M365 Faculty and Staff Email

Welcome! Graduate Center faculty and staff email transitioned to the Microsoft Cloud on February 9, 2023.

Welcome! Graduate Center faculty and staff email transitioned to the Microsoft Cloud on February 9, 2023.

Moving email to the cloud provides numerous benefits, including the capability to integrate your email with other applications within the Microsoft 365 family, such as Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint. The transition to Microsoft’s cloud-based email system will provide increased reliability, significantly reduce the risk of phishing and spam attacks, efficient single sign-on, and 24/7 Microsoft support and accessibility features.

All CUNY campuses are transitioning to M365 (email in the cloud). Each CUNY college will have its own timeline and approach to transitioning their faculty and staff email to the Microsoft Cloud.

To access your new GC mailbox, go to outlook.live.com/owa and log in using your CUNYfirst credentials.”

While your primary email address will not change, you will have to use your CUNYfirst credentials (@login.cuny.edu) to access your mailbox in the cloud.

Please see our Faculty/Staff Email FAQ section for step-by-step instructions on how to perform various tasks for M365.

You can view the following videos to learn how to set up Outlook for the platforms below (you may need to login with your CUNYfirst credentials).

A few things to Note:

  • Calendar:
    • Migrated calendar meeting invites cannot be deleted by the delegates of the mailbox. The organizer of the meeting will need to delete the migrated invites.
    • Calendar delegate permissions will not carry over. The owner of the calendar will need to re-share to their delegate(s).
    • You may have noticed that Outlook meeting invites automatically add a Teams meeting link to the event for the attendees.  The automatic feature is a user preference option.  If you wish to turn off this automatic feature, please follow these steps.
  • Email:
    • Your default email address is associated with your Primary Affiliation.  If you wish to change your default email address, update the Preferred Email Address in CUNYfirst -> Self Service -> Personal Details -> Contact Details. This enhancement took effect on 2/27.  You will need to manually delete and add back the preferred email address in CUNYfirst to trigger an update.  This change will take a few hours or overnight to process.
    • Student @gradcenter.cuny.edu email addresses are not listed in the staff/faculty global address list (GAL).  This is the expected behavior since students are in a different tenant. One option is to check Blackboard for their student email address.
    • Email auto forwarding is now allowed to all *.cuny.edu addresses.  Here’s the step-by-step instruction to email forwarding.
    • Shared mailbox(es) will not automatically populate in Outlook after permission is granted.  Here’s the instructions to manually added shared mailbox(es) to Outlook.
    • M365 limits the number of items per mailbox folder, including the Inbox.  The limit is 1,000,000 items.  Routinely clean up your mailbox to free up space and avoid hitting this limit, after which you cannot send or receive email.
  1. You will access your new CUNY mailbox in the cloud by using your CUNYfirst credentials (@login.cuny.edu). CUNYfirst credentials are required. If you do not have CUNYfirst credentials, please contact IT Services (itservices@gc.cuny.edu). Your primary email address will remain the same as it is today.
  2. You will be able to access your email online (via outlook.office.com) and from your local desktop client. Accessing your email online provides added features, including the ability to select a different “Send From” email address if you have email addresses at other CUNY campuses. You cannot change your “Send From” address via the local desktop client.
  3. Please see this guide on how to change your "Send From" email address in M365.
  4. Outlook will not work on your devices (PC, Mac, iOS, Android, etc.) until you have created a new profile.
  5. MFA (multi-factor authentication) is enabled in the cloud. Users will be prompted approximately every two weeks to re-authenticate with the cloud. These MFA notifications may pop-up in the background on your device. Make sure you re-authenticate when prompted to retrieve your latest email messages. For more information, see the MFA section on our landing page M365 Faculty and Staff Email Migration | CUNY Graduate Center.
  6. Going forward there will be a 35 MB limit within Outlook 365. This means that you will not be able to store, send, or receive emails that are over 35 MB in size, including attachments.
  7. If a recurring meeting was created pre-migration and you try to make any changes to the meeting post-migration (such as adding a new attendee), the process will fail, and you will receive an undeliverable message for the new attendee. The recommendation is to create a new meeting and delete the old meeting.
  8. Sending messages containing sensitive information (PII data) is not recommended. Suppose you try to send a message containing sensitive information. In that case, you will receive an alert message (a warning message) from Microsoft.
  9. The Microsoft Windows Report button replaces the Report Phish button, enabling you to report spam and phishing.
    O365 Report Phish Button
  10. The Global Address list (GAL) in the cloud will be inclusive of all CUNY campus faculty and staff email accounts. As a result, shared mailboxes display names will begin with “GC” or “ASRC” and distribution list display names will begin “GRD”. 

