About the Alumni EFL system . . .
Every year at this time, graduates of the previous year at UNB are told their student e-services, including their webmail accounts, are being cut off under the university's ITS policies.
While most are prepared for this, a few are not.
The following information is for the latter, and should answer all the questions you may have.
What is the difference between my student webmail account and the EFL service?
Your student webmail account is a full-service e-mail account. Messages can be sent to it, and from it. Student webmail accounts are in the format x1y2z3@unb.ca.
EFL is strictly a forwarding service. Messages sent to your EFL address actually arrive at some other full-service e-mail account you may have. EFL accounts are in the format john.smith@unb.ca.
I already have e-mail addresses in both formats . . .
Many of you do. When you arrived at UNB, you were given a student webmail address in the format x1y2z3@unb.ca. You were also encouraged to claim what is now your EFL address in the format john.smith@unb.ca. If you did this, your EFL address was automatically set to forward anything sent to it to your webmail address in the x1y2z3@unb.ca format.
What does this mean now that my webmail account is being closed?
That depends on how you have been handling your webmail and EFL addresses.
If you have been giving people your webmail address only, you will have to notify those people of some other e-mail address you may have. Once your webmail address is killed, you will not be able to access any messages sent to it, nor to send any messages from it.
If, however, you have been giving people your EFL address, you will be fine once you update your EFL account with a new forwarding address. In most case, those of you actively using your EFL address have seen those message delivered to your webmail account, where you have been access them and work with them. Once you change the forwarding address of your EFL account to some other account you may have, you will continue to receive, uninterrupted, messages sent to your EFL address. You will need to notify anyone using your EFL address of this change.
How do I manage my EFL account now that my webmail and other e-services are being cut off?
You can administer your EFL account by going to the alumni homepage at www.unb.ca/alumni, and clicking on the "Get Connected" link in the right-hand menu, then the 'My Alumni e-Services" link. You'll see the link for the EFL service.
If you haven't been to the alumni site before to claim a password, click on the activate account for the first-time link. You'll be asked to enter your alumni ID number and name. Do that and proceed through the ensuing steps to claim a password. When finished, either your existing EFL account will pop up or, if you've never claimed one, you do so in the first field, the Alumni eMail for Life field.
The second field, the Deliver eMail to field, is the important one. This is where you enter the address of the e-mail account to which you want your EFL messages sent. It can be any other full-service account you may have, whether it be a work account, hotmail, gmail, nbnet, etc.
Always keep the Deliver eMail to field updated with your current address, and your EFL account will always be good.
Important notes . . .
Your alumni ID number: Your alumni ID number in most cases will be the seven-digit number that was your student number. Your alumni ID number IS NOT your old student login ID in the format 1x2y3z. If you do not know or cannot remember your number, contact the Alumni Office at alumni@unb.ca, and we will send you your number. Be sure to give us your full name, and your year and degree to ensure we can find your proper file in the system.
Your name: When signing on for the first time, you must enter your first and last names as they appear in our database. For example, if your full name is John Adam Smith, and that was how you initially registered at UNB, you must enter Smith in the last name field and John in the first name field, even if you actually are known as Adam Smith.
Can I claim my old webmail address as my EFL address?: No. Your old webmail address is gone, and gone for good unless you re-register at UNB as a student.
I still have addresses and messages on my old webmail account that I need, but now it's been cut off: If you are in this situation, contact the UNB Helpdesk at helpdesk@unb.ca. The Helpdesk will arrange for your old webmail account to be opened up for a 24-hour period of time for your to retrieve whatever you need. Then it will be shut down again.
I've forgotten the password I set: If you've forgotten your password any time in the future, just enter your ID number, and hit the activate button. You'll then see a link to Forgot My Password. Hit that, and you'll be taken to the challenge question you entered when you first signed on. Answer your question (the answer has to be precisely as you first entered it, including caps, punctuation, spelling, etc.), and the system will allow you to re-set your password.
So EFL is NOT the same thing as my old webmail account.
No. Your EFL account, if you had one as a student, was connected to your webmail account, but only in the sense that your EFL account sent messages to your webmail address. The reserve is not true. Your webmail account was not designed and does not have the ability to connect BACK to your EFL address.
