Overview
Email is an important tool
for communication. This guide is intended to give you enough information
to manage your email experience at ASFM well.
The email application
for Macintosh users is Mail and for PC users it is Outlook Express.
These client programs interact with our email server to allow you
to send, receive and manage your emails.
The school has group email addresses which you should
use for school-related business only.
Quick Links
Addresses and Groups
When you start to type the person's first name in the address box
of a new email, it will auto-fill.
There are email groups already made in the system for you. The names
of these groups are mailed to staff from the IT dept on request.
If you want to make your own address groups, you need to use Address
Book.
Filing Emails
Email applications usually have some feature to save emails in personal
folders. In Mail, they are called Mailboxes. The + button at the
bottom left of the Mailboxes panel creates a new storage space for
you. A better storage strategy is to save your emails as text files in
your Documents folder with other documents on a related subject instead
of being forced to use the email application as your storage system.
Searching for Emails
The search tool in most modern email client software allows you
to search through all folders to find a string of text in the subject
line, address or body of the email.
Attaching Files
An easy way to share files with co-workers is to send them attached with the mail. When sending attachments please have in mind that the bigger the file the longer the time it takes to reach its destination and also bigger files cause more traffic in the network. Please follow the next directions when attaching files:
- Avoid sending audio & video files.
- The sum of all attachments file size should be smaller than 5.00 MB.
To know how to check the attachment's file size click here.
ASFM Webmail
Another feature of email at ASFM is Webmail
access. With any internet connection and a web browser,
you can navigate to ASFM
Webmail and type your login and password
to access your server Inbox (this will contain only your most recent
messages).
In order to retrieve your password:
- Click on Webmail link.
- Click on Forgot your password? link.
- Enter your username (firstname.lastname)
- An email will be sent to your email address with your password enclosed.
- Access your computer and the Mail program to retrieve the email.
- If you are not able to access your Mail program and you need your password, you will have to send your request to the IT Dept. with some verification as to your identity.
Quite simply, this is like an email client directly
on the mail server. If you delete items in Webmail that you have
not received in your Inbox of your client, they are deleted forever.
Simply
click on the ASFM
Webmail link wherever you see
it in the website. You will see this login screen. Type your
login information to enter.
Once you enter, you will see a menu bar with the following
options:
- Get Messages - your inbox and retrieve new messages button
- New Message - click this to type a new message (you will need
to type the address)
- Folders - online version of Inbox, SentMail, etc.
- Address Book - currently no addresses (this does not synchronize
with your Address Book)
- Calendar - handy calendar link
- Settings - account customization (set
your email to auto-forward, change your reply-to address,
etc.)
- IM - Instant Messenger (not MSN)
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Email Tips
- as a staff member, you have an email account with both an email client
(for at ASFM) and ASFM Webmail (for holidays or when you are
not logged in to your account)
- keep your Inbox with few messages if possible
- consider saving emails as text instead of relying on the email program
as a storage place
- only give your email address to reputable online sites (to avoid
spam)
- forward SPAM to spam@asfm.edu.mx
SPAM (Unwanted Email)
There are many techniques employed by "spammers" to get unwanted email
into your Inbox. The school has several systems in place to reduce
the amount of spam that you receive, but you can help keep yourself
spam-free. Only give your school address when you have to. Make a
Hotmail (or yahoo, gmail, etc.) account simply to use as your address
for subscriptions, greeting card sites, and information requests.
That way, you can focus spam in that external account. Any spam that
you do get, please forward it to the school anti-spam address: spam@asfm.edu.mx.
Rules
Click here to see the details on how
to set rules for automatically
handling emails according to certain criterion. The guide there is
for electronic submissions, but you can tailor the instructions
to your needs.
Account Configuration
If you have a home computer and you want to configure that machine to
read your school mail, please ask Tech Support staff for details.
Staff are reminded that they can use a different email client if they
choose but that the only clients that IT Dept. will support are the ones
mentioned above.
Passwords
IT supplies a 6-chararcter random password to keep your account
secure. If for any reason you want to change your password, you will
need to change it in two locations using the instructions below.
The Mail application does not have an access password. Anyone with
access to your login account can have access to your email. Take
care with allowing any person to access your login account. Like
any email system with a client-server relationship, there are two
locations for your account password: one on the server and another
in your client account configuration.
- Change password on server:
- Login to ASFM Webmail using your account: firstname.lastname and
existing password.
- Click on Settings.
- Click on Accounts from list at left.
- Click on your account in the box.
- Click on the Modify button.
- Change the password in both boxes that say password.
- Click on Save Changes.
- Change password in Mail application:
- Switch to the Mail application.
- Mail menu, Preferences…
- Select the Accounts tab.
- Select your mail account.
- Change the password in the one box that says password.
- Close the Preferences window and click Save.
- You are done. Check by pressing Get Mail button.
How It Functions
This list explains a few basic items about how email clients and servers function.
- mail server always on to send/receive mails (temporary storage of your mails)
- your computer uses server to send
- Mail is the client computer application that stores your messages and settings.
- your client computer (Mail) retrieves your mails and deletes them from the server
- ASFM WebMail is a web based way to view your incoming messages on the mail server
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