to use to check your mail.med account.

Mozilla Thunderbird (Recommended for the PC, also available for the Mac)
- Configuration Instructions
Apple Mail (Recommended for the Mac, only available on Mac OS 10.4 and later)
- Configuration Instructions

Webmail - A web-based e-mail client that is already configured for you and is accessible from almost any computer with a web browser. Webmail uses your PennKey for authentication. Webmail is available at http://mail.med.upenn.edu/webmail.

Managing your mail.med account:

Account services - You can manage different aspects of your account by using the Account Services tools located on the webmail site at http://webmail.mail.med.upenn.edu. On the login page click on the "Account Services" button. Enter your PennKey name and PennKey password and click the "Submit" button. You will be taken to a page where you can:

Forward your e-mail to another address
Create a vacation message that will automatically reply to anyone who sends you e-mail
Check your disk quota, and find the largest files in your account
Give others PennKey access to your mail.med account
Turn on or change server-side spam filter settings

Quotas - Your mail.med e-mail account is limited to 250 MB of disk space. Any files in your account, including e-mail or any web pages, count against this quota. Information on managing your quota can be found at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/email/quotas.html.

Off-campus access to your e-mail account:

If you need access to your e-mail account off campus, you need to sign up with a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP). Information relating ISPs is available at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/remote/.

Almost any computer with a connection to the internet is capable of connecting to mail.med using the same methods one would use on campus. The School of Medicine recommends that you use webmail (http://webmail.mail.med.upenn.edu) for accessing your account off campus.

Unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam):

Server-side spam filtering is available using the Account Services tools at http://mail.med.upenn.edu/webmail. Click on the "Account Services" button. Enter your PennKey name and PennKey password and click the "Submit" button. You will be taken to a page where you can opt-in for spam filtering, or modify spam filtering options. With spam filtering turned on messages identified as spam will either be moved to a folder named "caught-spam" in your account on the server or tagged as spam and passed on to your inbox.

General information on how to deal with unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) is available at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/security/advisories/spam.html.

E-mail messages and newsgroup postings that are threatening or harassing are not considered to be spam. If you have received threatening or harassing e-mail or been the subject of similar newsgroup postings, or you feel the personal safety of yourself or any other person has been threatened via e-mail or newsgroup posting, you should report it directly to Penn Public Safety at 511 (on-campus) or 215-573-3333 (off-campus).

E-mail account deactivation:

Your mail.med is eligible for deactivation as soon as

you are no longer actively working towards a degree in a School of Medicine academic program
you have left your position as School of Medicine faculty or staff
your mail.med has not been checked for more than six months (and mail is not being forwarded)
your mail.med account has remained over quota for an extended period of time

Once your affiliation with the University has become inactive you are no longer eligible for a mail.med account. There is no guaranteed period of time that your account will remain active once your affiliation with the University has ended. In some cases the School of Medicine Information Services will allow your account to stay active for a short period of time until it is automatically deactivated. If an expiration date is placed on your account you should receive a notice that your account is slated for automatic deletion.

Departments in the School of Medicine may request immediate deactivation of an e-mail account. In such cases users may not receive notification that the account will be deleted.

To manually deactivate an e-mail account your business administrator should e-mail School of Medicine Information Services at medhelp@mail.med.upenn.edu with the e-mail address in question and the date which the account needs to be deactivated.

Backups for mail.med data:

Please discuss backing up your mail with your department's Local Support Provider.

Data restoration for individual mail.med accounts is available for a $50 fee. To request data restoration send a message to medhelp@mail.med.upenn.edu and indicate

Your mail.med account name
The folder in which the message was last seen, or the folder that was deleted
The last time that the message/folder was present in the account
The budget code that will be used for the $50 fee

Group Accounts:

Group accounts can be requested by sending and e-mail message to medhelp@mail.med.upenn.edu with the following information:

Name of the group
Five choices for the mail.med address (eight characters or less, no special characters)
Penn ID number of the "owner" of the group account
List of PennKeys that should have access to the account
Expiration date for the account, if any

Group accounts are Enhanced Security accounts that can only be checked by logging into webmail with your PennKey or by using a desktop e-mail client that is capable of Kerberos authentication.

Mailing lists:

It is often desirable to send the same email message to a number of people. There are various mechanisms available that allow you to do this efficiently and easily. Information on mailing lists visit http://www.upenn.edu/computing/list/.

Penn online directory:

Penn maintains a central directory database of students, staff, and faculty. It is publicly accessible though the web at http://www.upenn.edu/directories/. Faculty and staff who have a PennKey can edit their listing by visiting the Penn Directory Services web site.

Policy on acceptable use of electronic resources:

Information on Penn's policies regarding e-mail can be found at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/policy/aup.html.