Email Compliance for Official University Business

Owned by Calhoun, Scott
Last updated: Feb 12, 2021
3 min read
The following is derived from resources originating from the Provost, CFO, and Information Security Offices at the University of Texas at Austin.  This wiki borrows heavily from the McComb's School of Business wiki on the subject.   Complying with Policy on Official Work Email Addresses (credit to James Coombes)

Per university policy "Users are to use University provided email accounts, rather than personal email accounts, for conducting University business." This policy requires employees and affiliated workers to use a university provided mailbox for university work and to register this as their official work email address. This page will provide guidance for complying with that requirement.

The basic steps for complying with this policy are:

1. Ensure that you have Duo set up, since university email accounts require two-factor authentication using Duo.

2. Claim a university email account if you do not already have one.

3. Register your university email address as your official work email address.

4. Disable any automatic external forwarding you may have configured on an existing university email account.

5. Review any work related email lists you manage and ensure any employee addresses there comply with this policy 

First - How do I know if this policy applies to me?

If you can log into Workday then this policy applies to you. Student employees must comply with this for their work email address. This policy does not apply to the email address designated as their primary student email address in UTDirect.

Set up Duo

Due to the ubiquity of services that require Duo, all employees and affiliated workers should already have this set up. If you have not done this already, you can find instructions for doing so at https://ut.service-now.com/sp?id=kb_article&number=KB0017949

Claim a university email account

UT currently offers two email services for employees:

Office 365

All new employees are provided Office 365 mailboxes automatically, and this is the preferred email account for employees since it also integrates with Teams, OneDrive and other Office 365 applications. For the Moody College, these addresses can be branded  @austin.utexas.edu, @utexas.edu, and @kut.org.   Until 2020, addresses with @utexas.edu were strictly the domain of UT Mail Gmail accounts.  This has changed.

If you work for the Moody College and do not have an Office365 account active but rather rely on UT Gmail, we strongly encourage you to switch to Office365 as it makes for much easier campus collaboration, communication and organization.  Email and calendaring are much easier to organize for a work unit and in the age of Covid and work from home, Teams, Sharepoint and OneDrive are becoming essential collaboration tools.  

If you do not currently have an Office 365 mailbox you can claim one at https://office365.austin.utexas.edu. There you will click Office 365 Management. 

For more information about all the Office 365 services please visit https://office365.utexas.edu.

UTMail

UTmail is a UT branded *@utexas.edu Gmail account. It is an optional service primarily intended for students, but it is also available to employees that prefer this to Office 365. To claim a UTmail account please visit https://utmail.utexas.edu.

Register your official email address

Employee official email addresses must be changed in Workday. To set or change your official address. . .

  1. Login at workday at https://workday.utexas.edu/login.
  2. Type "Change My Contact Information" in the search box and open the page it finds.
  3. On the Change My Contact Information page scroll down to the Work Contact Information section and update the Primary Email field.
    • Note that a Primary Email also exists in the Home Contact Information above this. You do not need to enter anything for your home primary email address.

Workday will not allow you to enter a non-university email address as your official employee address. If you have trouble entering your university email address please contact the workday team at askus@austin.utexas.edu or 512-471-8802. 

Disable automatic forwarding to non-university mailboxes

Neither Office 365 nor UTmail should allow you to configure automatic forwarding to a non-university email account, though you can still forward to another university email account.

Just to be sure, it is permissible to automatically forward a university provided Office 365 mailbox to a UTmail mailbox and vice versa.

Review email lists

If you rely on email lists managed by ITS, then you do not need to manually review them, since any non-compliant email address on those lists will be handled by those staff. However, if you manage some form of email list of your own that is used for university work, then you should ensure it only uses university addresses for current employees. If you need assistance with this please contact Moody College Technology Services at 512 471 1199, by emailing comm-help@austin.utexas.edu or submitting a ticket to our Service Desk.

Additional information can be found at: 

https://provost.utexas.edu/2020/06/03/update-university-email-policy/

https://communications.financials.utexas.edu/news/university-renews-emphasis-email-policy

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