Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
about E-Mail Aliases
at Granite State College

1. What's an e-mail alias?
2. How does an alias work?
3. How do I apply for an alias?
4. Can an alias help me separate my personal e-mail from my GSC business e-mail?
5. I already have an alias, how do I update it?
6. My name has changed, how do I change my alias?
7. Why is it required that GSC aliases must contain at least one period?

Don't see your question about aliases listed here? Then send e-mail to:

       Alias.Admin@granite.edu

which is, you guessed it, the alias for reaching the Granite State College Alias Administrator.

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1. What's an e-mail alias?

An e-mail alias is a mechanism by which sending and receiving e-mail can be simplified. An alias is usually your name or the name of a GSC department, program, or organization. Aliases such:

      Your.Name@granite.edu

and

      XYZ.Dept@granite.edu

are designed to be more informative and easier to remember than the typical computer log-in account name such as

      fml3@xyzzy.granite.edu

More importantly, if your actual log-in account or Internet service address should change, correspondents that use your alias need not be aware of this. By simply redirecting your alias to your new address, messages sent to your alias will continue to reach you.

The goal of this service is to allow the creation of standardized, easy to read, e-mail addresses for use on business cards, web pages, directories, and the like. All GSC faculty members and staff are encouraged to have a 'personal' alias established. In addition GSC departments are encouraged to establish appropriate 'support' aliases for their organizations. Granite State College students may also request a GSC alias, but with the understanding that the alias will be retired one year after the completion of their last GSC class. In all three cases the only restrictions are that the alias owner must be a member of the USNH community, and the alias must follow established naming conventions and point to a working e-mail address.

2. How does an alias work?

When you apply for an alias, you provide both your desired alias name, as well as the target address where you want your e-mail to be sent. When e-mail is sent to

      Your.Alias@granite.edu

the message is received by a system named granite.edu which automatically forwards the message on to the target address you have supplied. The alias system is, in effect, an automatic mail forwarding system. Your messages are not stored, so there is no mailbox on the alias system for you to access. You continue to receive and read your mail as before.

To encourage people to use your alias instead of your physical e-mail address, we recommend using your alias as your return address when sending e-mail. To accomplish this, you may need to configure your e-mail client software to use your alias in the From: or Reply-To: headers of your outgoing messages. (This is already done automatically for users who have mailboxes on the UNH Exchange or cisunix mail systems.)

3. How do I apply for an alias?

There are three basic types of aliases available at GSC. Pick the one that's right for you.

• Personal Alias -- A personal alias is intended for any e-mail that is being sent to you specifically, as verses a department or functional position. A Personal Alias always contains your family name and always has at least one period. Using some famous names, here are a few typical examples of what a Personal Alias looks like:

         Susan.B.Anthony@granite.edu
         Albert.Einstein@granite.edu
         E.B.White@granite.edu

  
  

• Support -- A Support Alias is a GSC alias that represents an e-mail contact point for a recognized GSC department, organization, or a functional position within a department. Some (fictitious) examples of support aliases are:

      GSC.Program.Coordinator@granite.edu
      Phrenology.Dept@granite.edu
      Fugue.Office@granite.edu
      ABC.Conference.Registration@granite.edu

  Descriptive information about the purpose of the alias is requested as part of the application process. (See also FAQ #4 below.)
  
  
  

• Private -- A Private Alias is a GSC alias that is specifically not to be published in any directories. Generally such aliases are limited to internal departmental or support functions. Contact the Alias Admin for instructions on how to apply for a Private Alias.

4. Can an alias help me separate my personal e-mail from my GSC business e-mail?

Possibly. A lot depends upon your particular e-mail client and the mail tools you have available. Typically the "To:" field of a message will reflect the actual address the message was sent to. This means that your mail program will often be able to identify messages that were sent to your alias as verses your 'physical' e-mail address.

• If you are a Microsoft Exchange user, check the Outlook help facility on the subject of managing messages with rules.

• If you receive your e-mail on cisunix, see:

       http://pubpages.unh.edu/notes/support.howto.html

  for more information on how to manage messages using the tools available on that system.

5. I already have an alias, how do I update it?

Use the Alias Update Request form to submit an update request.

6. My name has changed, how do I change my alias?

If you have legally changed your name, you will need to contact us to record this change in our records. You have to first make sure that the College in general knows about your new name before your 'computer identity' can be changed to match.

After your new name is on record with GSC, contact the Alias.Admin to request a change to your alias. We will notify you via e-mail when your new alias has been created. Of course one of the things we want to make sure of is that you will not miss any e-mail sent to you during the transition. To insure this we will point your old alias to your new one for at least 6 months. This means your original address will still deliver messages sent to it, giving people plenty of time to learn and start using your new address. At the end of the 6 months, your original alias is retired and any messages sent to it will bounce as an unknown address.

7. Why is it required that GSC aliases must contain at least one period?

A technical reason is because actual computer user names used within USNH supported computer systems never have a period in them. Requiring aliases to contain a period thus allows physical e-mail addresses and logical ones (aliases) to coexist in the University System of New Hampshire's global e-mail address name space without having problems with 'name collisions' or possible confusion.

But the best reason is because it helps make aliases clearer and easier to remember. The period is simply used wherever a space would appear in a name or phrase. By making an alias the full name of a person, functional position, department, or program, it is immediately clear who the alias is reaching. For example, given:

        edc@somesys.granite.edu

would this 'physical' e-mail address reach the "Educational Development Center" or "Ed Chamberson"?

Questions, comments, or suggestions about the info on this page? Please contact the Alias Admin at the Alias.Admin@granite.edu mailbox. (Which is, of course, an alias!)