Math Department Email
The Math Department has phased out its independent departmental email server and has moved this function to the central Cornell email system. If you have an address on the old math department system, see below for more information.
The Cornell Email System
The Cornell CIT email system is managed by Microsoft, and is delivered through their Office365 platform. It's managed by dedicated teams both at Cornell and Microsoft, and it's hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud. The email system is highly available, redundant, and backed up.
Cornell's Office365 is connected to Cornell's Active Directory system, so you can log in to Office365 with your Cornell email address and netid password.
Due to the need to comply with many different federal and state laws as well and strict insurance requirements, Cornell's Office365 email is secure and reasonably private.
You can access Cornell email at outlook.cornell.edu where you can log in with your netid@cornell.edu address and your netid password. Two-factor authentication is available at your option. Two-factor authentication is HIGHLY recommended and will prevent the vast majority of security problems you are likely to encounter with email. See instructions to Enable Two-step Login here.
Your email account is backed up and redundantly hosted so it's very reliable and the loss of data is very unlikely. Your email storage limit is 100GB which is quite large.
Email messages do not expire, so you can keep them for as long as you want. File attachments in email messages DO expire, however, so save your attachments when you receive them. Eventually, the original message will still be available, but any attached files will not be available.
Note that due to some account settings, messages older than a certain date may not appear in your inbox, but they are still there, they are just not being shown. An adjustment to your account settings will fix this.
Warning about G-suite
Cornell email address can be used with the G-suite (gmail) system from Google. Please note that this access is provided as a convenience so that Cornell can have access to G-suite services in general, but Gmail accounts are not linked in to the Cornell system, so some services will not work. One example is Mail-enabled groups, like our faculty and staff lists. These work to and from Cornell email addresses only, and you can't join these groups or send messages to these lists using Gmail. To send messages to mail-enabled groups, you must log in to Outlook or Office365 on the web.
Email Lists
There are three kinds of lists in use at the Math Department, Lyris lists, EGAs, and Mail-enabled Groups.
Lyris Lists
These are group lists for discussion and special interest groups. They are the lists with the -L addresses. These are managed through an outside company called Lyris. Lyris lists give the ability to send to all members of the list. Lyris lists usually can only be sent to by members of the list, although the list owner has the option of allowing messages from non-members. Lyris list members can have addresses outside of cornell.edu.
EGAs
Exchange Group Accounts are special mailboxes inside the cornell.edu system. Anyone can send email to these mailboxes, from cornell.edu or outside. A small group of netid users have access to these mailboxes to read the messages. They also have the option of receiving EGA messages directly into their own mailbox, and may also have the ability to send messages from the EGA address. An example of an EGA would be a special mailbox for an academic conference. People from outside of Cornell can email the address, and then several Cornell people may have access so that they can check the messages. The primary coordinator of the conference may choose to have messages sent to the EGA delivered into her own inbox also, so that she will see the messages in a timely manner. A member of the group who has permission to use the EGA address as the sending address could send out announcements to the conference attendees using the EGA address, both to conceal their personal address and so that responses to the announcement will go to the group mailbox.
Mail-Enabled Groups
These are groups of Cornell addresses that have their own email address where messages can be sent to everyone in the group. These work only will Cornell senders and recipients. You cannot email a mail-enabled group from an outside account, including a Gmail account with a cornell.edu address. For instance, the MathStaff mail-enabled group receives messages at staff@math.cornell.edu and will deliver messages to all of Math Department office staff.
One advantage of mail-enabled groups is that they can be nested. Someone can be a member of two groups, and one of those groups may be a member of another group. If a message is sent to the top-level group, it will be delivered to the members of that group and all of its subgroups. Anyone who is a member of more than one of the groups will receive only one message.
Another neat benefit of mail-enabled groups is that they exist as Active Directory groups, so they can also be used for other kinds of authentication. For instance, web page or folder access can be given to a group, and then anyone in the group will have access. So, access to certain resources can be granted just by adding someone's netid to the email list.
Old Math Department Email
The Math Department email server has been phased out and will be archived in the summer. The system will no longer be able to send or receive mail. It will remain available with limited access for people to access old messages for archival purposes.
If you have a math department email address in the @math.cornell.edu system, you may receive mail sent to that address in your Cornell email, and you can even make your @math.cornell.edu email address your primary email. Contact the Math Department I.T. staff as soon as possible to make arrangements.
You can have your old math department email folders imported into your account on the new system. All of your folders can be put under a subfolder within your Office365 email account. Please contact us for more information.