ITS Departmental Email Account

A departmental account is an email account associated with a particular department or program. Typically, the account is used for communications between the department and the audience that department serves. Departmental staff must accept responsibility for managing communication and mailbox cleanup. The management of this mailbox will directly affect the level of customer service and convey a public relations image. It is imperative that email sent to these accounts, from any and all constituencies, receive timely responses to inquiries.

Departmental accounts will be created only when certain requirements are met.

• A departmental email box will be created when:
• A department or functional area needs to promote their programs in marketing materials and respond to applicant or student inquiries.
• A department or functional area or special project needs to maintain uniform communications with the college community.
• The departmental/functional administrator provides justification of the need for the departmental account, and specifies who will be the responsible owner, editors and authors for the account.
• The request is approved by ITS.
• The owner, editors (at least 2) and authors are identified for the account. They will share the workload for managing the mailbox.
• Email box editors must be responsible for maintaining the inbox on the server.
• If the departmental account is used to perform a mass mailing via email, the account owner or editor must consult with the Manager of ITS Customer Support and Training Services to confirm that mailing guidelines are followed.

Instructions for Delegates in the Departmental Email Box

• All departmental email boxes will be set up and delegate rights will be authorized as requested; no password will be provided; all editors and authors will access the box as a delegate.
• To open the mailbox in Outlook, click File > Open Other User's Folder; type the name of the email account and click OK.
• When you reply to messages within the departmental email account, the reply email will automatically come from the departmental account name "on behalf of [user's name]."
• To initiate a new email message, put the departmental account name in the "From" field. If you don't see the "From" field, click View > From. (Or if you use Word as your editor, click on Options.)
• Delegates should devise a plan for sharing the responsibilities of monitoring the mailbox and following up on replies. ITS advises delegates to use color-coded categories to mark email they are working on.
• To clean the mailbox, ITS advises that the primary editor create a personal folder in Outlook and drag emails to be stored to that personal folder. (The normal archiving process is not available for delegates.)

Managing the Departmental Email Box

• Due to limited storage resources, departmental email boxes will be subject to the same size limitations for email box and attachments as those for individual email accounts.
• Departmental staff should make reasonable efforts to review undeliverable messages and make corrections to original databases (including student demographic data in Colleague).
• Departmental staff must accept responsibility for managing communication and mailbox cleanup. The management of this mailbox will directly affect the level of customer service and convey a public relations image; it is imperative that all constituencies can send email to these accounts and receive timely responses to their inquiries.
• Handling of departmental email accounts are subject to all current policies and guidelines for email communications.