Note: As of May 2013, all Simmons students, faculty, and staff will be using Google Apps for Education (including Gmail). At that point, Simmons Webmail will be decommissioned. As of February 1, 2013, all new Simmons employees will be provided with a Google Apps account. Simmons Gmail is accessible from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection by visiting gmail.simmons.edu. To find out more about the Google Apps project, please visit googleapps.simmons.edu.

Simmons Webmail is a web-based email platform that allows you to access your Simmons email from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. This guide provides an overview of how to navigate and use Webmail. Please note that Webmail is used only by faculty and staff at Simmons. Students can access their email at gmail.simmons.edu.

Contents:

• Getting Started
• Settings and Options
• Reading and Composing Messages
• Using Folders
• Address Book
• Distribution Lists
• Filters (Forward, Vacation Reply, etc.)

Getting Started

Most tools you will need to navigate Webmail are either at the top of the screen or in the side bar. You can toggle the side bar open and closed by clicking the (Toggle) Button on the left-most portion of your screen. The side bar provides an easy way to navigate your email folders, address book, and options in Simmons Webmail. Click the (plus sign) next to a category to expand a list of options. The Mail category will show a list of all your email folders.


Configuring Settings and Options

Click (Options) from the toolbar at the top of the screen to change settings that affect how you use Simmons Webmail.

General Options: Personal Information:  Before you get started, you should customize Simmons Webmail to contain your own information and to fit your email needs.  Note that all options here refer to your Default Identity unless you choose to create a different identity. Your Default Identity contains the personal information that will be displayed in each email that you send or receive using Simmons Webmail. You should fill in your Name, Email Address, and Signature (if desired). Technology recommends that you leave the default "Save sent mail" at the bottom of the page. If you do not do this, your outgoing messages will not be saved.

When you are finished editing your default identity, click Save Options to update your identity and return to the main options page.

Message Options: Deleting and Moving Messages: Here you can change how Simmons Webmail handles your deletions and choose whether you want to go to the next message after you delete, copy or move a message, or go back to the list showing all of your email messages. Click Save Options to save your changes.

Note that Simmons Webmail creates a Virtual Trash folder by default. This folder provides you with one place to review all of your deleted messages before permanently purging them. The (Empty Trash) button will remove all messages that appear in the Virtual Trash Folder from your Simmons email account.

Other Options: Mailbox and Folder Display Options: These choices allow you to change the order in which email is sorted when viewing your list of messages and set the number of messages per page in the mailbox view. Click Save Options to save your changes.

Message Options: New Mail: You can control how often Simmons Webmail will check for new mail and whether or not to notify you (through a pop up notification or sound) when you have new mail. By default, you must click the (Inbox) button at the top of your screen to check for new messages. Click Save Options to save your changes.

Message Options: Message Composition: These options allow you to customize how you send mail, where drafts are saved, and how spell checks are performed. By default, "Compose messages in a separate window" is checked. This means that when you click New Message to compose an email, a window will pop up for you to type into. Click Save Options to save your changes.

General Options: Login Tasks: From here, you can define maintenance operations that occur each time you login. If you have a Login Task scheduled, you will be presented with a confirmation message when you login, before seeing your email messages. You can choose to "Perform" or "Skip" the maintenance before continuing. Click Save Options to save your changes.

By default, Simmons Webmail is set to Purge the Trash Folder on a monthly basis. This means that when you login, all messages in your Trash Folder that are older than 30 days will be permanently removed from your Simmons email account. You will be presented with a confirmation message before this happens. Simmons Technology recommends that you leave this default setting and choose to Perform Maintenance Operations when asked. This will ensure that you stay within your email quota and do not keep messages that you have already deleted in your trash.


Reading and Composing Messages
You can select a mail folder from the Open Folder list at the top right hand corner. Click the folder that you wish to open and the messages contained in the selected folder will be displayed.



The Side Bar provides an alternate way to navigate your email folders. Click the (plus sign) next to the Mail category and click Inbox to read your mail.

View a Message
To read a message, click the sender or subject link of the message.

Sort Messages
You can sort messages by date, sender, subject, or size simply by clicking on the corresponding word at the top of your email list. You can also the reverse the sorting (from ascending to descending) by clicking on the triangle arrow next to word

Tip: Sorting by size is a good way to see which messages are using the most of your quota.

