Email

Faculty/Staff Email System

HLS utilizes Microsoft Exchange for email services for all faculty and staff.  See below for important information regarding the use of this service.

• Accessing Email Remotely
• Quotas
• Postini SPAM Filtering
• Recovering Deleted Items
• Setting up Out of Office/Auto-Reply Messages
• Fowarding and Redirecting Email Messages
• Sharing and Delegating
• Email Distribution Lists
• Email on Mobile Phones
• Leaving Harvard Law School
• Monthly System Maintenance

 Accessing Email from Home (or from a Remote Location)

When HLS faculty and staff receive a new computer, Microsoft's Outlook or Entourage email client will be installed, configured, and ready to use.  Because our email environment uses Microsoft Exchange, configuring another email client on a home machine is not necessary.  Using the email web client provides our staff with the ability to check email, calendar, contacts, and tasks from anywhere with an Internet connection.  Anything that is done via the email web client will then be synced with the Outlook/Entourage desktop client.

You can access the new web client here:  https://webmail.law.harvard.edu/

You must include your domain when you login.  Most users are members of the HLS domain.  If you are a member of the HLS Clinical staff, your domain is HLS_Clinical.  

 Setting up Out of Office messages/Autoreply

You can create an Out of Office message that will automatically reply to any message you receive while this feature is turned on.  This is perfect for vacations and email accounts where an auto-response is appropriate.

Directions to create an Out of Office message in OWA

Directions to create an Out of Office message in Outlook 

Directions to create an Out of Office message in Entourage

 Forwarding and Redirecting

The differences between automatically forwarding and redirecting an incoming message are as follows:

• Forwarding: When a rule automatically forwards a message that you receive, the rule adds the designation "FW:" to the beginning of the Subject line, changes the message formatting, and forwards the message to the account specified by the rule. The recipient sees that the message came from you. A copy of the message you received is left in your Inbox or in the folder to which the message was originally delivered.
• Redirecting: When a rule automatically redirects a message that you receive, the rule sends the message, unchanged, to the account specified by the rule. To the recipient, the message appears as though it came directly from the original sender. There is no indication that the message was delivered by way of your account. If you would like to have your email redirected to another account, please contact the Help Desk.

Directions to forward email in OWA

Directions to forward email in Outlook

Directions to forward email in Entourage

 Email Distribution lists

Listservs, also called mailing lists, are a way of communicating via email to a specific group of people on various topics of interest.  Faculty, staff, and students take advantage of listservs when they want to communicate a message (usually about a specific, pre-established topic) to a group of people.  The people receiving the message have the option to stay "subscribed" to the list or to "unsubscribe" if they do not want to receive future emails.

If you would like a listserv created, you can visit the listserv creation tool or contact the Faculty-Staff Help Desk.  From the web site faculty members can view what HLS lists they are currently subscribed to, what additional HLS lists they would like to subscribe to, or request to have a new list created.

 Email on Mobile Phones

To learn more about email options on your mobile phone, please read this pdf file.

 Leaving Harvard Law School

By default, auto-reply and forwarding will work for 30 days past the email account expiration date for faculty and staff. 

To set up one or both of these options, please see the Auto-Reply or Forwarding sections above.

 Monthly System Maintenance

Our hosting provider, NaviSite, has a monthly maintenance window every 3rd Friday from 10:00 P.M. to 4:00 A.M.  You can access your email and calendar off-line during this time, but may not be able to send or receive new messages or calendar proposals while system maintenance is taking place.  Please note that Outlook Web Access (OWA) may also be interrupted during these hours.