Known Email Issues with Email Forwarding

By default when we created the student Academic Account we enabled forwarding and, for security reasons, we have disabled access to remote services (webmail). Since forwarding is "on" there is currently no email in the webmail account because all email sent to the RRU email account is forwarded directly to the personal email account (same one used to login into MyAdmin).

Ultimately email forwarding is not perfect. Adding a component where email is being forwarded to another account, adds a layer of complexity that can be problematic. The only way to guarantee that you will get all your RRU email is to turn off forwarding, but most students like having the email forwarded to their personal account. For the most part the forwarding service is reliable and works, just make sure you are always checking your forums and assignments and hopefully you will never miss anything.

One solution that has solved most issues is to make sure that "royalroads.ca" is added to your email whitelist or safe-sender list.

Please see below for known issues with the various email providers and details on how to add "royalroads.ca" to the safe senders.

Whitelist "Royalroads.ca" on Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook.com, Live.ca, Live.com, MSN.com and Yahoo email services

Most free-mail providers filter messages for spam however some can be better than others. Computer Services has found that Microsoft and Gmail email services tend to classify a lot of valid RRU email as spam (the initial username and password email and password reset emails are perfect examples). It is strongly recommended that you keep a close eye on the spam/junk mail folder to make sure no RRU email gets forgotten in this folder.

An even better step is to add our domain (royalroads.ca) to the Safe Sender/Whitelist. This will help ensure that ALL RRU email will be given special treatment.

How to add an email royalroads.ca domain in Outlook.com (used by Hotmail.com and Live.com addresses)

You should do this on a Computer. Please log into your Microsoft account

In the top right, click on the Sprocket and then View All Options...
On the left, select Mail
In the middle click on Junk Mail Settings
Scroll down to the section that says Safe Senders and Comains
Type Royalroads.ca in the box and hit ENTER/RETURN on your keyboard
After a second or two it will add the domain to the list.
Click Save

You are done. Now future RRU email should arrive safely in your mailbox, however some emails, like password resets, might still go into Spam, but they will not be blocked completely as in the past.

How to add an Royalroads.ca domain in Outlook Web app (used by older Outlook.com addresses)

You should do this on a Computer. Please log into your Microsoft account

In the top right, click on Options → See All Options...
On the left, select Block or Allow
Under Safe Senders and Recipients click in the box where it says Enter a sender or domain here
Type Royalroads.ca in the box and click the +
Click on Mail in the top left and you should be prompted if you want to Save the changes. Click Save

You are done. Now future RRU email should arrive safely in your mailbox, however some emails, like password resets, might still go into Spam, but they will not be blocked completely as in the past.

How to whitelist an email address with Gmail

Sign in to your account at Gmail.com and do the following.

Add the address to your contacts

Add the email address that is sending you email (eg support@onlinegroups.net) to your Gmail Contacts. Google will usually deliver email from addresses that are in your Contacts.

Mark messages as ‘Not spam’

If Gmail has marked emails you wish to whitelist as spam, tell Gmail the emails are not spam.

In Gmail, navigate to the spam folder.
Search for emails containing the domain you wish to whitelist (eg onlinegroups.net).
Select all the emails shown.
Click More and then Not spam.

Create a filter for the address

Create a filter to tell Google to whitelist email from a domain or online group.

Click the cog icon in the top-right corner, and then Settings
Click on Filters and then Create a new filter
Either
- enter the domain of the email you want to whitelist in the From field
  or
- enter the email address of the online group you want to whitelist in the To field
Click Create filter with this search
In the box headed When a message arrives that matches this search select Never send it to spam
Click the Create filter button

Tips:

Do not enter email addresses in both the From and To fields as Gmail will only filter in emails that meet both criteria
In both the From and To fields, you can enter either a specific email address or an entire domain
To enter multiple domains in each field separate them with OR as in “onlinegroups.net OR groups.yahoo.com”

See also Google’s help on Legitimate mail is marked as spam.

A whitelist is the opposite of a blacklist. Where a blacklist tells a email server what email addresses to block, a whitelist tells the email server what email addresses are safe/accepted. Usually adding an email address or domain to a whitelist will tell the server to ignore all the usual checks and let the email though, even if the server thinks it is spam. If you are not receiving email for your instructor or a colleague or Moodle Forums, then adding RoyalRoads.ca to the whitelist should help.

This is not to say you cannot use a Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail email accounts as your forwarding address, but it is important to understand the risks.

If you want to look at alternative ways to get your email, you can check out this article.

Government/DND/Police/RCMP/Health-Care email addresses

DND and Government addresses have a very strong filtering behavior and they are not recommended as your forwarding address for RRU. It has been our past experience that emails can be blocked, without warning to the sender, because the messages contain certain files types or information that is deemed unacceptable by the server filters. ("Request new password" emails, for example, routinely get blocked).

Email attachments sent through Moodle using Quickmail are automatically "zipped". Most Government email addresses block all email with ZIP attachments.

This is not to say you cannot use a Government or DND email account as your forwarding address, but it is important to understand the risks. Please contact your local IT department for assistance with whitelisting the royalroads.ca domain.

GMAIL email addresses

In order to successfully receive email from various RRU services/departments, it is strongly suggested that you whitelist the ‘@royalroads.ca’ domain in any third-party mail service that you might be using. Please follow the instructions given in this link to do so: http://onlinegroups.net/blog/2014/02/25/how-to-whitelist-an-email-address/

Do not try to send a test message to your RRU email account, you will not get the test message. If you want to make sure your forwarding is on; use another account, other than your Gmail account, to send your test message. We think this is because Gmail knows where the email is originating from, and doesn't like that it is being re-directed back to itself. Test messages from someone else's Gmail account will work though.

Unable to send e-mail while on campus?

This is due to the fact that your email provider does not allow you to send email using their server when you are not on their campus.

For steps on how to setup your non-RRU e-mail so you can send and receive on your computer while in residence, please visit /wiki/spaces/ITKNOW/pages/5835229.

Sympatico/Bell email addresses

In the past, on a couple of separate occasions, we had reports from students with Sympatico email accounts that they were not receiving any RRU emails. After much investigation we have determined that there is nothing more we can do on our end. It appears that at times Sympatico is blocking our emails out as SPAM.

In the past we contacted Sympatico, however since we are not customers ourselves, we were asked by Sympatico technical support to have their customers contact them directly. If you are concerned about missing emails, please contact Sympatico and inform them that emails from royalroads.ca are not arriving in your mailbox. Please explain that our server administrator contacted Sympatico already, but was told to have you contact them yourselves.

At this time we do not recommend using your Bell/Sympatico email address for forwarding.

Please review our email summary page for alternatives. Particularly Downloading (or popping) your email might be the best alternative in this situation. The simplest change would be to modify your forwarding email address to something other than Sympatico.

We do apologize for this inconvenience. Please feel free to contact us by telephone if you would like further explanation and you may use us as a reference when contacting Sympatico.

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