Email service phaseout on pangea

Instructions for group accounts read by multiple people

Last revision August 13, 2007

As described in news items, email service will end on pangea by November 1, 2007, and email forwarding will end on June 30, 2008.

A few genuine group email accounts have been established on pangea, such as "dean" and "rfp". Multiple people can connect to these accounts to read the emails received there, delete them, or file them into folders. These accounts will end along with personal accounts on November 1, 2007.

Other group email addresses on pangea, such as "gsac", are not actually group email accounts, but simply aliases that forward to one or more individual accounts. The instructions on this page do not apply to those aliases.

Not sure if the email address on pangea is an actual group account or just a special alias? If it appears in the list showing accounts currently accessing email on pangea, then it is a true group email account, and you proceed with the instructions on this page. If it does not appear in that list, it is a special alias, and you switch to the special alias email address phaseout instructions.

The users of these group accounts need to take immediate action to avoid disruption of email service. Basically, these accounts must be migrated to a new outside email account, following the same instructions as people who receive email on pangea, with these extra conditions:

1. If you want to maintain your group email account with a Stanford address, then your only option is to open a group IMAP account on the @stanford.edu server. You may not be able to get the same account name that you have used on pangea. Be sure to update any web pages or publications that give out this group account name. There is a charge - currently $5.95/month - for each Stanford group IMAP account that must be billed to a normal university financial account. One person must take responsibility to be the manager of the group account. He/she must maintain the list of SUNet IDs that can access this account. Make sure this new group account is properly setup before proceeding.
2. The multiple users of the group account need to coordinate when it will be switched. One person should take the lead to setup email forwarding from pangea and transfer saved email from pangea. When done, he/she notifies the others so they can update their email client configurations to connect to the new account. Group accounts on pangea permitted access via webmail, but group IMAP accounts on the @stanford.edu servers can only be accessed via a Windows or Mac client program, such as Eudora, Outlook, Mac OS Mail, or Thunderbird, which is properly configured to use IMAP to connect to this new group account as a secondary email account.

When these extra conditions are satisfied, proceed with the instructions for people receiving email on pangea, substituting the group account for your own personal pangea account.

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