Composing and Sending Messages
If you want to write a new email message, click (New Message) from the toolbar at the top of the screen. A Message Composition window will pop up for you to type your message. When you finish composing your message, click Send Message.
You can use the Address Book function to find an email address by clicking (Address Book) when you compose a message. You can locate someone by Name or Email Address. From the list of addresses, you can select an email address and add it into the appropriate To, Cc or Bcc fields.

Composing and Reading HTML Messages

Composing HTML Messages
You can use Simmons Webmail to send messages using HTML formatting. This allows you to bold and underline text, to change the font size and color, and to format the message in ways normally reserved for a word processing application. Some people enjoy this capability.
To send HTML formatted text, you can click (Switch to HTML composition) in the Message Composition window. You can set this by default if you go to Message Options: Message Composition, and click the box labeled "Compose messages with an HTML GUI by default." Note that not all web browsers support this feature.
Once the Option has been set, when you click (New Message) the Message Composition window will include this toolbar:

You can use this toolbar much as you would in a word processor to change the look of the text in your email.

Reading HTML Messages
Using Simmons Webmail, you may from time to time receive a message that looks strange. When you click on the message subject to read the email, instead of seeing a message you may see a variation of this:

Sometimes you may be able to read the email message, but sometimes there will be a warning or error message instead of the email you wish to read. This means that the message you received was sent using HTML format. You must click the link to view the message as the sender intended you to see it. Clicking the link will pop-up a new window that will display the HTML message in your default web browser external to Simmons Webmail.

This feature is by design in Simmons Webmail. Viewing HTML formatted messages can allow malicious programs to collect personal information that is stored on your computer. Many modern email clients do not permit the display of HTML formatted messages for security reasons. It is imperative that you trust the sender of the email before clicking the link to view the attached HTML message.

Saving Draft Messages
If you are composing a message and want to finish it later, you can click Save Draft in the Message Composition window. The draft message will be saved in a drafts folder. (This folder will be automatically created the first time you use Save Draft). You can retrieve the draft messages by using the Open Folder pull-down list at the top right hand corner or by using the side bar. Click resume at the top of the email window to continue typing the email.

Replying to and Forwarding Messages
To reply to a message, click on the message (in order to open it). Click Reply to reply only to the sender, or Reply to All to respond to the sender and all other recipients. A window similar to that of Message Composition will be displayed. When you finish composing your reply, click Send Message.

Similarly, click to forward the open message to others and click Send Message to send your message.

Sending Attachments
In the bottom section of the Message Composition window, there is an Attachments section. Click Browse to select a file from your computer. The selected file will be shown in the Attachment window. Click Attach and the file name, size and file type will be shown.

Important: You must click Update to attach your chosen file to the email. If you do not click Update, the attachment will not be sent. Click Send Message to send your message.

In case you wish to remove the attachment before sending your message, look again at the Attachments section. Under the box to add an attachment, a list of attached files is shown. Next to the attachment you wish to remove, click the box under the file name marked Delete and press Update. The selected files will be removed from the attachment list accordingly.

Important: if you save your sent mail (the default Webmail setting), Webmail will not save attachments in your sent-mail, unless you change the "Save Attachments with messages in sent-mail folder?" option to Yes when you add an attachment.  You can change the global setting through Options, but Technology recommends you do not change the global setting in order to more easily stay under quota. In your sent-mail, Webmail does indicate that a message included an attachment, whether you saved the attachment with the message or not.

Checking Spelling
If you would like to check for spelling errors in the message you are writing, click Spell Check in the Message Composition window.

Deleting and Undeleting Messages
To delete a mail message, select the message by clicking the checkbox to the left of the message. Then click Delete.
You can click (Empty Trash) to permanently remove your deleted messages from your Simmons email account. By default, this button will purge all messages that appear in your Virtual Trash folder. If you have selected the option to move all deleted messages to the Trash folder and do not use a Virtual Trash Folder, then Empty Trash will purge deleted messages from the Trash folder only.

If you have deleted a message you did not intend to delete and wish to undelete it, navigate to the Virtual Trash folder. Select the message you wish to undelete by checking the box to the left of the message and click undelete at the top of your message list.



