New Hopkins email system

Well, fellow students, we are approaching the end of August, which means that we’re about to start another exciting school year with some significant changes all around campus. Construction on Malone Hall is progressing well, North Charles Street is completing the final stages before the street is reopened, and the new biology labs have finally been opened and they are ready to go. Internally the campus has changed as well: Aramark has been replaced as the food provider by Bon Appetit, and the campus dining options and lounges have been completely renovated with new stations and services. The worst part is Einstein’s Bagel Bros. is gone, but judging from the food at Levering, we’re not going to miss it for long.

This is what CharMar looked like a month ago, but no pictures have been posted since. They're clearly hiding something amazing. From https://www.facebook.com/HopkinsDining

Another difference between this year and last year is the renovations to the Hopkins websites that are happening in every department and office associated with Johns Hopkins. They are everywhere, and the place where they are most noticeable is within the Hopkins portal. We’ll talk about the changes to the dashboard and home page next week, because today is going to focus solely on the Johns Hopkins email system. 

What it used to be.

On June 17 Johns Hopkins switched its email provider from Outlook 2010 to Office 365, and while the transition has been smooth for some, others have expressed displeasure at the change in the email. Personally, I always used the ending @jhu.edu. If you are like me, then you probably had no issues with forwarding Outlook email to your Gmail or Yahoo accounts. If you instead used the ending @live.johnshopkins.edu, however, you’ll need to know that this ending has changed. The implications of this are your Gmail won’t accept mail that isn’t from the address listed on the options page, and mail that used to reach your Hopkins mail account just bounces back. 

What it is now.

The new ending, for the record, is @jh.edu.It's pretty simple and short, unlike the cumbersome @live.johnshopkins.edu domain.

As you can imagine, the login page for Outlook also doesn’t work anymore. The old address, login.live.com, is still accessible, and you can still enter your Hopkins ID and password, but it will only take you to the storage space you were afforded with the original Live@edu account. This means the SkyDrive and cloud storage space is still available to you, but your email is not. To access your email without traveling through the portal, the new address is outlook.office365.com. The login page for this email looks identical to the ones for the portal, but it does open directly to the familiar Outlook email system. 

The login page for the email system and the new JH Portal.

You can also prevent yourself from ever looking at Outlook again, if you are so inclined, since you can easily forward your email to another interface, such as Gmail. To do this, just go to the top right corner of the Outlook mail screen and make the drop down menu appear. Click “See All Options,” then click the tab at the top of the middle section of the page called “Connected Accounts.” You can choose to connect your two email accounts, so you can access all the information from both and send from either email address by using only one interface, or you could choose to simply forward email from Outlook to the other.  Of course, if you want to use the portal to access your email, ISIS, Blackboard, and other Hopkins sites and keep the other mailbox separate, that’s fine too. It really depends on what you want, and it’s great that the system is flexible enough to give you choices. 

Where the See All Options tab is in the upper right corner.

One of the best advantages to this upgrade is the increase in email storage space in Office 365. While Outlook only permitted a maximum of 10 GB of email data, Office 365 is equipped to handle 25 GB per user of space. SharePoint Online is also the cloud storage system, reserving SkyDrive for the independent Microsoft account now associated with live.johnshopkins.edu. This upgrade has not been completed yet, and will happen independently at a later date.

Lastly, to set up the Office 365 email on your mobile phone requires a bit of cellular gymnastics. Some phones will accept the JHEDID@jhu.edu and password, and start working immediately. Androids and iPhones also require the name of the server, and there are three different servers that could satisfy this requirement. For more information on these servers, you can go here, but in general one of these should work for your mobile phone.

POP 3 Server Name: outlook.office365.com, Port 995 SSL

IMAP4 Server Name: outlook.office365, Port 993 SSL

SMTP Server Name: smtp.office365.com, Port 587 TLS

For more information on the email system in general, the link is here. Hopefully this has alleviated any concerns that you’ve had with the new email system, but if you have any comments, please leave them below. Until next time!