This document provides guidance for email communications with undergraduate student workers, graduate assistants, and other student employees.
University policy regarding email communications
- All accounts used for university business are subject to open records requests.
- Forwarding emails from a business email account to a personal account is prohibited.
Student email (UTmail) accounts
- Students receive a UTmail account (@utexas.edu) upon enrollment. By default, these are considered personal accounts, shielding them from open records requests.
- However, once a UTmail account is used to conduct official university business, the entire account is subject to open records requests.
TLDR; Because many students use UTmail for personal communications, we recommend that student workers avoid using @utexas.edu email addresses for communications related to their Healthyhorns job duties.
Microsoft Exchange email accounts for student workers
Instead, student workers should set up a Microsoft Exchange email account for business communications. This process will create a my.utexas.edu account used for:
- Communicating with individual student workers regarding business-related topics
- Creating Microsoft Teams accounts for student workers
- Adding student workers to shared email inboxes used by departments, teams, and committees (e.g., lwc@austin.utexas.edu, daec@austin.utexas.edu, etc.)
Important notes:
- Student workers do not need an austin.utexas.edu or uhs.utexas.edu email address – my.utexas.edu replaces these.
- Student workers who already have an austin.utexas.edu or uhs.utexas.edu email address do not need to switch to my.utexas.edu.
- My.utexas.edu email accounts are not searchable in the UT campus directory or in Outlook.
- Supervisors should add student workers’ my.utexas.edu email addresses to Outlook as contacts so they are easily searchable for business communications.
- Submit a HITS ticket (from the Staff Intranet or https://tinyurl.com/HITSrequest) for requests related to shared email inboxes, including:
- Adding student workers to an existing shared email inbox
- Creating a new shared inbox for use by a Healthyhorns department, team, or committee
- Removing student workers or others who are no longer Healthyhorns employees from shared inboxes
Student workers can create and manage their own Microsoft Exchange accounts
To activate or manage Microsoft Exchange accounts or access my.utexas.edu email inboxes, students should use the UT Office 365 website: https://office365.austin.utexas.edu
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