Campus Guideline for Using Email, Calendars and Texting

PURPOSE AND SCOPE

The purpose of this document is to establish guidelines for conducting university business using email, text messaging, and calendar services. These guidelines apply to CSULB faculty, staff, students, volunteers, emeriti, auxiliaries, and others who receive a university-provided email account.

GUIDELINE STATEMENT

  1. BACKGROUND

    CSULB recognizes the University email and calendar system as mission-critical tools for conducting university business. As such, CSULB supports the use of a centrally provided enterprise email system for faculty, staff, and others (as described in this document’s Eligibility section) to use for conducting official university business. Matriculated students are also provided a university account. Text messaging is an increasingly popular and effective method used to conduct university business and is addressed in these guidelines.

  2. EMAIL USAGE

    1. TYPES OF EMAIL USER ACCOUNTS

      Individual Accounts

      Email accounts for faculty, staff, and others will be created based on user eligibility (see Eligibility section below). The email account generated will be considered the individual’s primary email account to be used for official university communication.

      Student Accounts

      Student email accounts will be created based on user eligibility (see Eligibility section below).  Student email accounts will be considered the student's primary email account for official university communication.  Students have the option of creating a forwarding rule to send university email to a designated third-party personal email account.

      Shared Accounts

      Departments and colleges may use shared email accounts to support business operations. Departments and colleges are entitled to one shared account per unit and may request additional shared accounts as needed. Each department and college is responsible for managing the security and appropriate use of its shared accounts. Only staff, faculty, and student assistants may be granted access to shared accounts with their designated employee email (first.last@csulb.edu or first.last-SA@csulb.edu).

    2. EMAIL USAGE RESPONSIBILITIES

      1. Faculty and staff must use the University-provided email system when conducting CSULB academic and administrative business.
      2. Faculty and staff must use the calendar in the University-provided system to schedule meetings, busy times, and appointments within and across the campus.
      3. Faculty and staff may make incidental and minimal use of their University-provided accounts for a personal purpose1, but such use may be subject to disclosure of the email under the California Public Records Act.
      4. Students may designate either their campus or personal account as their preferred email account for receiving university communications. Students are able to auto-forward their campus accounts to their personal email accounts if they choose to do so.
      5. University email account holders should not send confidential information over email. Confidential information includes, but is not limited to, an individual’s name in combination with Social Security Number, driver’s license/California identification card number, health insurance information, medical information, or financial account number such as credit card number, in combination with any required security code, access code, or password that would permit access to an individual’s financial account. Further details about securing content of email messages are outlined in the CSULB Records Management Standard.
      6. University email account holders are responsible for safeguarding access to their University-provided when using any computing device. Refer to the CSULB Safe Computing Resources.

    3. SECURITY AND PRIVACY OF EMAIL

      1. Electronic communication, such as email, text messages and calendar content and attachments, are university records. As such, they may be subject to disclosure in accordance with state and federal laws.
      2. University-provided email is scanned and filtered for security threats such as malware, viruses and potentially dangerous files.
      3. University-provided email is managed to comply with laws prohibiting activities such as misleading advertising, email spam, and phishing.

    4. PROHIBITED EMAIL ACCOUNT ACTIVITIES

      CSULB prohibits certain email activities, including the following:

      1. Email “masquerading,” which misrepresents an email user’s account name or host name from sent email.
      2. Automatic forwarding of email by faculty or staff from an @csulb.edu address to a non-@csulb.edu address.
        • Faculty and staff may forward selected, individual emails from an @csulb.edu address. Auto-forwarding all email to non-CSULB email accounts prevents CSULB from complying with the requirements of California Public Records Act (Gov. Code section 6250 et seq.).
      3. Opting-out of mass campus broadcast emails.
        • Faculty, staff, and students may not opt out of mass campus broadcast emails. The campus must be able to easily and consistently communicate important business and academic information to all employees and does so using mass broadcast emails.
      4. Sending mass campus email.
        • Staff and faculty are not allowed to send mass campus broadcast emails unless approved and sent through defined channels. (See Broadcast / Mass Email section below.)
      5. Harvesting directory information.
        • Obtaining email addresses from the email directory for the purpose of sending unapproved bulk email or spam is not permitted.

    5. ELIGIBILITY

      The following users are provided CSULB email accounts:

      1. Faculty, staff, and volunteers as identified by Human Resources or Faculty Affairs are eligible for faculty and staff email services.
      2. Matriculated students are eligible for student email services.
      3. Auxiliary employees as identified by each auxiliary organization (Foundation, 49er Shops, Associated Students, Inc.).
      4. Emeritus faculty and staff as identified by Faculty Affairs or Staff Human Resources, as appropriate, may retain their accounts indefinitely subject to account renewal.
      5. Guests and other individuals may receive email accounts for a limited time by request of campus-defined sponsors and with approval through the campus-defined processes.

    6. EMAIL ACCOUNT NAMING CONVENTIONS

      1. Each faculty, staff, auxiliary, and volunteer email user is entitled to one University-provided mailbox based upon preferred first and last names in HR records, which is provided per the following naming convention:
      2. Each student user is entitled to one University-provided mailbox based upon preferred first and last names in Enrollment Services records, which is provided per the following naming convention:
        • firstname.lastname0#@student.csulb.edu
      3. When multiple firstname.lastname situations occur for email users, uniqueness will be achieved by applying sequential numbering to the email account name.
      4. The @csulb email system does not allow users to create their own aliases. However, alias account names may be requested and obtained on a case-by-case basis. Aliases must comply with the naming conventions stated above.

