Account Services: E-mail, Bboard, Pcounter, MuskieLink
A1. E-mail Account Generation Procedure
Under normal circumstances all accounts are triggered either through the student enrollment process or the employee hiring process. By adding a person to the institutional database, the admissions, GCS, and/or HR office generate data fields used to track the presence of electronic accounts. A program runs in the middle of the night that checks for various changes in the institutional database. The following conditions will meet the requirement for account creation:
- Students: All undergraduate students must apply for admission, which gets them entered into the administrative database as an "applicant". By paying a deposit, undergraduate students are reclassified as "student". Graduate and Continuing Ed students usually become a "student" at the same time that they are initially entered into the database. All "student's" without a current email account are flagged for automatic generation.
- Employees: Except for custodial, grounds, and temporary summer employees, all new employees (Faculty and Staff) are entered into the institutional database during the hiring process by the Human Resources department. As soon as an employee is assigned an FTE (Full Time Equivalant) of 1.0 their record is flagged for account generation.
- Others: With appropriate authorization, anyone not fitting the above rules, which typically refers to part time employees, must request electronic account services directly to CNS.
Once flagged for generation, accounts are created on the next business day due to the need for manual oversight of account naming idiosyncracies.
A2. Initial Password
The default password for all accounts is the first 4 characters (lower case) of a person's last name followed by either (1)the last 4 digits of a person’s Social Security Number or (2)the last 4 digits of the person's faculty/staff/student unique ID number, in that order of preference.
A3. Password Changing
If a person prefers to change or customize their password they must use the “Change Password” link found in the Preferences/General Tab of WebMail/Zimbra. Anyone wishing to change their password, including those who do not know or can not remember their password, may bring appropriate identification to the CNS department during business hours. We will also accept telephone password change requests but will ask for identifying information to verify the caller.
A4. Account Retention
E-mail accounts remain active based on the following conditions:
- Did the person attend a class during the last 365 days and does the person have a null hiatus code (which the registrar’s office uses to signify student departures)?
- Is the person still classified as a “student”?
- Was the person employed, other than as a student, in the last 6 months?
Accounts may be terminated upon appropriate authorized request. An e-mail message is sent to each account 2 weeks before it is to be removed. The person is given two (2) weeks to respond to any condition they believe warrants their account being retained.
A5. Account Usage and Limits
Each e-mail account is generated with 150 MegaBytes (MB) of allocated storage capacity. When this limit is reached, the owner will not be able to receive additional messages until items are deleted. In this case, an inbound message is rejected and sent back to the sender with a “Quota Exceeded” reason.
Owners of e-mail accounts may use any POP (Post Office Protocol) compliant e-mail software. This includes our WebMail/Zimbra offering as well as Zimbra Desktop, Eudora, Thunderbird, and Outlook. Depending upon provider, it may be possible to retrieve your Muskingum e-mail from off-campus e-mail providers (like Yahoo) as long as they use POP. To configure this possibility, the name of our e-mail server is: mailsrv.muskingum.edu.
CNS does not recommend using the e-mail attachment feature to transfer files. Using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software, anyone can transfer a file to their web space and then send an e-mail link for a recipient to access the file. Using e-mail to transfer certain file types can cause the recipient’s computer to become vulnerable to virus infection. For this reason, the following file types are blocked from e-mail attachment exchange: SCR, EXE, BAT, PIF, VBS, COM, ZIP.
B. Blackboard Account (NOTE: Also see Blackboard Services)
1. A Blackboard account is created for someone if they:
- Have been, are, or will be a student. This does not include those who are now employees.
- Are registered for classes in the current term, including employees.
- Are listed as a faculty member in the current term, or any term that will start in the next 30 days.
2. The Blackboard password is the same as your email password. Any password changes should be done through Webmail.
3. The Blackboard account will be removed when the e-mail account is removed.
C. Pcounter (Print Accounting)
1. A Pcounter account is created for someone if they:
2. Pcounter accounts are funded once per semester. It is the Business Office's responsibility to fund Pcounter accounts for late enrollment or late technology fee payment.
- Are enrolled, or will be enrolled, in the current term or any term that will start in the next 30 days AND have paid their technology fee. These accounts are given a $20 balance.
- Have a student e-mail account but have NOT paid a technology fee. These accounts are given a $0 balance and must be funded by the owner through the Business Office.
- Are an employee with an e-mail account. These accounts are given an “unlimited” balance because charges are applied to the employee’s departmental budget on a monthly basis.
3. The Pcounter software authenticates from the e-mail server, thus using the same username and password as a person’s e-mail.
4. The accounts are removed and re-created before each term.
5. Cash deposits are rolled from term to term by the Business Office.