Technical Note - Email Setup

Summary

This tech note outlines how to setup your email account (both on-campus and at home), and how to set up forwarding or automatic responses to email. It also has the information necessary to setup LDAP, which will allow you to query the Victoria address book in your email client.

Details

Setting up your email client

There are many platforms and email clients which you can use to access your email. For the technically inclined, here is the basic information you need:

• Incoming mail: mail.ecs.vuw.ac.nz, IMAP (POP3 is allowable if IMAP isn't available).
• Outgoing mail: mail.ecs.vuw.ac.nz, port 587, SMTP, requires authentication.
• Encryption: Both the incoming and outgoing server should have encryption enabled (May be referred to as "STARTTLS" or "TLS").
• Username/password: These are your ECS username/password.
• Email address: For ECS staff/graduates: FirstName.LastName@ecs.vuw.ac.nz; For SMS staff/graduates: FirstName.LastName@sms.vuw.ac.nz; For ECS/SMS undergraduate students username@ecs.vuw.ac.nz.

KMail

• Sending: Select the Settings menu and choose Configure KMail. Click on Accounts then the Sending tab. Select the default "Outgoing" account and click Modify. Use the settings above.
• Receiving: Select the Settings menu and choose Configure KMail. Click on Accounts, then select the Receiving tab. You should only have one "Incoming" account. Use the settings above. Set the Authentication Method to "GSSAPI".

Thunderbird

• Sending: Select the Edit menu and choose Account Settings.... Click on Outgoing Server (SMTP), then select Edit. Use the settings above.
• Receiving: Select the Edit menu and choose Account Settings.... If you want to create a new account select Add Account... and step through the add account wizard. If you want to check your account is setup correctly select the account from the top of the list. Use the settings above.

Apple Mail

• Sending/Receiving: Select the Mail menu and choose Preferences. Choose the Accounts tab and press the "+" symbol in the bottom-right. Apple Mail will launch a wizard to help you. Use the settings above.

LDAP

If you want your mail client to autocomplete email addresses of people at ECS and Victoria staff, you need to point the client at the ECS LDAP server. Usually, adding an LDAP server (Outlook calls it a type of "Directory Service") you will need to go to your Address Book and select the Preferences menu. Thunderbird does this differently. To add LDAP servers in Thunderbird, go to the Account Settings and select "Composing and Addressing".

• Server: ldap.ecs.vuw.ac.nz
• (DN or search) Base: dc=vuw,dc=ac,dc=nz

For some mail clients (like Outlook), you will need to add the LDAP server and then edit the preferences of the LDAP server to be able to add a (DN or search) base.

VUW Email on Outlook

For setting up VUW email (i.e., first.surname@vuw.ac.nz) on Microsoft Outlook, see Configure My Mail resource from VUW ITS. Note that the resource has a manual configuration for Outlook 2013 which cannot be found in Outlook 2016. Some users have reported longer waiting times in setting up mails in 2016 compared to 2013 (with manual configuration).

Advanced users may opt to modify their HKCU registry so as to have a similar manual setup in Outlook 2016 and possibly reduce waiting times. Current User Outlook Software Policy can be imported to user registry to get similar manual configuration as Outlook 2013. However, users need to be aware that this is VUW email specific. Joel is usually the one to contact for assistance.