Email Homework Assignment

Monday June 11

Evaluation:

15 points 3 points for sending a test message from the Rulink email system 3 points for setting up an event on your calendar which your TA is invited to 3 points for sending one email message from Eden to two different people which you cc to yourself 3 points for discussing your product and answering all issues itemized below 3 points for forwarding the Eden message you cc-d to yourself on to your CS110 TA

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is get you familiar with various email tools at Rutgers including the portal my.rutgers.edu, rulink.rutgers.edu and the spam filters available through eden webtools. (You can do all the following from any computer you have access to as long as you can get on the Internet. Although there may be other ways to do the graded steps, you will want to make sure you use my.rutgers, rulink and webtools as explained below since information about these may show up on exams.)

Preparation:

My.rutgers, rulink and webtools all have help features built in. Use them to learn more about each piece of sofware. Do HW1 - the Web assignment - first, so you know what product you will be concentrating on in this and future assignments.

Directions:

[Rulink] Using any brower (Safari, Netscape, IE, Mozilla) go to the website: http://rulink.rutgers.edu. This website offered by Rutgers runs a piece of software called Sun ONE (previouslly called Iplanet.) This is an integrated system that allows everyone to maintain personal calenders and schedule joint meetings and other events. It also can be used to help you manage various aspects of your Rutgers email account - including offering you tools to read and send email. We will actually be using a different system, called My.Rutgers, to read your email. But there is a reason we are going to use rulink to start out. By logging into this system you create a new email name for yourself. Let us say that your username on eden is iamgreat. Then your normal email address for your rutgers account is iamgreat@eden.rutgers.edu. However, the first time you log into rulink, a more generic email address - iamgreat@rutgers.edu is created for you. (Notice, the eden part is not here.) What you want to do is to make sure that any mail outsiders send to you at this address, actually makes it to your main email account at Eden.

You do this by using the "Setup: Mail...." option under "Primary Applications". When you select this off the main rulink.rutgers.edu webpage, it will bring you to a screen so you can log in. For netid - enter your eden username. Also, enter your Eden password. If you enter the info correctly, this will bring you to the Main tab of the Intranet Services screen where you should click the "Manage Mail Delivery" option under "Changing Your Mail Setup". On this final screen, under the section that read "Change how mail sent to this system is delivered" chose either the option "forward mail to the address in PDB" if it is currently set to your eden account, or the "forward mail to other adddress" in which case you have to type in your whole eden email address (such as iamgreat@eden.rutgers.edu)

By the way, the PDB is a Rutgers database that contains information on all Rutgers students and staff. Most people have an email address listed there and that is how rulink knew yours. As a final step click the "Change Mail Delivery" button. That is all there is to it. Now you can tell folks in the outside world that your email address is @rutgers.edu (like iamgreat@rutgers.edu).

By the way, if interested you can go back into the "Manage Mail Delivery..." option and add alternative email addresses for yourself ("customized email addresses") like John.Smith@rutgers.edu by following the directions in the "Change Email Address" section of that screen.

Once you are back at the main Rulink screen (you can click "Intranet Services: by the Rutgers Logo on the upper right to get there), try the "Unified Web Client" Primary Application (top option on right-hand bar). This is an application that lets you handle email and use scheduling software at the same time.

By setting forwarding above, we have chosen to use Eden to handle your email (that is why we forwarded the @rutgers.edu there), so normally you would not get into Rulink to read and send email.  (You can chose to use this system for your primary Rutgers email if you want. You would go back into settings and make sure you have no forward set.)

But since we are here in Rulink, let's check out how the email here works. Using the features in the Mail tab (it should have defaulted to this) of the unified system, why don't you try to sending a few emails messages from here just to get used to the system. (This is possible without changing your forwarding settings.) As your first required task of this assignment, send an email to your TA, which you cc to yourself, saying hello and explaining you are sending a test message from the rulink system.

Now switch over to the Calendar tab.  Experiment with the features here to see how to add events to your calendar. When you are comfortable, add an event to your calendar and invite your TA to it.  (It doesn't have to be real, but you can add things like recitation, or the TA's office hours, or the final exam.) The second task you will be graded on is whether the TA gets a proper invite to this event.

Ok, we are done using Rulink for now.  Feel free to use it on your own as you see fit. You can log out of the system using the Log Out option (often found in the middle or righthand side of many rulink screens.)