Managing Email Using Folders
You can better manage your email through the use of folders. By creating folders you can sort messages into categories that you define rather than storing them all in one location. This can help you more easily decide which messages are important to save and you will be able to locate a particular message faster. You can manage your mail folders by clicking (Folders) from the tool bar at the top of the screen. This will display the following screen:

To create a folder, click the Choose Action pull-down window and click Create Folder. A dialog box will appear. Type the name of the folder to be created. Then click OK. The new folder will appear in the Folder Navigation window and you can also find it from the Open Folder pull-down list.

You can rename or delete the mail folders by clicking the appropriate options under the Choose Action pull-down list. All the messages inside a folder will be deleted if you delete a folder.

Selecting and Marking Messages
In order to move, copy, delete, or mark a message you must first select it.

You can select a message by clicking the checkbox to the left of it. You can check the box next to any number of messages on the current screen.

You can select multiple messages in the folder you are currently viewing by using the Select pull-down list. You can select all the messages at once by choosing All from the pull-down list.


Marking Messages
You can change the status of a message by marking it. For example, you may wish to indicate that several messages in your Inbox are important to you. You would first select the messages you want to mark. Then choose Important from the Mark As pull-down list.





Selecting Marked Messages
You can use the Select pull-down list to select all messages of a chosen status from the current folder. Following our example, you can select all the messages you had previously marked Important by choosing Important from the Select pull-down list.




Moving or Copying Messages
You can move or create a duplicate of any number of messages to another folder. To do this, first select the messages, then choose the folder you wish to move or copy to from the Messages to: pull-down list.



Next click either move or copy at the top of the screen to complete the action.



Setting up Address Books
You can store email addresses and personal contact details in your Address Book.

Each user has a personal address book. To edit your address book, click (Address Book) from the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Add an address:
Click (New Contact). On the next screen, choose My Address Book from the drop-down list. (You cannot add a contact to the Simmons Directory.) The only mandatory field is Name, but you cannot send an email to a contact without providing an email address. When you finish entering the information, click Add.

Search an address:
Click (Search/Advanced Search) to search for a saved address.


The Search function allows search by Name or Email, and the Advanced Search function provides more fields for searching. You can search your own address book or the entire Simmons Directory (see below). Enter the word for which you would like to search and click Search to start searching.

Browse the address book:
Click (Browse) to browse and select My Address Book to browse the contents of your address book. You cannot browse the entire Simmons directory here; you can only perform searches on it.

Import/Export an address book:
Click (Import/Export) to import an address book into your address book under Simmons Webmail or to export your address book saved under Simmons Webmail to your own disk.

When you finish editing the address book, click (Mail) on top or the browser's Back button to go to the Inbox screen.

Setting up a Distribution List

To create a distribution list

1. To edit your address book, click the Address Book icon on the toolbar at the top of the screen.
2. Click Browse to see all the email addresses.
3. Check the boxes in front of the e-mail addresses to be added to the list.
4. In the Select List pull-down box on the right, select My Address Book, under Create a new contact list in:
5. Click the Add to button to add the selected names to the list.
6. Give a name to the distribution list.

1. Click Compose to create an e-mail
2. In the To field, enter the name of the distribution list.
3. All email addresses in the distribution list will be shown in the To field.
4. Compose the mail and send.
   

1. Click (Filters) on the toolbar at the top of the Webmail screen. You will see a list of the existing filter rules, including any that you created.
2. Click (Vacation). You will see the Vacation filter pane, with the Basic Settings tab displayed.
3. Click the Calendar icons to select dates for the start and end of your vacation.
4. Fill in the remaining fields as appropriate. Click Help for descriptions of each field.
5. Click Save. You will see a confirmation message.

• That an automatic response is not sent to messages that come from mailing lists or that are marked as bulk mail.
• The number of days to wait before sending an auto response to a person who has already received one from you.
• One or more email addresses to forward messages to from your Inbox while you are on vacation.
• List of recipients who will not receive your auto response message.

1. Click (Filters) on the toolbar at the top of the Webmail screen. You see a list of the existing filter rules, including any that you created. >
2. Click (Forward). You see the Forward pane.
3. Fill in the fields as appropriate. Click Help for descriptions of each field.
4. Click Save. You see a message saying your forwarding addresses were saved.

When you Click (Filters) on the toolbar at the top of the Webmail screen, you will see the list of existing filters.

If no text is displayed next to the filter indicating that it is disabled, the filter is currently active, or enabled. Click (Edit) next to a filter, verify that the filter's settings are as you wish, and click Save and Disable to turn off the filter.