Email Client Configuration

We currently have a number of different email systems on campus. Students and most adjunct faculty share one server, tenured faculty and staff use a collection of Exchange servers, and Alumni are on yet a third system. Unfortunately, the connection settings you'll need to use for an email client (such as Apple's Mail or Microsoft Outlook) are different for each system. So before you can configure an email client, you'll need to know what system you're on.

UNIX Webmail

Students and adjunct faculty share our UNIX email system. Users of this system generally access it via Squirrelmail.

During the Summer of 2008, students will be moving into Gmail, while adjunct faculty (and other users) will move to an upgraded and revamped UNIX mail system.

To configure an email client to send and receive through our UNIX environment, use the following settings:

Receiving Mail
Protocol:	IMAP
Server:	coyote.csusm.edu
Port:	143
Security:	TLS Enabled
Username/Password	Use your campus username (e.g. smith001, not smith001@csusm.edu) and normal password.

Sending Mail
Protocol:	SMTP
Server:	postoffice.csusm.edu
Port:	25 or 10025 (see note below)
Authentication:	Password
Username/Password:	Use your campus username (e.g. smith001, not smith001@csusm.edu) and normal password.

Microsoft Exchange

Exchange users are those users who use Outlook Web Access to view their email when not at their primary computer. These are mostly tenured faculty and staff members. If the Help Desk set up your computer with Microsoft Outlook, this is likely the system you're looking for.

To configure an email client to send and receive through our Microsoft Exchange environment, use the following settings:

Receiving Mail
Protocol:	IMAP
Server:	postoffice.csusm.edu
Port:	143
Security:	TLS Enabled
Username/Password	Use your campus username (e.g. smith001, not smith001@csusm.edu) and normal password.

Sending Mail
Protocol:	SMTP
Server:	postoffice.csusm.edu
Port:	25 or 10025 (see note below)
Protocol:	SMTP
Authentication:	Password
Username/Password:	Use your campus username (e.g. smith001, not smith001@csusm.edu) and normal password.

Alumni Webmail

Alumni use an email system very similar to that used by students and adjunct faculty, though it's hosted on a separate server. Alumni will be moving to Gmail as well.

Receiving Mail
Protocol:	IMAP
Server:	alumni.csusm.edu
Port:	143
Security:	TLS Enabled

Sending Mail
Sending mail from an email client isn't currently supported for Alumni email. Sorry, you'll need to use Alumni Webmail to send mail.

Gmail

By the end of the summer, all students and Alumni will be using Gmail, rather than a service hosted on campus. Rather than repeat the information here, I'll defer to Google's excellent set of documentation:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=75725

Notes on sending email

In order to minimize the amount of spam sent from our servers, we require that clients authenticate with the server before they can send email. And because we require people to authenticate and we have to take their campus passwords over the internet, we require all mail communication to be sent securely via TLS/SSL.

Some clients will figure this out automatically (Mozilla Thunderbird 2, and Apple Mail in OS X Leopard), while some others don't (Apple Mail prior to OS X Leopard, and Microsoft Outlook Express). If your client doesn't figure it out automatically, you'll need to manually enable TLS support. As soon as we get the chance we'll supply screenshots and specific instructions to do so.

Also, some Internet Service Providers (notably Cox High Speed Internet) will block the standard mail sending port (25) in an attempt to stymie spammers. To get around that, we offer our mail sending service on both port 25 and port 10025. So if one port doesn't work for you, give the other a try.