For detailed guides on how to set up your system for e-mail at DTU please see the information on portalen AIT Email FAQ and check the pages for Email in Android and Email on iPhone/iPad
For a description of the various mailing lists at DTU Compute please see the page Email distribution lists.
The mail services at DTU Compute are facilitated by the DTU email systems. It can roughly be categorised in to three different e-mail components:
- A central Microsoft Exchange server at DTU for presenting mail (plus more: calendar, address book, tasks etc)
- SMTP gateways for sending and receiving all mail for compute.dtu.dk domain
- Spam and antivirus scan (see email scanning at DTU Compute)
These components offers a very flexible scenario in terms of choice of e-mail client and operating system for the users. Generally the components offer the following e-mail related services:
- imaps (mail.dtu.dk) - imaps is supported by virtually all modern e-mail clients (see exception for android below)
- web mail (mail.win.dtu.dk) - provides mail access from any where with a web browser. The link to remember is http://mail.win.dtu.dk/.
- MAPI (mail.win.dtu.dk)
- Outlook Mobile Access (mail.win.dtu.dk) - webmail access optimised for browsers on mobile devices
- RPC over HTTPS (mail.win.dtu.dk) - full Outlook functionality form external networks
- Active Sync (mail.win.dtu.dk) - service allowing mobile devices such as mobile phones to synchronise personal mail, calendars, address books and tasks
- SMTP (mail.dtu.dk) - handles e-mail transmissions to and from DTU Compute
Generally speaking, everybody with an account on the DTU Compute IT systems (except students) have an email address LOGONNAME@dtu.dk. This address is being used for DTU Compute mailing list, etc. All new staff users (incl. PhD. students) and guests are provided with a mailbox on the DTU exchange server while students with an account at DTU Compute will have their email forwarded to s012345@student.dtu.dk
Contents
Microsoft Exchange Server
The Microsoft Exchange Server at DTU is Exchange 2010 Enterprise Edition. This offers additional functionality:
- e-mail via MAPI, imaps, web (OWA and OMA) or rpc over http
- Personal and shared calendars, address books and tasks via MAPI, web or rpc over http
- Synch to mobile devices - via Active Sync
The exchange server is administered by the DTU central IT department (AIT) but support is usually via DTU Compute ITSupport.
To take full advantage of all the features included in the exchange server one has to use Microsoft Outlook (windows) as a client capable of utilising the MAPI interface. Entourage (for Mac) and Evolution (for Sun/Linux) both offers "almost" full functionality as they utilise the Outlook Web Access (OWA) interface to Exchange. All three clients handles remote access very well (same functionality from external networks).
To read "just" mail (mostly non Windows users), a multitude of imaps clients exist. The most popular client amongst DTU Compute non-MS users is Mozilla Thunderbird (all platforms). For imaps on some android systems, see below.
Web mail on the exchange server can be accessed from any browser (except maybe Lynx). Internet Explorer will provide most functionality as it uses so called "Premium OWA" interface where as other browsers, such as Firefox, will have to settle with the "Light OWA" interface. Still browsers such as Firefox, Opera, Safari and alike provide mail, calender, address book and tasks functionality.
Special Exchange features
There is a few settings that users should be aware of.
Exchange Backup
- A backup of the exchange server is performed once per day. The purpose of the backup is crash recovery, i.e. in case the exchange server breaks down DTU will be able to restore the mailbox with a loss of data of up to 1 day. The possibility for restoring individual mails accidentally deleted by the end user is quite limited (although in special cases possible). Instead accidentally deleted mails can be restored using outlook within the retention period (see below).
Retention time
- Objects (i.e. email, contacts, etc.) deleted is normally just moved to a "Deleted Items" and once the "Deleted Items" is purged the items are completely removed. However, items deleted completely from the mailbox store is still available in a retention period of 30 days, i.e up to 30 after the item has been deleted it is possible to restore the item.
Known Problems
Folder names in some clients
If you want your sent and deleted mail to end up in the same folder in an imap client like i.e. Thunderbird as they do when using Outlook, webmail or Activesync on your mobile phone, you must set copies of sent mail to be put in 'Sent Items' (Thunderbird default is 'Sent') deleted mail to be put in 'Deleted Items' (Thunderbird default is 'Trash')
In Androids standard mail app it is not possible to set the folder names, so you have to check 'Trash' as well as 'Deleted Items'.
In the english version of Ipad's mail app, the folders are called 'Sent' and 'Trash', but 'Sent Items' and 'Deleted Items' are the actual folders being used, so no need (or possibility) to change the settings
Tagging in Thunderbird
Only works on the local computer because Exchange does not store the tags on the server
Attachments in Thunderbird
The icon for attachment is only shown after the attachment has been opened
Large attachments are sometimes unreadable. They can be accessed via webmail.
