Nevis Mail and the Columbia UNI

Nevis Labs and Columbia University have two completely separate e-mail systems. This page discusses your choices on how to connect them.

When you come to Columbia as a student, employee, or faculty member, an account is created for you on Columbia University's computer network. This account is known as a UNI. It gives you access to the various network services offered by Columbia.

When you come to Nevis, an account is created for you on the Nevis Linux cluster. It gives you access to Nevis-specific services like Nevis-based e-mail, your own web site, web-based calendars, mailing lists, and other features.

It's important to understand:

• Columbia University will only send out e-mail to the UNI account, including important announcements about benefit information.

• Unless you tell the Nevis systems administrator otherwise, or make one of the other arrangements discussed below, all your Nevis-related e-mail (including site-wide announcements) will only be sent to your Nevis e-mail account.

• The Nevis and Columbia computer networks are completely independent of each other. As far as your e-mail is concerned, the only link between Columbia and Nevis is you.

• You have to take action (even if it's only to talk with the Nevis systems administrator) to make sure all your e-mail goes to one place.

The following sections outline your choices:

Forwarding your Columbia UNI e-mail to Nevis

To do this, visit Columbia University's myUNI page. From that page, you can discover what your UNI is if you don't know it, set your UNI password, and set your e-mail forwarding.

Once you log in:

• Scroll down to the section labeled "Configure E-mail Settings".
• Click on the "Email forwarding" link.
• Click on the word "Forward".
• Put your Nevis e-mail address in the "address(es) to forward to:" box.
• Click on the "Save" button.

Forwarding your Nevis e-mail to Columbia

Your Nevis-related e-mail can be sent to any account you prefer, whether that's your Columbia UNI, or an account at some other institution such as FNAL, CERN, BNL, etc. However, you have to make arrangements for this; if the Nevis systems administrator does not know about your choice, all your Nevis-related e-mail will be sent to Nevis e-mail account.

Here are your choices for forwarding your Nevis e-mail:

• If you are comfortable logging into a UNIX-based system and editing files, then edit the file /a/mail/forward/$user and put in the e-mail address to which you wish your mail sent.

• If you don't know how to login to the Nevis Linux cluster or you aren't familiar with UNIX, you can use our web-based e-mail access:
  • Login to the Nevis e-mail system using the webmail page.
  • Click on the "Settings" gear near the upper right-hand corner of the page.
  • Click on "Filters" on the left-hand side of the page.
  • Near the middle bottom of the page, click on the big "+" sign to add a new filter.
  • For "Filter Name:" you can put anything; I'd suggest simply "Forward".
  • In the "For incoming mail" section, click on the "All messages" radio button.
  • For "...execute the following actions" select "Redirect message to" from the pop-up menu.
  • Type your Columbia UNI address (or other alternate address) in the text box.
  • Click on the "Save" button.

• As discussed on the Nevis e-mail forwarding page, you may wish to ask the Nevis systems administrator to create an alias on the mail server. You would choose this option if you were certain that you never wanted to use your Nevis e-mail account.

Whichever of the above options you choose, you might want to let the Nevis systems administrator know, so your entries on the mailing list server are correct.

Reading both your Columbia UNI and Nevis in one program

All of the common programs that read e-mail have the ability to set up multiple accounts. If you wish to keep these accounts completely separate, you can still read both of them in the same program.

The details of how to do this vary from program to program. Typically there's an "Account Settings" option under an "Edit", "Preferences", or "Tools" menu that lets you create multiple accounts. You have to create one account with the Nevis e-mail set-up and a second account with the Columbia UNI set-up.