Campus Legal Guidelines for Email Service and Usage Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Who receives an email account from CSULB?

Email accounts for students, faculty, staff, and others (auxiliary staff, emeriti, etc.) are created based on eligibility. (See Eligibility Section E of Campus Legal Guidelines for Email Service and Usage).

2. What will my campus email address be?

Email addresses for faculty, staff, auxiliary, emeriti, and volunteer users are created with the following naming convention: firstname.lastname@csulb.edu. Email addresses for students are created with the following naming convention: firstname.lastname@student.csulb.edu.

When multiple firstname.lastname situations occur, uniqueness will be achieved by applying sequential numbering to the email account name. With the exception of hyphens, special characters are not allowed in the firstname or lastname fields (e.g., dot, space, quotation mark, comma).

3. When should I use my employee @csulb account?

The campus email system is to be used by faculty, staff, auxiliary, emeriti and volunteers when conducting university business and for official university communication.

4. Can I opt out of mass campus broadcast emails?

No. Faculty, staff, and students may not opt out because the campus uses mass email broadcasts to consistently communicate important business, academic, and safety information.

5. How many email recipients can I email to in a single message?

Staff, faculty, and students are limited to 99 recipients per message.  Staff and faculty are not allowed to send mass campus broadcast emails unless approved and sent through defined channels. (See Broadcast/Mass Email Section of Campus Legal Guidelines for Email Service and Usage).

6. Can I use my new CSULB employee email account for both professional and personal email?

Faculty, staff, auxiliary, emeriti, and volunteers are provided campus email accounts to conduct university business and for official university communication. Campus email accounts can be used for incidental personal usage. Please note that email accounts are subject to public records disclosures and subpoena as dictated by local, state, and federal laws.  For more information see Section III, Acceptable Use of CSULB Electronic Communications Systems and Services policy.

7. Are students using the same email system as employees?

No. Student accounts are supported by a Microsoft Live@edu cloud-hosted service. Employee accounts are supported by a campus-hosted Microsoft Exchange platform.

8. Does the new email system comply with accessible technology requirements?

Yes. Microsoft is actively committed to Section 508 regulation compliance. Email settings can be adjusted on supported clients and web browsers to allow for accessible usage by faculty, staff, and students with low vision and to support CSU Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) requirements. For Microsoft VPATs (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template), go to Section 508 VPATs for Microsoft products

Email Security, Quota and Sizes

1. Are email records considered university records?

Email, by itself, is not specifically listed within the CSULB records retention and disposition schedule. However, an email may become a record depending on its content. If an email is deemed a record then it is subject to the CSULB retention and disposition schedule. Refer to the CSULB Records Retention and Disposition Schedules.

2. How much storage do I get with my email account?

Ten gigabytes of email storage is provided to each new faculty, staff, and student account.

3. What are the attachment size limits?

Messages may contain attachments up to 15 MB in size. If you would like to email large files, you should consider compressing them prior to attaching them to the message.

4. Can employees have all of their CSULB email forwarded automatically to their non-CSULB email accounts?

No. Employees can only forward selected, individual emails from an @csulb.edu address. Auto-forwarding all campus email to non-CSULB email accounts prevents CSULB from providing email records to legal entities when officially required to do so and is therefore not permitted. Employees may, however, forward individual messages to non-CSULB email accounts as long as they do not contain confidential Level 1 information.

5. Can I store my email locally on my computer?

Ample email storage is provided on email servers alleviating the need for local email archiving.

6. Who has access to my emails (who can read my emails) besides me?

Electronic communication such as e-mail content and attachments are university records. As such they may be subject to disclosure in accordance with state and federal laws. Campus Executive approval is required prior to disclosure.

Deletion and Recovery

1. Is email automatically emptied from an employee's Sent mail folder?

Beginning summer 2012, email messages residing in the “Sent Items” folder will be removed automatically after six (6) months. Email messages in the “Sent Items” folder can be moved and saved in other email folders to avoid automatic removal from the “Sent Items” folder.

2. Is email automatically emptied from an employee's Trash folder?

Email messages deleted by a user are automatically emptied from the user account's trash bin after 30 days but may be manually emptied from the trash bin anytime by the user. After automatic or manual removal from an account's trash bin, an email message can be recovered for a limited time.

3. Is email from any other folder besides Trash automatically deleted from an employee's email account?

Beginning summer 2012, email in “Sent Items” will be automatically deleted from an employee’s account after six months. Items in “Junk E-mail” are automatically deleted from an employee’s account after 30 days.

Calendars and Other Email

1. Can a faculty or staff member use Doodle Poll, Google Calendar or other calendar tools instead of the @csulb calendar?

In the course of conducting university business, faculty and staff are to use the personal calendar provided in the campus email system to schedule meetings, busy times, and appointments within and across the campus. The new email calendaring system displays free and busy times for others on campus and thus provides a much easier experience when trying to find open times to meet and collaborate with campus colleagues.

2. Why can’t I use Thunderbird for an email client?

Some email clients, including Thunderbird, are limited in functionality and resources needed for @csulb email and will not receive regular, automatic updates. If you need assistance using supported clients, please contact your Campus Technical Coordinator or the Technology Help Desk at (562) 985-4959.

3. Can departments have shared calendars?

Yes.  Shared and resource calendars can be requested and utilized by departments to manage department resources such as conference rooms and to enable groups of employees to share a calendar. For assistance in creating a shared calendar, please contact ITS at x58344.