Email

Gryph Mail
E-Mail Software
Email Account Tasks - forward, auto-reply, passwords, and more...
Campus Directory
Attachment Tips

Gryph Mail @ OVC

For information concerning the University of Guelph mail system, Gryph Mail, please visit the following links for more information:

Grphy Mail @ OVC - learn how to:

• Copying your Address book(s)
• Import/Export of Lists of Addresses
• Moving your Local Mail (if desired.)

New Email System - more Gryph Mail links (CCS pages):

• webmail.uoguelph.ca - with links to the new mail system and the optional Opt-in page.
• Email Options Page - with links to help you use and configure your Zimbra account.
• Cool Features! - read through the new web 2.0 features included with the new Zimbra mail system
• Comparison Table - a comparison between the current webmail system and the new Zimbra mail system

E-Mail Software

If you are interested in using an email client software, OVC ITS currently recommends using Mozilla Thunderbird but there are other IMAP clients support by CCS. Please see the following CCS page for software configuration instructions of Thunderbird and other email clients.

Email Account Tasks - forward, auto-reply, passwords, and more...

Utilities are available from CCS to allow you to configure your email and account settings. Please visit the CCS email page for more information.

If you experiences any problems please come to Room 1601 (LTC) during regular office hours.

Campus Directory

It's possible to add the campus directory to your email software. Please consult the CCS "Directory Setup" links on software configuration page for specfic instructions for your supported email software.

Attachment Tips

E-MAIL may not be the best way to send data. What do you do when you want to send a 2MB file to a friend or what if you have a 1MB file you want 200 people to see? The answer in both cases is NOT e-mail. Email, although admittedly easy to use, is the most inefficient method of sending large files. Because mailboxes have limits (quotas), and many mail servers refuse to pass very large files on, files more than 2MB are refused. As well, sending 200 copies of a 1MB file takes approximately 300MB of valuable space on the mail server. The administrator of the mail server may complain that this is not the best use of his resources.

Local, using OVC network:

Instead, if distribution is within OVC, there is a space provided: v:\workgroup_shares is for long-term storage of information of academic interest. V:\temporary is for short-term storage, such as transfer from one machine to another, or for other "drop-off & pickup" applications. Please try to remember to clean up stuff you no longer need. I will occasionally (especially if we are low on space) go in and remove all old files. This directory is not backed up nightly.

Copy the large file to one of the above places, and send an email to the recipients telling them where the file can be picked up.

Web TMP folder:

If the recipient is not in OVC (or for that matter not at the University of Guelph) we can use the web. If we put a file called (for instance) hello.txt in the special place v:\web\www\tmp\hello.txt, then we can email people, and tell them to pick up the data at web location (URL), e.g. http://www.ovc.uoguelph.ca/tmp/hello.txt.

Anyone in the world who knows the URL to the file can pick up your file. But: They have to know the complete URL, down to the name of the file. Fishing around in the tmp directory for files is prohibited. If you wish, you can create a simple HTML file that will help the recipient locate and download the file(s), and email them the URL to that web document instead.

Again, place the file into the V:\web\www\tmp\ directory, and e-mail the people who need to know. Don't send the data, but a "URL" pointing to it. Put another way, local path V:\web\WWW\tmp\filename.ext is equivalent to http://www.ovc.uoguelph.ca/tmp/filename.ext on the web. You put the file on the former, and you send the latter to your intended recipient.

After a suitable delay (or upon receipt of some notification that the file has been picked up), please clean up and delete the file.

Notes:

• Be aware that files > 1 week old may be removed from here, depending upon server disk space availability.
• Files in this directory are not backed up to tape nightly. Keep your original copy!
• Long file names are allowed, but do not use spaces (some web servers and clients don't like them).
• IIS (the Web server) does not like files of unknown types. ZIP them instead to circumvent this "feature".
• A ZIP package is also a good idea if you have many files or a folder to send.
• Microsoft's habit of supressing file-type extenders may cause you some grief here.
  • If you copy a Powerpoint presentation here, for instance, the URL you send to the intended recipient MUST include the ".PPT" extent at the end of the file name, zip files must end in ".zip", etc.
  • If your copy of Windows still has the default settings, and you can not see file extensions, open Windows Exploer or "My Computer", and select [Tools], [Folder Options], [View] (that's [View], [Folder Options] on older computers). Then uncheck (turn off) "Hide extensions for known file types".

For more permanent storage on the web server, please contact OVC ITS.