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Email delivery options

This is an introduction to the facility that allows you to forward your email elsewhere or to let people know you are unavailable.

These options are available from the My Accounts facility. When you first view this page it provides you with a means to change your password. To set a forwarding address or set up a vacation message, click the Set Mail Options button at the top.

• An introduction to Set Mail Options
• How to forward your email to another address
• Setting up an automatic reply for your email
• What to do if your Sussex account has more than one email address
• How to handle your email if you leave Sussex
• Finishing with Set Mail Options

An introduction to Set Mail Options

The Set Mail Options panel of My Accounts provides three main options:

1. Forwarding your email to another address;
2. If forwarding, whether or not to retain a copy of incoming email in your Sussex account;
3. To set up an auto-reply, or 'vacation message', letting people know if you're not using your Sussex account.

Once you have selected your preferred options, to implement them you must click the button near the foot of the page.

The standard settings are:

• Mail to be kept at Sussex and not forwarded;
• People not to receive a message if you are not reading your email.

How to forward your email to another address

You can easily use the internet to access your Sussex email from anywhere in the world with webmail, so there is no need to forward your email elsewhere for everyday use. However, you might want to forward your email if you are going to work elsewhere, such as spending a year abroad at another university. One point to consider is that the amount of space made available for holding your email at Sussex may be more generous than that provided by some other email service providers. The limit on individual message sizes at Sussex, at 50MB, may also be much larger than permitted by other email service providers.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You must not forward your incoming email to another person, for example if you will be absent and wish a colleague to handle your work while you are away. This is because the Data Protection Act will be breached if any email personal or confidential to you is redirected to another person, and this will be unlawful.  Instead, set up an autoreply on your account to ask correspondents to contact another person's email address if the email concerns any aspect of your work. You must only forward your email to another of your own personal addresses.

To forward your email, enter the address in the text box provided, like this example:

When you've done this, click the button near the bottom of the page to save your new setting.

Take great care to give the correct forwarding address. If My Accounts detects an incorrectly-formed address it will warn you, but it will still implement your request. If you provide an undeliverable forwarding address, irrespective of whether the system detects it or not, your mail will be returned to the sender. If you provide the wrong address, but one which delivers elsewhere, your email will be received by a stranger!

Unless you specify otherwise, a copy of any forwarded message will be retained in your Sussex email account. Remember that this means you may need to deal with messages twice: once in your forwarding account and again in your Sussex account. It also means that you will need to check your Sussex account periodically and remove unwanted messages. You can, if you prefer, prevent copies of forwarded messages being retained in your Sussex account:

Remember to click the button near the bottom of the page to save your new setting.

To stop the forwarding, you just have to remove the address:

Again, remember to click the button near the bottom of the page to save your new setting.

If you have switched off keeping local copies of forwarded message, this option will be switched on again when you delete the forwarding address and click on the Submit button.

Setting up an automatic reply for your email

This facility is useful if you will not be reading your Sussex email for some time, for example if you are on leave. It will enable people not to expect a rapid personal reply. You can also use this facility to set up - on a permanent basis - an automatic, standard reply acknowledging incoming messages to group or role-based accounts. For example, the IT Services Online Support service sends such an automatic reply.

The standard vacation text message, offered when you select this option, is shown below (you can tailor this text to suit your own requirements - but see the Important Note below):

How the vacation system operates

• The system keeps a record of addresses which have been sent your vacation message, and if they send you more email in the next seven days, they won't be sent another vacation message. However, this may depend on which of the four Sussex servers delivers your message.
• Your vacation message will be sent only in response to messages sent directly to you, that is "personal messages":
  • Your address is in the "To:" header (that is, you aren't a CC: or BCC: recipient).
  • The message is not known to be from a mailing list.
  • The message is not known to be automatically generated (for example, vacation messages).
  • The message is not from you (this doesn't apply if you use an external address to test the message).
• To prevent "collateral spam", the vacation message system will not respond to any messages that look even slightly spammy.
• The Subject: line of the vacation message will begin with Auto: instead of Re: (this is a standards requirement).

You can tailor the Vacation message text to your own requirements. However, if you do change the message, we recommend that you retain the expression "$h_subject:" because this will be replaced with the Subject line of the original message and so will be useful to its sender. An example of a 'custom' Vacation message is shown below:

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE LENGTH OF YOUR VACATION MESSAGE TEXT

When setting up your vacation message, if you tailor your own text instead of accepting the standard text, you may use a maximum of 1,024 characters (including spaces and punctuation marks) for the message text. If you exceed this, you will not be warned about it - but it will cause delivery faults, and your incoming email will be deferred and possibly sent back. The message sender will also get a message back saying that their email has been delayed. To prevent this, please make your vacation message text as short and concise as possible. As a guide, the standard vacation message text is 169 characters long.

If you do tailor your own message, remember that when you return switch off your vacation message, the customised version will be discarded and it will revert to the standard message. If you want to save your custom message for use again later, please copy and save it in a separate text file before switching off the Vacation option.

What to do if your Sussex account has more than one email address

Some members of staff, and student representatives in USSU, have extra addresses (called 'aliases') which are used to contact them in different capacities or just as alternative addresses. If you are such a person, you may wish to make sure your 'vacation' auto-reply message is also sent to mail sent to such aliases. This is because auto-replies are ordinarily sent only to emails coming to your standard address. To add extra aliases, you will need to make use of Expert Mode in Set Mail Options after you have set up your vacation message. Follow the instructions below. Please note that you can only use this feature if extra addresses have been added to your account, or a mail alias has been set up to deliver to your account.

1. Set up your required vacation message and click the button, as described earlier.
2. Now click the button at the foot of the panel.
3. You will see a window appear, containing various commands, together with the text of your vacation message. It will look something like this:
   
   
4. In the text window, you will see a reference to your address, like this:
   
   Click at the end of the line showing 'alias' and then press Enter so as to create a new, empty line. Then enter another 'alias' line which shows your extra address, like this example:
   
   You should then end up with that section looking like this:
   
   Do not change any other parts of the text in the window.
5. Now click the button to put this change into effect.

From then on, automatic replies will be sent to any emails coming to either of those addresses. If you have several aliases, you can add those too.

To cancel this feature and switch off your auto-reply, just click on the button at the foot of the page.

How to handle your email if you leave Sussex

If you leave the employment of, or graduate from the University and leave, your email account will close. This does not happen immediately, so there is a short period after your departure when email sent to your Sussex address will still be accepted (for more information, see our FAQ for leavers). After that time, email will be returned to the sender with an explanatory note. The example below shows how you can set your own message, and also forward your email to a new address if you wish, in the meantime:

Finishing with Set Mail Options

Remember that you have to click on the button at the foot of the Set Mail Options page to save the changes you made to your forwarding or vacation options. Then, you must click the button at the top of the page to leave My Accounts so that others cannot change your options or your password.