The Full Frame

Recently I had the motivation to configure my laptop and my phone (running droid v3) to sync correctly with the Email systems of Creighton University in Omaha Nebraska. A large part of my reasoning is the fact that when I am signed into the email systems using the schools online “Outlook Web Access” page at http://cumail.creighton.edu I can’t select multiple messages when I am using firefox. I am a strict firefox user so when it comes time to delete multiple messages from mailing lists this just won’t work.

Anyways…

So first I will run through the method that will allow you to use your phone’s native mail app to sync with the Creighton servers. This is the most elegant way to access mail on the go from Creighton University.

This type of connection is called “Exchange ActiveSync” Exchange refers to Microsoft’s mail software that Creighton is currently running and ActiveSync is just the program that allows remote access to the server.

1. Start your mail app for your phone. I have a droid EVO so these steps might be slightly different for iPhones but the settings will be the same.

2. Once the program is running it should pop-up a configuration page that will allow you to input settings for the Mail Server. Make sure that the “type” of mail server is set to either “Exchange” or “Exchange ActiveSync” other incorrect options that you may encounter are IMAP or POP.

3. Where it asks for server location, type “cumail.creighton.edu“

4. Where is asks for domain, type “blue“

5. Where is asks for username, type “abcXXXXX” meaning your school user ID

6. If it has an option for security encrypted password SSL or something about password security then make sure that that box is checked because Creighton does use secure passwords.

At this point save the changes and your phone should start syncing your messages from the Creighton servers to your phone.

In your mail program it should give you some other options about how often you would like to sync and/or how many days worth of messages that you would like to keep on your mobile device. These settings directly affect the battery life of your phone and the space available on your phone.

Here is a link to Creighton’s DIY writeup for the iPhone

Here is a link to Creighton’s DIY writeup for the Droid OS

That should be pretty straightforward, if you have any questions please email me or post up on this site and I will do my best to answer them.

Ok so the next thing that we are going to do is we are going to setup our laptop email client to work with these same servers.

Most people using the Microsoft Office package are going to be using Outlook, personally I prefer open source so I use either Evolution or Thunderbird. The process is the same for 99% of email clients.

1. Start your mail client and it if you have never done so before it should automatically prompt you to setup your mail account, if not you probably need to go to “edit” -> “Preferences” to add your new Creighton account.

2. It should ask you for your name, this will be the name that it will send on all outgoing emails so choose something that you would like others to see. It will also ask you for a reply-to address and some other things, you can just keep all the settings on this part of the process the same.

3. Click next and you should start getting to the meat of the setup process, the server-type, username, and other settings.

4. When it asks you for servertype choose either “Exchange” or “Exchange ActiveSync” other incorrect options are IMAP or POP

5. It should ask you for a server address or an OWA address. OWA stands for Outlook Web Access. In this spot you need to input “https://cumail.creighton.edu/exchange” note the “s” after the http line, it is best to just copy-paste it.

6. If your email program has a spot for Domain you need to input “blue” if your email program DOES NOT have a spot for domain we need to enter this information along with our username in the username box, type in “blue\abx12345” placing your username after the backslash. So to summarize, if your email program has a separate box for the domain then you have to just enter your username normally “abc12345” if it doesn’t then enter it as in the special case that I posted above with the backslash.

7. If it asks for secure password transmission or plaintext choose secure.

8. Keep all other settings the same

Ok so finish up with the configuration wizard and try your mail program, you should see the emails from your Creighton account begin to appear in your inbox.

Again if you have any questions please email me or post them on this site.

Thanks for reading.