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IT Services

Student Email

Student Email

Service Description

Student Email is the email and calendaring service that all registered undergraduate and taught-postgraduate students use for University-related email. The service is provided in the cloud by Exchange Online (part of Microsoft 365 for Education suite) in collaboration with the University.

The Exchange Online offering, based on Exchange Online (Plan 1) for Students program, is accessible from anywhere using Outlook on the web (often referred to as OWA) in a web browser. Outlook on the web provides access to email, calendaring, task management, personal contacts and a global address list. Users have access to a personal calendar to schedule meetings with internal or external contacts, and to share mailbox folders or assign delegation.

Students sign-in to their Exchange Online account using their username (@abdn.ac.uk). 

Features

A list of all service features:

Email, Calendar and Tasks

  • Web-based access via Outlook on the web from anywhere (https://outlook.com/abdn.ac.uk)
  • Client access using MAPI, IMAP, POP and EWS protocols
  • Compatible with mobile devices using Exchange ActiveSync
  • 50GB mailbox storage (25MB maximum message size)
  • Virus and spam filtering in the cloud
  • Creation of personal contacts lists an groups
  • Calendar functionality includes scheduling meetings, sharing and delegation
  • Task management

Users

  • Students
    • Undergraduate
    • Taught-Postgraduate
  • Temporary accounts (groups on short courses or summer schools)

Service Hours

    • 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Level of Service

Exchange Online is provided using the Software as a Service (SaaS) model whereby the software and associated data are centrally hosted in the cloud by Microsoft. Microsoft is responsible for the hardware and software infrastructure in the cloud. IT Services is responsible for account (de)provisioning, password management and day-to-day user administration.

Availability

  • Exchange Online is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Backups

  • No automatic system snapshots or backups are taken of mailbox data.
  • The expectation is that users retrieve deleted items from the user’s own Deleted Items folder up to 30 days from deletion. After 30 days, deleted items can be retrieved from the user’s Recover Deleted Items folder for a further 14 days.
  • An administrator may be able to retrieve an item which has been deleted from the Recover Deleted Items folder (i.e. from the Purges sub-folder) for a further 14 days.

Restrictions

  • Outlook on the web is the only access method supported by IT Services. Access by other clients or protocols is supported as best endeavours. No support will be provided to diagnose issues whose root cause is attributed to a user’s personal device.
  • Mailbox items will not be retrievable once the item is no longer searchable by an administrator.
  • Manual backups of mailboxes will not normally be provided to users. A user will be responsible for creating personal mailbox backups when and if required.
  • If a user does not sign-in to their mailbox for a continuous period of 6 months, Microsoft can remove mailbox contents and de-activate the user-id.
  • The student email service does not include the provision and maintenance of email clients.

Support and Documentation

Request Process

  • Requests to search and retrieve messages which have passed the retention period in Recover Deleted Items folder are logged with the IT Service Desk. An administrator can only search for items for a further 14 days after expiry from this folder.
  • Contact the IT Service Desk with your request.
    See our Help and Support page for contact details. 

User Responsibility

Costs

  • No charge