Faculty email accounts

• Web interface to email
• Setting up your email client
• Filtering out "spam"
• Vacation messages, forwarding, password change, etc.
• Updating your account details

Accessing your email

The Faculty of Medicine has a web page where you can access your mail online if you use one of the following servers:

• Faculty of Medicine
• GMP
• School of Public Health
• Medical Sciences
• Anatomy
• Physiology
• School of Molecular and Microbial Sciences

The address is: https://www.mail.med.usyd.edu.au/

The start of the address is "https". This signifies that it is a secure server and the page won't work unless you enter that precisely. The upside is that a secure connection is established between your computer and the server than this should keep your information private.

Enter your username and password and select the appropriate server from the drop down menu and then click "Login". The username entered here is most likely the information before the"@" in your email address. You don't type the whole email address as you may do with other web pages or servers.

Using the online client

Your view will look something like this, although there will probably be more mail. If it seems like none of your mail is there then there's a chance you may be using POP mail. If this is the case then you will only be able to see mail on this server which has arrived since you last checked your mail from your usual computer. If you wish to change this discuss it with your local CSO.

Writing an email

Most functions are self explanatory. Click "Compose" to send an email and a new window will pop up.

You will not have access to your address book, however you can search the Directory for people who work for the Faculty.

To attach a document click the "Choose" button at the bottom of the compose window and navigate to your file and click open as usual. Then you have to click the "Attach" button to actually attach it to the email. If you change your mind you can either close the email window, or click the checkbox next to the filename and click "Remove Selected".

If you are familiar with setting up email clients then the only settings you will need to know are your username and password and;
IMAP Server: imap.med.usyd.edu.au
SMTP Server*: smtp.med.usyd.edu.au

If you don't currently have an email client then MedFacIT recommends that you download and install Thunderbird.

The first time you start the application it will ask you a number of questions, the answers are as follows.

• Your name: The name you wish to appear on your emails, usually your full name
• Your email address: Your actual email address, probably something like name@med.usyd.edu.au
• Click Next
• Check IMAP
• Incoming Server: imap.med.usyd.edu.au
• Outgoing Server*: smtp.med.usyd.edu.au
• Click Next
• Incoming Username: This will be your username, usually the part before the "@" in the email address
• Outgoing Username: This will be your username, usually the part before the "@" in the email address
• Click Next
• Account Name: Either leave this as your email address, or put something like "Medicine Email"
• Click Next
• Click Finish
• Check "Do not display this dialog again"
• Click Yes

The application should then attempt to log into your email on the Medicine server and it will ask for your password. If you wish it to remember the password check "Use password manager to remember this password" but keep in mind if you do this that other people may be able to access your email from your computer.

*Note: The outgoing or SMTP server will be different if you are located inside on of the hospitals. For example, in RPAH the outgoing server is "mail.cs.nsw.gov.au". If you find you can't send emails try that as an outgoing server and failing that contact your local CSO.

Spam is unsolicited, occasionally offensive and often nonsensical advertising. Because of the way in which these emails are structured computer servers can’t guarantee that they can determine which email is spam and which is real email. So to avoid the risk of deleting legitimate email what we instead do is "tag" email which is suspected to be spam, but don't actually delete it. Our intention in doing this is that these emails can then be automatically sent to a folder and then once a week you scan through the folder just to check that you haven’t missed any legitimate emails.

Setting up your spam filter in Thunderbird

• Go to Tools, Message Filters
• Select New
• Filter Name: Spam
• Beneath "Match any of the following" there is a drop down menu with "Subject" selected and to its right "contains"; right of that is a blank field; put in (copied precisely or the filter will not work):
  [Possible SPAM]
• Next you need to tell the spam where to go.
• In the bottom half of the dialog box there is a "Perform these actions" section.
• Check "Move to folder"
• To the right of your email address click "New Folder..."
• Name: Spam
• Click on "Create as a subfolder of" and navigate to the right to select "Inbox" and "choose this for the parent" as in the figure below;
• Click OK
• Click OK
• Close the Message Filters dialog.

Your spam filter is now working!

While this will filter any new mail coming in it won’t filter the existing mail. You can go to Tools > Run filters on folder then it will filter anything applicable in the folder you currently have open.

Don’t forget to check it once a week to make sure that you haven’t lost any legitimate emails. When you’re sure nothing in the Spam folder is mail you need, feel free to delete the spam messages.

When you need to set up or stop email forwarding, vacation messages, change your password or check your usage you can use the Medicine Faculty email administration utility: https://www.mail.med.usyd.edu.au/acct/

Log in with your username and password (just the username, not the email address!).

To set email forwarding

• Click on the forwarding button
• Enter the email address you would like the mail forwarded to.
• Select "Copy to self": yes or no
  (If you select yes then it will both keep a copy in the mailbox and send another copy on to that address. If you select this option then you will have to log into your Medicine Faculty email address regularly to check and delete your mail.
• If you select no it will pass the email on to the address in the usual fashion.)

To turn off email forwarding

• Simply log into this utility and remove the email address from the "Forward" field. You will very likely want to select "Copy to self" yes at this point. If you don't all of your incoming mail will be deleted.

Setting a vacation message

• Click on the "vacation" button.
• Enter the reply you would like people to receive when they email you during this period; you will probably want to tell people when they can expect you to return and who they should contact if the matter is urgent
• Select Vacation: On
• Select Store Received Email: Yes

Anyone who emails you will be sent this reply automatically by the server. However they only receive this notice once a week regardless of how many times they mail you. This can make it tricky to test the vacation message more than once.

Turning off a vacation message

• Log into this utility and select Vacation: Off

You can leave the text in the field as a template for next time you have need of a vacation message.

Changing your password

• Click on the "password" button.
• Type in the new password; and
• Confirm the new password
• Click OK.

Checking disc space used by your email

• Click the "usage" button.

While some say that nobody should ever need more than 10MB for email the IT Team is happy for people to use up to 100MB. If you go much further over this then it is very likely that you will be contacted by the IT Team and asked to reduce your usage.

Here you can also identify the folders which take up the most space as a clue as to where to delete old (or large) email from.

When you are finished with any of these functions you should return to the main menu and log off.

To update your account details log into the Medicine Faculty email administration utility: https://www.mail.med.usyd.edu.au/acct/

• Click the "edit user" button and alter any field which is incorrect
• Click "Modify User"
• When finished editing your details, make sure you Log Out.