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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.
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.

Once UTmail accounts are used for business communications, they become subject to open records requests.

For this reason, we recommend that student workers avoid using @utexas.edu accounts for emails related to Healthyhorns job duties.

Instead, we recommend that student workers set up a Microsoft Exchange (my.utexas.edu) account to keep personal and business email accounts separate.

Microsoft Exchange email accounts for student workers

All students have the option to create 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.)

What about austin.utexas.edu and uhs.utexas.edu email addresses?

Student workers do not need an austin.utexas.edu or uhs.utexas.edu email address – my.utexas.edu addresses serve the same purpose of providing a separate inbox for business communications.
Student workers who already have an austin.utexas.edu or uhs.utexas.edu email address do not need to switch to my.utexas.edu.

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

Healthyhorns > Student worker email accounts > OWA portal.png

If a student has already activated their Microsoft Exchange account, they should click the Outlook Web App (OWA) button to access their my.utexas.edu inbox using their existing EID + password credentials.
If a student has not activated a Microsoft Exchange account, they should click the Office 365 Management button using their existing EID + password credentials. They will need DUO to login.

Creating an "alias" for my.utexas.edu email addresses

Microsoft Exchange email accounts default to EID@my.utexas.edu. To make email addresses easier to remember, students should create an “alias” for the email – we suggest the format FirstName.LastName@my.utexas.edu.

Students can do this themselves by logging into https://office365.austin.utexas.edu and selecting Office 365 Management.

My Mailbox - Doe Jane (jd123)

The landing page will show the primary mail address (the default EID@my.utexas.edu) and a place to add secondary email addresses.

This is where the student will enter their desired alias (See highlighted alias, jane.doe). Once they click Add, the secondary mail address will appear in the window. In this example, the secondary email will be jane.doe@my.utexas.edu.

Healthyhorns > Student worker email accounts > image-2023-7-11_15-0-30.png

Supervisors should add student workers’ my.utexas.edu email addresses to Outlook as contacts so they are easily searchable for business communications.

Adding students to shared email inboxes

After they create a Microsoft Exchange account, students can be added to shared email inboxes.

Submit a HITS ticket (from the Staff Intranet or https://tinyurl.com/HITSrequest) for requests related to shared email inboxes, including: