How do I set up an email alias?
Each faculty and staff member is given, in addition to their normal email address, up to five aliases they can use for other things.
These other things might include aliases for the department or office they work in (e.g., "admissions@nebrwesleyan.edu"), common misspellings of their name ("stpeirre@nebrwesleyan.edu"), their full name ("Tim.Holtzen@nebrwesleyan.edu"), or anything else.
To manage your aliases, follow these instructions:
- Log in to WesMail at webmail.nebrwesleyan.edu. You'll use WesMail to manage your aliases even if you prefer a different mail client (like Outlook or Entourage).
- Click on the plus icon next to "My Account" in the lefthand sidebar. Click on the word "Aliases" in the resulting menu.
This will bring you to a screen that will list your currently owned aliases, and allow you to add more aliases (up to five). To add a new alias, click "Add New Alias." This will prompt you for the address of the alias; if you wanted to make an alias to "Your.Full.Name@nebrwesleyan.edu", you'd just enter "Your.Full.Name". Enter a description for the alias, which is what you'll see in the drop-down menu on the first "Aliases" page.
To add recipients to the alias, enter their (or your) email addresses in the "Recipients" box, one per line. You can add as many recipients as you wish. To remove recipients, simply delete their addresses from the box. You can enter full addresses ("jdoe@nebrwesleyan.edu") or, for on-campus recipients, usernames alone ("jdoe"). Note that you can create aliases in this manner for which you are not the recipient. This is particularly useful for, e.g., student organizations that you sponsor. Since students cannot create aliases, you could create one for them.
To edit an alias, select it from the drop-down menu and, select "Edit", and click "Submit." To delete an alias, do the same thing but select "Delete" instead of "Edit."
Any changes you make may take a few seconds to show up.
Aliases are first come, first served, so be aware that someone else could take your preferred alias. If you believe that this has been done maliciously -- e.g., if someone else has taken your name as their alias -- please submit a ticket.
Conversely, if you try to add an alias that is already an existing email address -- for instance, if you tried to use "stpierre@nebrwesleyan.edu" -- the alias would be added, but it would not work. The original email address would continue to function normally. This ensures that you can't "steal" someone else's mail!
If you need to create an alias that can be edited by more than one person, please submit a ticket and we'll help you with that.
If you have a legitimate need to create more than five aliases, submit a ticket; you can't create them yourself, but we can create them for you.
