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Manage Your Account

Changing Your E-mail Name

General Information Email Services - General Help Overview

UCI Health Information Services (HIS) provides a department level electronic messaging system within the University of California, Irvine campus network.  Our messaging system is designed to accommodate state and federal regulations related to patient information, business continuity, healthcare operations and UC Irvine Medical Center centric operations.  Because of the defined regulatory requirements that we must satisfy we operate on a commercial messaging platform.  Currently UCI Health Sciences bases our electronic messaging systems on Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, with SharePoint Portal Services providing enhanced file sharing capability. 

Our current system is funded by UCI Health and our level of service and support is dictated by this budget level.  In fiscal year 2007/2008 we will upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.  The planning and design that was used envisioned a more robust environment in terms of accessibility, storage and support.  Mailbox quotas will be expanded to double or triple the current sizes (based on job requirements).  Access from on campus and off campus will evolve into a more user friendly experience.  We expect support will become a lot more user friendly, with more web based help available.  Access to support such as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) and direct links to HSIS support personnel being available via Outlook Web Access's login page.

General Topics of Concern:

Quotas

Typically quotas are assigned by work requirements.  Currently almost all users have quotas that max out at 105MB.  The reason for that figure was affordability of storage disk on high performance Storage Area Network (SAN) disk systems.  In 2003 the cost of 1 terabyte of usable SAN disk storage was more than $60,000, and that didn't include the chassis or subsystems. In 2007 the cost of 1 terabyte of usable SAN disk storage was $10,000.  Currently HSIS provides email services for over 8,6000 mailboxes.  Adding up the number of mailboxes and the capacity of storage they require does add up.  We also exponentially increase costs as we raise quota levels because backups and disaster recovery costs rise with almost equal costs for each additional TB of storage we give our users.  Offsite storage of backup media, system administration and recovery times all get more complex as quotas increase.   

Email Recovery

UCI Health Information Services email recovery policy is dictated by our system design and funding.  All deleted email is available for recovery via Outlook 2007 or Outlook Web Access within 14 days of the deletion.  For more information on recovering this data please look here.  We cannot accommodate a mailbox level recovery of any information unless requested by the Dean's Office or by a senior UCI Health manager such as the CIO/CFO/CEO.  All requests for recovered data must be submitted as a ticket to the service desk or directly to the Postmaster at mailto:postmaster@hs.uci.edu.  A recovery that is deemed as required for business continuity sake will take up to 14 days.  Offsite tapes must be recovered and this work will be done as staff have available time to accommodate the request.  

Change your password

What account are you using?  UC Irvine campus assigns each employee a username and password when you are hired. UCI Health has a separate security system that requires more granular requirements due to federal health regulations.  We refer to campus ID's as UCINetID's and to UCI Health ID's as HSNetID's.  You use a HSNetID to access our email system and to log on to our Intranet.

There are three methods to change your HSNetID password-

Method one

Typically users whose passwords have expired will contact the service desk for direct assistance with this effort. You may reach the service desk at 714-456-3333.  In order for UCI Health users to change a users' password the user will need to provide personal employee related information to our service desk. Once we have confirmed your information we will reset your password to a unique value that will allow you to reset your password on your own later on.

Method two

You can change your password by using the control-alt-delete buttons and selecting the Change Password option. This is only available is your password has not already expired.

Method three

Within OWA 2007 you will have the option of changing your password. Again this option is only available if your password has not already expired.

There are two ways to change your UCINetID-

Method One

To change your UCINetID password please contact OIT at 949-824-2222

Method Two

Go to www.oit.uci.edu/ucinetid for more online information.

Use your name@uci.edu

UC Irvine has made available the option for users to use their full name as an email alias.  For example peter.anteater@uci.edu is the alias for panteater@uci.edu.  This does not replace your UCINetID nor does it replace your email address.  It is a formal, professional looking alias that is provided to all UC Irvine employees who have a @uci.edu email account. 

