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Information On Accessing E-Mail During An Emergency

Accessing E-mail During an Emergency

If avian flu or other emergency forces campus to close, e-mail access from home may provide a vital link to colleagues and loved ones, as well as a channel by which the University can supply you with timely information. This page provides pointers for accessing your University of Maryland (UM) e-mail, provided that you already have some form of Internet access (dial-up, DSL or cable modem).

Mail Forwarding

Every member of the University of Maryland community has a Directory ID and Password. These are used to log in to campus systems such as ARES, UMEG and Testudo. The ID also forms an e-mail address (yourID@umd.edu) that has the ability to forward mail to any account that you specify. You may specify any valid address, even a personal one from another provider like AOL or Gmail.

The most important step in preparation is that you know your Directory ID and Password (see www.directory.umd.edu), and that you make sure that your official forwarding address is correctly specified using www.ares.umd.edu for faculty/staff or www.testudo.umd.edu for students.

Mail@umd

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) provides the Mail@umd e-mail system, currently in use by over 33,000 faculty, staff and students. It can be accessed with your directory ID and password, using e-mail client software like Outlook Express or Thunderbird, or by a Webmail interface.

Webmail is particularly easy to use when away from campus, using your favorite browser: https://www.oit.umd.edu/email/about_webmail.html

If you prefer to use client software, the OIT Help Desk provides recommendations and configuration information: http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/documents/0/690/ In this case, you may also need to use the Virtual Private Networking (VPN) software in order to send mail through the University's SMTP servers.

NOTE: Although the name may remind you of the mail forwarding service, Mail@umd is a completely separate service; just because your e-mail address looks like yourID@umd.edu, that does not necessarily mean that you are using Mail@umd. If you want to use Mail@umd with the forwarding service above, you will specify yourID@umd.edu in ARES or Testudo, but you would still tell people to send to yourID@umd.edu. If you have any questions, the OIT Helpdesk can assist you.

Other E-mail Systems at the University of Maryland

OIT maintains other mail services such as Glue and DEANS. General information can be found here: http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/systems/wam/connectivity/email//4092/

Some departments and other groups provide their own mail services. If you are using one of these services, please contact your IT administrator for additional assistance in accessing these systems from home.

If you currently access your e-mail through a department server that has been disabled due to an emergency, it is possible to set up an account on the Mail@umd system by visiting www.oit.umd.edu/new and following the links. Accounts do not exist for everyone. Once established, the account may be accessed via the web using https://mail.umd.edu/. Please note that your archived e-mail will not be available in the newly created account.

A partial list of departmental e-mail systems appears below.