[Webtools] Now we will go and use Eden, the main email server for Rutgers students,  to handle your email. Let's setup your eden account so most "spam" (or annoying email) is filtered out from your incoming messages - so that you need not be bothered by it. Rutgers has a tool to help handle this for you - it uses software called Spam Assassin. Go to https://webmail.rutgers.edu and click on "New Brunswick/Piscataway Student". Now enter your NetID (Eden username) and your password before clicking Login. WebMail is one of the ways you can read your email here at Rutgers. Anytime you have access to the web, you can go to webmail.rutgers.edu to get to your Rutgers email. In here, you will see there is a special "Webtools" option towards the top-right of the window. Click this to get over to the webtools you can use to change how your email is processed. Once on the webtools screen, since we are interested in getting rid of spam, click the "Spam Filtering" option under Setup.

Next, read the information on the webpage you end up on about how spam filtering will work. Once you are ready, click "Setup spam filtering" on the top of that page and then follow the directions. Mainly you need to fill out section 2. (See next paragraph for advice.) When you are done, remember to hit the Submit button.  After you complete this process, depending on the settings you picked, some of the unwanted email that annoying organizations/companies/individuals might send to your Eden account will be redirected to a folder (or deleted) before it gets to you.

Some people at Rutgers now recommend setting the spam filter level at a very low number like 1 or 2, which will cause the system to try to catch more spam messages but occasionally will lead to a real message getting accidently marked as spam.   Also, it is recommended to chose the option for a AUTO-DELETE-SPAM folder, which means you will be able to look through this folder, for a mismarked real message, if necessary.

[My.Rutgers] For the last part of the assignment, you will be using the website my.rutgers.edu to send and read your eden email. Most of the necessary commands to do this will be explained in recitation. My.Rutgers is what is known as a "portal". That is, a website that acts as an opening or starting point to access things on the web. My.Rutgers is a personalized portal. It can be used by anyone at Rutgers. To get in, use the browser (Safari, Internet Explorer etc.) to go to my.rutgers.edu and then click the large yellow "Login" button in the upper right. After you identify yourself (thru your eden netid and password), the portal changes so information useful to you shows up. For example, your new RuID number is listed by your name here.

You can customize the portal so Rutgers information useful to you, such as your own grades, your current class schedule and so on, is readily displayed. You add "channels" so that other info you want to regularly access - such as the weather or Rutgers announcements - are also visible. One type of info that many folks at Rutgers want to get to is their email. So My.Rutgers has web-based software built into it to allow you to read and send email from your eden account. Anywhere you can access the web in the world, all you need to do is enter my.rutgers.edu as the address (URL) in a browser and you will be able to use the web-mail built into my.rutgers to access your Rutgers mail. (This is an alternative to the method we just saw in webmail.rutgers.edu.) There are many ways to read email at Rutgers, but this is a good one to know about and the primary one Rutgers has been slowly changing over to.

So practice using the mail features in My.Rutgers.  Once you are familiar with these features send out the following email.

Send a message (the same message at the same time) to two different people; with a carbon copy (cc) of the message to your own email account. Type in a good subject line to explain what the message is about. Note: You are sending one message to two people with a copy of the message to your account. Your message can be sent to classmates in your recitation section; friends at Rutgers or other universities; colleagues in business, industry, etc.

In your message you should include the following information:

a. Tell what item you decided to purchase as your theme for this class.

b. Give a couple reasons why you made this choice.

c. Give the URL (the web address) of the web site that you felt had best info for your needs. Explain why you feel this way.

d. Tell whether you found your product available on an auction site. If not, what was the closest match you found? Also mention which auction site you used.

e. Describe your experience with the shopping bots. Did you get any good pricing for your product? If so, how much can you purchase it for? What shopping bot did you use and which actual retail site did it direct you to purchase the product for this price?

f. Make sure you end your message with your full name. (Your TA will need this info.)

Do not send the original message to your TA, instead do the following. Since you placed yourself on the cc list, the original message will be returned to your email account. When it arrives, it will appear on the list of received mail. When your message arrives, open it up and read it. To complete the assignment and get credit for it, forward this message to your TA - adding a line at the beginning of the body that says "Here is my HW. " Your assignment is not complete until the cc of the original message is forwarded to your TA from your account. The class webpage lists the TA's email addresses.

In a day or so your TA will send you a confirmation saying he got your assignment. In that email he will also tell you what your Class Id is. (This is NOT your Rutgers ID.) This number is used to post your grades throughout the summer. You will need to remember your number or else you can not look at your grades. Keep checking your email until you get the confirmation from your TA.

Enjoy,

-Jt