Students’ Outlook-powered email addresses will be more accessible by people on Eastern’s Outlook email system, if the request from faculty and staff is approved for students to be added to the Global Address List.

The Global Address List is the email that students, faculty and staff use when they log on to Microsoft Office 365, the new system for Panthermail. The email list automatically checks against the Global Address List before sending to make sure a person’s email valid and confirmed.

Eastern’s email services have had a Global Address List just for faculty and staff for several years. Students weren’t on this list before because the old system wasn’t as manageable to handle faculty, staff and students all at once.

David Emmerich, the associate director for information technology services, said the list is more comprehensive than systems used in the past.

“Office 365 has better management capabilities of this list and it relies on email addresses being in the Global Address List more than previous systems,” Emmerich said.

The old system would run into an issue with sharing information on students because the accounts wouldn’t have the student list. With the request from the faculty and staff, adding the students would improve the Global Address List.

“It is hoped many people will be able to more effectively share and collaborate and have fewer issues making that happen,” Emmerich said, while talking about the differences from the older system used by Eastern.

He said he hopes by adding students to the Global Address List it would make it easier for sharing calendars and files through Office 365 OneDrive.  No external companies can see the information on a user’s online storage drive, rather only Office 365 OneDrive users will be able to see documents that are shared.

The global list could not be used by any third-party email services; the global list is for the Eastern faculty, staff and students only. If a student wants to use a third party, they will not be able to see people’s calendars for files because they are not connected with Eastern’s email system.

The request to add students to the Global Address List is being filed by Eastern’s system administrators, Emmerich said.

“Email users who are actually looking for it should start seeing them added any day now,” he said.

Chris Widdel can be reached at 581-2812 or dennewsdesk@gmail.com.