Oakton Email Information

Getting a network/email account

All College employees and credit class students are allowed network and email accounts. Student accounts are created automatically upon class registration. Employee accounts are created upon request.

Forwarding Oakton Email to an Outside Account

Your Oakton email can be forwarded to your non-Oakton email account (yahoo mail, gmail, etc.) . To set up forwarding, go to myOakton > Self Service Banner > Personal Information > Update E-mail Addresses. Follow the directions provided there.

Responsible Use

Oakton email provides an important means of communication amongst the College's employees and students. To preserve the viability of email, we ask that you abide by Board Policy 8330.2 for Responsible Use of Information Technology at Oakton (available online at http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/policies.htm).

On-Campus Access

Oakton email is accessible from any networked campus computer. While Mozilla Thunderbird is the preferred program for accessing email on campus, browser-based WebMail (Squirrelmail) is also available on- and off-campus. Detailed instructions for both are linked from http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/knowbank.htm

Off-campus Access

WebMail: Employees and students may access their Oakton email via a web mail interface. The URL is http://www.oakton.edu/webmail. Instructions for using WebMail are linked from the WebMail login page and also from http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/knowbank.htm.

IDs & Passwords: Your ID & Password is the same on-campus as off-campus. 

(Note: Oakton no longer offers dialup.)

Account Management & Message/Spam Filtering

Employees may set up features such as mail forwarding and vacation notices. For more information on how to do this see http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/mailgide/acctmgt/acctmgt.htm. Users may setup their own message and spam filters by using the instructions linked from http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/mailgide.

Important User Guidelines

College business is dependent upon Oakton’s email. To ensure the viability of the system, please follow these guidelines.

• The use of College technology, including email, for personal gain is not allowed.
• Email storage is limited to 250 Mb for all folders. The system will warn you when you approach your limit. Exceeding your limit will result in bounced mail; if IT must correct the problem, you may lose all saved mail.

Please:

• Check your mail often
• Delete unwanted messages from your Inbox and Sent folders (under your Inbox and also Local mail)
• Empty your Trash folder regularly

Mailing Groups

There are six major mailing groups at the College (in addition to those you may create in your own address book or listservs which IT may set up for a specific purpose)

faculty@oakton.edu	Received by Full time and Adjunct faculty only
FTfaculty@oakton.edu	Received by Full time faculty only
staff@oakton.edu	Received by Classified staff only
administrators@oakton.edu	Received by Administrators only
everyone@oakton.edu	Received by All members of the above groups
*RHC@oakton.edu	Received by All people that work at RHC and by request

.................................* Contact Julia Gray, IT/RHC to be added to the RHC mail group

You must have a valid Oakton email account to be able to send to any of these groups.

You must send from your Oakton account either on campus, through Oakton's dialup connection, or via webmail.

Those who go over their email quota for more than 10 days in a row will be automatically unsubscribed

Use of these addresses should be carefully considered and generally restricted to college-related activities. As a community college, College-related activities may include a broad range of business, professional and personal development, and community-related issues. However, we do ask you to follow these guidelines when mailing to any of the major "@oakton" groups.

• Do not use mailing groups to advertise personal items for-sale. 
• Do not use mailing groups to advertise personal business or other for-profit activities·
• Do not use mailing groups to distribute chain letters or jokes
• Avoid sending mail "Highest Priority." This priority is generally reserved for critical use as determined by the administration.
• Do not use mailing groups to distribute virus warnings. Send virus warnings to helpdesk@oakton.edu and it will be forwarded to appropriate IT personnel for evaluation and possible general distribution.
• Do not send the mailing groups messages with large attachments. The automatic limit for the groups is approximately 300K including the message plus the attachment.
• Do not conduct discussions via the groups or "reply all" with humorous or contentious responses. If you take issue with an email sent to a group, reply only to the sender or follow normal complaint procedures.

Large messages can adversely impact users' individual accounts and the mail system as a whole.  The file size of an email increases greatly with the inclusion of attachments and embedded images.  If you are unsure of the total size of an email with attachments and images, send it to yourself first. Consult IT for further advice. A guide for optimizing the file size of images is at http://www.oakton.edu/resource/it/optimize/optimize.html