Please go here to sign up for the service.  You need to use your UCINetID (not your HSNetID) to log in and set this up.  You can inform UCI Health email administrator to add this alias to your local account by contacting us at postmaster@hs.uci.edu 

OIT has a web page dedicated to all UC Irvine email related options.  Please look it over if you have questions.  www.oit.uci.edu/email

Account Removal & Deactivation

Old and unused accounts

UCI Health is subject to federal and state regulations that require us to remove obsolete, unused and possibly duplicate accounts.  Email accounts that are not accessed for a period of longer than six to nine months may be subject to removal and deletion.  A removal notice will be sent to the owner to give them 14 calendar days to respond.  After 14 days the account will be marked for deletion and data will be archived and stored in a PST file for 30 days after a removal notice is sent to the mailbox owner. 

Non-HIS delivery points

All employees of UCI Health who discuss or maintain business related information in their email must use a UCI Health hosted mailbox.  All operational related data that refers to research, patient information and university healthcare business related data is required to be maintained on a system that conforms to UC Office of the President standards. Those standards include daily full backups and offsite archiving of data to remote storage.  All data must be secured and saved for a period of no less than 1 year.  In the event of a legal inquiry by state, local or federal law enforcement, or by legal discovery prcedures, this data must be available to all parties. Failure to produce a local copy in a timely could result in default judgment for the plaintiffs.  Using OIT or any other non HIS email does not fulfill this requirement as their data retention policies are not geared for such strict legal inquiries.

Duplicate email accounts

HIS will not retain email accounts for users who use outside or offsite email delivery points.  If a user decides to have their UC Irvine email delivered to a non HIS system their UCI Health email account will be removed from service.  Because of the cost of providing email services per user the policy is to not provide duplicate storage of electronic data.  A full disclosure of the NON-HIS delivery point policy will be explained and if no reply or a refusal to change delivery points continues the UCI He account will be closed within 7 calendar days.  Data will be archived for 30 days in the form of a PST file and then disposed of.  Notice of not abiding by this policy may be forwarded to UCI He Compliance. 

Contacts in the GAL

Creating contacts within the Global Address book- Users who opt out of using their UCI He based email account will need to contact postmaster@hs.uci.edu to edit their HSNetID account so that emails are properly routed to their new delivery point. HIS will not facilitate moving your mailbox to OIT's email system per our email location policy (see above).   

Windows Mobile, ActiveSync and PDA based e-mail

UCI Health provides email access via a variety of Windows based services and protocols.  Our most popular new method of accessing email is via handheld devices such as cell phones or PDA's.  Remote email access in this manner is secure as the data is transmitted over the network.  We offer three ways to access email on these types of devices.  Our preferred and supported communication method is using Microsoft ActiveSync.  We do support secure POP and secure IMAP.  All email transmission on our new email system is secured by Secure Socket Layer protocols.  That also includes SMTP message transmission.  UCI Health electronic messaging policy now requires a secure communication for both sending and receiving messages.  As users migrate to our new Exchange 2007 email system they will be required to update their settings to adopt these requirements. 

One of the important issues that arises is the approved handheld email device policy.  Currently UCI He Sciences requests that all new email devices used for remote email access be a Windows Mobile device with version 5.0 or higher.  We will fully support any ActiveSync device as well.  Non-ActiveSync and non-Windows Mobile devices will be support as much as possible, but in the event they do not work with standard IMAP settings we will not explore further support options.

A full list of vendors, models and options can be found on Microsoft's Windows Mobile site ยป

What is ActiveSync and how is it different from Windows Mobile?

Microsoft offers a Windows based operating system for handheld devices.  Windows Mobile is a full operating system with Office applications for opening files created by applications such as Outlook, Word, Excel, Power Point and typically used non Microsoft files such as PDF's.  Prior to Windows Mobile the operating systems was referred to Pocket PC.  Currently Windows Mobile is a common operating system for many phone carriers and handheld vendors.  If you use Outlook to store email addresses, phone numbers and calendar items you will find that this software is very easy to work with. 

ActiveSync is a software application that is included within Windows Mobile that allows the operating system to connect to Microsoft Exchange.  ActiveSync does not require Windows Mobile to operate.  Many handheld vendors have licensed this software so that their devices can communicate with Microsoft Exchange.  Currently we anticipate that vendors will make a strong push to incorporate ActiveSync onto devices that previously did not offer it.  Currently devices as the iPhone offer IMAP email access, but anticipate that within the next 90 days an upgrade will offer ActiveSync as an option.