BCS / CVS / ASL webmail system instructions

By Chris Freemesser

version 1.0

March 10, 2007

Our webmail system has a pretty intuitive design, so extensive documentation for it is not needed. This document will cover only basic operation and locations of important features.

This system is not intended as a permanent replacement for POP mail clients (ie: Eudora). If you are currently using Eudora with your mail account and find it acceptable, I encourage you to continue using it. Those of you who wish to use the webmail system as your sole means of accessing your BCS/CVS/ASL mail accounts may find the feature set of this system somewhat spartan, but fairly complete.

A word of warning:

Unlike Eudora, which downloads mail from the mail server and shows you a COPY of your messages, the webmail system interfaces with the ORIGINAL mail residing on the mail server itself. If you delete mail using the webmail system, it’s gone for good….there’s no backup like there is with Eudora. If you are a regular Eudora user and are using the webmail system for occasional mail access only, it’s important that when using the webmail system, leave any messages in the Inbox that you want Eudora to download later.

Accessing the webmail system:

Important! Before you can use the webmail system, I need to make modifications to your account on the mail server. Please contact me to have this done.

There are two web addresses you can use to access the webmail system:

http://webmail.bcs.rochester.edu

http://webmail.cvs.rochester.edu

It does not matter which you use….they’re both names for the same server.

When first accessing the webmail system, your web browser will likely display an error related to the security certificate for the server. This is expected and okay. Some web browsers allow you to view the certificate and configure the browser to always accept it, while others will display this error every time you login.

After a quick webpage redirect, you will see the main login page for the webmail system:

For “Name”, enter your full e-mail address (ie: ). Enter your e-mail password in the password field, and click “Login”.

Upon successful login, you will be shown whatever page you’ve decided should be displayed immediately after login. By default, it’s the “Inbox” page:

Please note the row of buttons at the top of the screen….they appear on all pages of the webmail system and are your primary means of navigation.

You can view your various mailboxes by clicking on the mailbox list at the top left corner of the screen (it says “Inbox (1/1)” in the image above), pick the mailbox you wish to view, and click the “Go” button. To read an e-mail message in a maibox, just click on the subject of the message. The three mailboxes created for you automatically are “Inbox”, “Outbox”, and “Trash”, but you can create as many mailboxes for yourself as you like….they will all appear in this mailbox list.

It is important to note that if you stay on the Inbox screen, any new messages you may receive will NOT automatically appear until you manually refresh the Inbox. If you wish new mail to be shown to you automatically, you need to use the “New” page, accessed by clicking on the “New” button at the top of any screen. Here’s what the “New” page looks like:

To read a new message, you just click on the message’s subject field. Once you’ve read a new message, it will disappear from the list of new messages (since it’s no longer new). To access it again, you need to go to the Inbox.

The interval the server uses to update your new mail listing (as well as many other settings that let you customize the webmail system) can be changed by clicking on the “Options” button at the top of any screen. This takes you to the Options page, seen below:

Most settings are self-explanatory, and you don’t need to change any of them to use the system successfully. The ‘Refresh interval of “New mail” page’ option is the aforementioned setting related to the automatic update of your new mail listing. I would ask that it be set to something other than 1 minute though, to reduce the workload on the mail server.

The webmail system allows you to create folders to organize your e-mail. This is done via the Folders page, accessed by clicking on the “Folders” button at the top of any screen. It looks like this:

To create a new folder, just enter the folder’s name in the first field, and click “Create” (you should never change the “Place this folder in” field). To delete or rename a folder, just pick the folder from the drop down menu for each option. The list of all your folders appears at the bottom of this page….none of the various settings for each folder (Hide, Check unread, etc.) should be changed. Please note that folders created via the webmail system are totally different than those created in Eudora, and as such will not be accessible via Eudora.

To create a new message, click on the “Compose” button at the top of the screen. The intuitive Compose page looks like this:

The “Contacts” button will take you to the Contacts page, which is basically an address book. As you can see from the image above, your Contacts list also appears on the Compose page so you can easily add people to your new messages.

As usual, if you have any questions about this system, please ask me!

Chris