Leaving for the Holidays?
Set Up Vacation Email and Voice Mail Messages

By Jeff Van De Pol and Bethany Faith Daniels

 
If you plan to be away from the office for the holidays, an important item on your checklist should be the management of electronic and phone messages during your vacation. This can prevent a backlog of email or voice mail messages, particularly if you subscribe to email lists with heavy traffic or if you are a list owner. In the case of email, if you have a large enough backlog of messages, your disk quota will be exceeded, causing subsequent messages to "bounce." To check your email quota information, go to http://ir.ucdavis.edu/info/email/check_quota.html.

A popular message management solution is setting up email and voice mail absence notifications. These messages provide a convenient way to automatically inform anyone trying to contact you that you're on vacation. Other possible options include setting up another email program at your vacation destination or using Web-based email (though IT does not recommend this option because Web-based email is not secure). To learn more about how to check your email away from home, see the UC Davis email Web site at http://email.ucdavis.edu/vacation.html.

Email Vacation Message
To set up an email notification message for your UC Davis account, a tool is available on the Web. To use it, you will need:

• A UCD LoginID (i.e., the name you use to access the campus network). To verify your LoginID, go to http://mothra.ucdavis.edu/UCDLoginID/ and click on "Check the Status of Your LoginID."

• A Kerberos password. To create or verify your Kerberos password, go to http://mothra.ucdavis.edu/UCDLoginID/ and click on "How to Obtain a UCD Kerberos Password." If you need to create a Kerberos password, allow 24 hours for it to take effect.

• An account on one of the campus email servers (blue, green, scarlet, purple, yellow, or mailbox). To check which server you are on, go to http://ir.ucdavis.edu/info/email/mailid.html and enter your mailID (i.e., the set of characters before the @ucdavis.edu in your email address). The name of one of the email servers will appear after the @ symbol.

When you're ready to set up the notification message (and to disable it upon your return), go to http://email.ucdavis.edu/ and click on "email vacation utility." You will be prompted to enter your UCD LoginID and your Kerberos password. If you have any questions about the email notification tool, contact the UC Davis Postmaster at postmaster@ucdavis.edu.

Voice Mail Absence Greetings
If you subscribe to a UC Davis voice mail plan, follow these steps to create an extended absence greeting:

1. Access your mailbox by dialing 2-8629 from campus or (530) 752-8629 from off-campus.
2. Select option 4, Personal Options, from the Main Menu.
3. Select option 3, Record Greetings, from the Personal Options menu.
4. Select option 2, Create an Extended Absence Greeting, from the Record Greetings menu.
5. Record your greeting.

From then on, whenever you check messages, the voice mail system will give you the option to retain or delete the extended absence greeting.

Depending on your plan (Subscriber or SubscriberPlus), the maximum number of days that new messages will be stored is 14 or 21, respectively. The maximum number of messages that a voice mailbox can hold is 30 or 50, respectively.

For further information on voice mail and its capabilities, refer to your VoiceMail User Guide or contact the IT-Communications Resources Network Services Center at (530) 752-4603.