Email Accounts

Members of the GSD community are given access to  Microsoft 365; a cloud-based email and collaboration service.   The service includes email, calendar, file storage, and Microsoft Office. Visit Harvard IT’s website to learn more about what is included with Microsoft 365.

Email Security and Privacy

In general, Email is a potentially insecure medium, and should not be used for the transmittal of confidential information, or any message you would not wish to see become public or accidentally sent to the wrong person

If you have the need to send confidential information over email,  Microsoft 365 does provide a secure, easy-to-use, feature embedded within Outlook called Office Message Encryption ( OME )

Send an encrypted email in Outlook – IT Help (service-now.com)

Harvard IT uses ProofPoint to manage spam sent to University mailboxes.  Typically, anything filtered by Proofpoint is legitimately spam but on occasion, a message will be flagged as a false positive.  You will receive a ‘Daily Digest’ including any messages quarantined during the day to review, with the option to whitelist any message incorrectly marked as spam.

Manage the Proofpoint Web Console – IT Help (service-now.com)

For any spam or phishing messages that are not intercepted by ProofPoint, Harvard IT recommends you forward the message to [email protected]

Phishing Information Security Incident Reporting | Harvard University Information Security

What happens when I leave Harvard?

Your Microsoft 365 access is terminated when you no longer have an active role at Harvard.  For Faculty and Staff this happens fairly abruptly, students however are given a 365 day grace period following graduation.

Visit the following knowledgebase article Prepare to Leave Harvard to learn more.

Managing Your Email and Other Services

The amount of information that each of us receives on a daily basis can be overwhelming.

Below you will find a few tips and guides on how to more effectively manage things like your email, calendar, or tasks while using your Microsoft 365 account.

Create Rules to Filter Email

Outlook offers a feature to automatically process your mail and apply workflows based on things like the sender or subject, allowing actions such as moving messages to folders or categories, marking with different priorities, or forwarding to different email accounts.

The steps to create an Inbox rule differ depending on how you access your Outlook email.

Microsoft’s website offers ‘guided support’ that will tailor the instructions based on your choices, depending on whether you check your email via the web browser, a desktop mail client, on a Mac or PC, or a mobile device.

Manage email messages by using rules – Microsoft Support

Forward Your Mail to your Personal Email

If you prefer not to use Outlook to check your email and would rather consolidate your school and personal email, you can configure Microsoft 365 to redirect your Harvard mail to another email account.  Once applied, all messages will arrive in the specified mail account – however, you will not be able to send as your Harvard email address from your personal account

Set up inbox rules for Office 365 email auto-forwarding – IT Help (service-now.com)

Add Multiple Accounts to the Same Mail Client or App

Most modern mail clients now have the ability to add multiple email accounts from different providers, allowing you to use one app or client to manage all of your mail accounts.  Microsoft also provides the Outlook mobile app for iOS or Android, which gives the best experience and access to the most features available to your Microsoft 365.

Mailing Lists

The school has a variety of mailing lists used to communicate news and events to the community. Some of these lists are required, like the Student, Staff, Faculty, or Researcher mailing lists.

Students are also subscribed to the GSD-Fellow-Students list, which is an ‘unofficial’ mailing list that students. Fellow-Students is a GSD Student Forum initiative and GSD Students will be automatically subscribed at the start of each school year with the option of opting out at any time.

Setup Mailing List Digests

Mailman, the platform used for Harvard mailing lists, has the option to receive a daily digest of the list activity rather than receiving individual messages as they are posted.

Though it may not be a good idea to receive digests for the main mailing lists, the GSD-Fellow list may be a great candidate since it can generate a significant amount of emails that you may not want to receive throughout the day and would rather review later.

Request a Digest in a Mailman 3 Mailing List – IT Help (service-now.com)

 

LinkedIn Learning

The University’s partnership with LinkedIn Learning provides a great resource for formal training and guides to many of the services offered by Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 Productivity (linkedin.com)