What is UC at Illinois?

UC is a major, campus-wide technological initiative to replace telephone, email, and calendaring services for faculty, staff and graduate students. Like faculty and staff, graduate students receive an Exchange email account and a Lync account. Unlike faculty and staff, graduate students will only receive a Lync-to-Lync Account, Depending on unit/department provided information, professional graduate students will receive a Lync Enterprise Account.

With your new Exchange account, your email address, netid@illinois.edu, will remain the same. In many cases, the way you check your email, store your contacts, and schedule meetings will be very similar to what you do now (using Microsoft Outlook). However, if you are using anything earlier than MS Office 2010 for Windows or MS Office 2011 for OS X, you will need to upgrade to the latest version from the University of Illinois Webstore.

• To upgrade MS Office for your UIUC-owned computer, click Unit Purchase.
• To upgrade MS Office for your personal computer (UIUC graduate student or professional student), click Personal Purchase.

You can also continue to check your email online as before, using the Outlook Web App, although its web address has changed to: https://webmail.illinois.edu.

What are the benefits for graduate students?

As a graduate or professional student, you will be able to use Unified Communications (UC) to send and receive email and instant messages. You will also be able to schedule meetings and share your calendar with others. You can call other users of Unified Communications at our campus right from your computer using Microsoft Lync, the UC Voice software component. UC offers many conveniences for scheduling meetings, working collaboratively and communicating with others on campus. For information on downloading Microsoft Lync, please see: Installation Instructions - Lync.

In addition these conveniences, using UC helps protects the security of your communications. Graduate students often take on many different roles on campus, becoming closely involved in research and teaching activities. For this reason, graduate students need to be aware of security concerns when sending information through email.

Although it may be tempting to forward your campus mail to an external email account, graduate students, like faculty and staff, should be aware of email security issues that can arise.

Why should I use my Exchange account, rather than forwarding my mail to another email service?

Unless you are leaving campus, CITES strongly discourages faculty, staff, and graduate students from forwarding their email for the following reasons:

• You risk violating FERPA and other regulations. These laws protect student information or other confidential information from being disclosed to a third-party, which includes companies that provide email services.
• Your other account might be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. University business records stored in a private email account may render the entire account subject to FOIA requests for searches for relevant documents.
• If you have a Lync Enterprise Account, you may not receive voice mail. The campus Unified Communications system relies on functionality within your Exchange 2010 account to deliver voice mail.
• CITES cannot provide support if problems ensue from forwarding your email. Due to how email traffic flows into and out of the campus Exchange system, redirecting your email will result in your email being delivered to two separate locations. Official University correspondence and email from any other Exchange user will be delivered to your official University email account (Exchange) regardless of your forward setting. You are solely responsible for any consequences resulting from this change.

Again, it is important to note that official University email correspondence (Exchange to Exchange) sent to your Exchange account will not be forwarded to a third-party email service. This remains true even if you opt to have email that is sent to you at yournetid@illinois.edu forwarded to a third party account through EDE redirecting. Therefore, it is important to check your Exchange account regularly to be sure that you are not missing any messages sent to you from campus units, faculty or staff.

Exception: Forwarding your email might be a good idea for those who leave campus employment. Your Exchange 2010 email account will be deactivated 30 days after your employment ends, but email redirection will continue to work for approximately 2 years so that you can receive email sent to yournetid@illinois.edu alias and you have an opportunity to request that your contacts update their address books.

How do I access my Exchange account?

Some graduate students are automatically given an Exchange account, others may need to set one up. To check to see if you have an Exchange account or to set one up, go to:

https://partnercomputing.illinois.edu

UC Training

Training will be available through CITES Training Services. Find out more about training for UC at http://fast3.illinois.edu/uc/.

UC Transition Timeline

Now - October 31, 2011 - Exchange Accounts for Express Users

Express Email will be decommissioned on October 31st. To keep your Express email, go to http://go.illinois.edu/expresstoexchange.

Now - December 2011 - Exchange Accounts for Other Mail System Users

Many graduate students already have already begun using UC by having Exchange 2010 accounts for email and calendaring. If you don’t have an Exchange 2010 account, you should have one by December 2011. If you would like to know more about when you will get your account, ask your technical support person or contact the CITES Help Desk (consult@illinois.edu, 217-244-7000) .

February 15, 2012 - Voice and Chat Features

On February 15th, the limited voice and chat features will become available to you through the UC Voice component, Microsoft Lync. Information about how to use Lync is available at the CITES Lync Pilot homepage.

Glossary of Terms

Lync-to-Lync Account

• For graduate students without appointments
• No phone number
• No voicemail
• Lync-to-Lync calls, instant messaging, and data conferencing
• No calls outside the Lync system
• Cannot receive calls from outside the Lync system
• Cannot place 911 calls

Lync Enterprise Account

• For professional graduate students and graduate students with appointments (based on unit provided information)
• Unique phone number with voicemail
• Can make calls based on dialing policy
• Can receive calls from anywhere
• Can make 911 calls

Contact Us

For further information about the UC Voice bridge period, or anything UC at Illinois related, please contact the CITES Help Desk, 217-244-7000, consult@illinois.edu.