    7. TERMINATION OF EMAIL ACCOUNTS

      An email account may be terminated for a variety of reasons. Typical termination situations include:

      1. Standard employment separation, termination, or retirement.
        • Users who do not have a current faculty, staff, emeritus, volunteer, or auxiliary status will have their account terminated.
        • For a limited period of time, faculty member accounts may be retained by the university and may be accessed by a separated, terminated, or retired faculty member to address grade appeals.
      2. Violation of Campus Computing Policies or Guidelines.
        • Violations as defined in the campus acceptable use policy or campus computer usage and safety guidelines will result in email account termination.
      3. Disciplinary Action.
        • A University-provided account may be suspended, terminated, or reassigned pursuant to student or employee discipline.
      4. Shared email accounts that are inactive, no longer have active member, or otherwise are no longer needed will be deleted.

    8. FACULTY AND STAFF EMAIL MESSAGE RECOVERY

      Email Message Recovery

      Deleted email messages are automatically emptied from the user's account trash bin/deleted items 25 days after deletion. Users may also manually empty their account trash bin at any time. Emails automatically or manually deleted from an email account's trash bin may be recovered only within 5 days of deletion from the trash bin/deleted items folder.

      Email Message Archiving

      Email message archiving is not provided.

    9. EMAIL STORAGE AND MESSAGE SIZES

      The faculty and staff email system provides at least 50 gigabytes of email storage.

      The student email system provides at least 50 gigabytes of email storage.

      Maximum message sizes and attachments will follow email best practice standards to protect network services and ensure fair use of computing resources.

    10. BROADCAST / MASS EMAIL

      Mass emails, also known as “broadcast email” or “email blasts,” are messages sent to large distributions of students, faculty and/or staff. Broadcast emails typically provide important campus information, and:

      1. Require a campus Vice President or President or authorized approval prior to sending.
      2. Should avoid attachments, but if used, may not contain attachments over 15MB. Links to attachments are allowed and encouraged.
      3. Include students, faculty, and/or staff identified by campus systems of record.
      4. Have no provision to allow recipients to “opt-out.”

    11. FACULTY AND STAFF EMAIL APPLICATIONS AND PROTOCOLS

      Access to faculty and staff email is provided through a standard set of campus-approved email applications and protocols to ensure consistent and secure service and technical support to email users. These email applications and protocols are defined in the @CSULB Email Technical Standards Guide.

      • Approved email clients on the campus network will receive regular automatic security updates as part of the software deployment service.
      • All major web browsers are supported.
      • Email settings can be adjusted on supported clients and web browsers to allow for accessible usage by those with low vision and to support CSU Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) requirements.

    12. USING UNIVERSITY-PROVIDED EMAIL WITH MOBILE DEVICES

      The ITS Email Services page lists mobile device operating systems that are compatible for use with the campus email system.

      Users may configure compatible personal mobile devices to integrate with the CSULB email system, and instructions are available for the recommended mobile devices.  Personal mobile devices used to conduct university business may be subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act, including email and text messages, and users are required to comply with such disclosure requests.

    13. EMAIL RETENTION

      Emails normally do not qualify as records subject to the CSULB records retention and disposition schedule.

      However, an email may qualify as such a record, depending on its content. Please refer to the CSULB Records Retention and Disposition Schedules to determine whether an email is subject to retention.

      If a faculty or staff is informed a legal hold has been placed on records in their possession, email and text records must be preserved in addition to “hard copy” documents.

    14. PERSONAL CALENDARS

      Faculty and staff must use the calendar provided in the University-provided email system to schedule meetings, busy times, and appointments within and across the campus when conducting university business. Shared and resource calendars may be requested and utilized by departments to manage department resources, such as conference rooms, and to enable employee groups to share a calendar.

      Students are not required to use the campus-provided, student email calendar function.

  3. TEXT MESSAGING

    Any university business conducted using text messaging, whether on university or personal devices, is subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act.

  4. RESPONSE TO VIOLATIONS

    The University reserves the right to temporarily or permanently suspend, block, or restrict access to campus services when it reasonably appears necessary to do so to protect the confidentiality, integrity, availability, or functionality of those services.

    Any violation of these guidelines or program-supporting policies, standards, or procedures may subject the violator to discipline up to, and including, dismissal for employees and expulsion for students.

1California Government Code section 8314 defines “use” to mean “a use of public resources [including campus email] which is substantial enough to result in a gain or advantage to the user or a loss to the state… for which a monetary value may be estimated.” Further, California Government Code section 8314 defines “personal purpose” as “those activities the purpose of which is for personal enjoyment, private gain or advantage, or an outside endeavor not related to state business. ‘Personal purpose’ does not include the incidental and minimal use of public resources... for personal purposes.” Violation of California Government Code section 8314 may subject the violator to civil and criminal penalties, as well as campus discipline.

APPENDICES AND RELATED INFORMATION

Appendices (if any): N/A

Related Chancellor’s Office Policies: CSU Accessible Technology Initiative

Other Related Information:

FAQ

HISTORY

Issue Date: October 2011

Last Review Date: April 2017

Amended Date:

Amended Description: