Staffmail for Informatics Staff and Visitors

The University's Information Services (IS) provides an email account for every staff member and some registered visitors to the University. In a bid to reduce duplication of effort, it is intended for Informatics cease providing our own mail service for staff, and use the central staffmail.ed.ac.uk service instead.

The migration of existing staff and visitors to staffmail.ed will be a gradual one, but anyone wishing to do move ahead of time, is free to do so, and should currently fill out the Support Form for help and guidance.

As of October 2007, all new members of staff and certain visitors will use the central staffmail.ed service. They will not have access to the existing mail.inf service. This does not mean they won't have an username@inf.ed.ac.uk email address, just that mail sent to that address will be delivered into their username@staffmail.ed INBOX. So you can still publicise a username@inf email address, but see later if you'd like an @ed.ac.uk style email address.

Accessing Staffmail.ed

In order to access your staffmail.ed email, you will need to have registered with EASE. The University's central authentication system.

Please note - your EASE password is not, and should not be, the same as your DICE login password. However, later we'll show how you can configure staffmail to use your DICE Kerberos credentials to access your staffmail mail folders.

Don't be tempted to make your DICE login and EASE passwords the same - this will make your accounts more vulnerable to hackers. Don't give out any of your passwords to anyone else.

Once you've setup your EASE password, the simplest way to access your staffmail mail folders is via the web at: www.staffmail.ed.ac.uk. The University provides documentation on accessing staffmail via the Webmail (IMP) interface.

Though webmail is simple and convenient to use occasionally, say from home or while away on a conference, you'll probably want to use a fully fledged email client for your day to day use of email.

Using Other Mail Clients With Staffmail.ed

The University provides various documents for configuring mail clients, for several operating systems, to access staffmail.ed. They are all linked to from Staffmail Configurator. These include: Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, (al)pine.

For other mailers, the basic information you need to know is:

Incoming server (IMAP)	imap.staffmail.ed.ac.uk - requires SSL or TLS
Incoming username/password	Is your UUN (DICE username) and your EASE password.
Outgoing server (SMTP)	smtp.staffmail.ed.ac.uk

Specific options for users of DICE Linux machines

If you use pine/alpine or thunderbird on a DICE linux machine, you can take advantage of the fact that both these mail clients support kerberised authentication, and you can configure staffmail.ed (via the web interface) to allow IMAP access to your mail using your DICE kerberos credentials, and hence not need to enter your EASE password.

The details of these instructions are still under development, but can be found on the Informatics Wiki pages at:

When the above information is more polished, it will be relocated here.

The Edinburgh Mail Directory

The University also provides the Edinburgh Mail Directory (eddir for short). This allows you to request an email address like Fred.Bloggs@ed.ac.uk which will forward mail onwards to your actual INBOX, eg fbloggs@staffmail.ed.ac.uk