When accessing your former (old) GC mailbox, you will receive the following message. This is simply a notification that you can no longer send/receive email from the mailbox. You do not need to delete anything. Unfortunately, it is an automated message and we cannot change it.

Exceeded Mail Limit Message
  • Any email messages or attachments that are 35MB or larger in size.
  • Any personal contacts or contact groups you created in Outlook Contacts.
  • Any mailbox delegations you created for your personal mailbox.
  • Any rules you created in Outlook and OWA.
  • Any email messages or content contained in the Deleted Items and Junk Email folders.
  • Color categorization (Category designations) of mail items will not migrate. 
  • Personal email signatures will not migrate. You will need to recreate them after the migration.
  • Users will only be able to post to a listserv from the email account that they registered on the Listserv. 
  1. GC IT is copying email data to the cloud. The original email data will remain in the user’s archived GC mailbox (MS Exchange).
  2. You will be able to access your MS Exchange GC mailbox until May 9, 2023 via this web address: https://wa.gc.cuny.edu.
  3. When you go to wa.gc.cuny.edu, you will see the following message on the login page. This message is to notify you that your old GC mailbox is in read-only format. You will need to go to https://outlook.live.com/owa/ to send and receive new email.
OWA Login Screen

GC IT conducted two town hall sessions to provide information and answer questions about the Graduate Center's upcoming faculty and staff email migration.

The Town Hall sessions were held on:

The topics that were presented at the Town Hall sessions are detailed here: M365 Faculty and Staff Email Migration Information Guide.

For faculty and staff who have email addresses with multiple campuses, there are a few critical items to note: 

  1. There will be one consolidated mailbox for campuses moving into CUNY’s unified email tenant. Multiple CUNY email addresses will now be directed to a single inbox under your primary affiliation. For example, suppose you currently maintain mailboxes at Baruch, Queens, and the Graduate Center. In that case, all three mailbox emails will be accessible from the consolidated CUNY mailbox. CIS recommends that users with multiple campus affiliations create folders and rules in the cloud mailbox to assist with organizing your incoming email. 
    Email Consolidation Explanation (M365)
  2. Your primary campus affiliation determines your primary email address. If your primary campus is Baruch, your primary Send From email address will be @baruch.cuny.edu. If you have multiple campus affiliations and are unsure which campus is considered your primary, please get in touch with your HR department.
  3. Please see this guide on how to change your "Send From" email address in M365.
  4. For users whose primary campus will not migrate to the cloud until after The Graduate Center, your GC email will be delivered to your CUNY cloud mailbox and your primary campus email will still be delivered to your on-premises mailbox, until after your campus migrates to the cloud. Your default cloud mailbox email address will be your CUNYfirst account (XXXX@login.cuny.edu). As depicted below:
Multiple Campus Proxy Rules
  • Students should notify their colleagues that their “@gc.cuny.edu” email address will cease to function on February 9, 2023.
  • IT will no longer be able to redirect “@gc.cuny.edu” email traffic to any email address. The service known as “mail-enabling” will cease on February 9, 2023.
  • Discontinuation of “@gc.cuny.edu” will not impact a student’s GC network credentials or “@gradcenter.cuny.edu” email addresses.
  • Suppose a student has used their “@gc.cuny.edu” email address as a username or contact at external organizations. In that case, they should update their information with those organizations.
  • As of February 9, 2023, students will no longer be able to access faculty and staff mailboxes, including departmental or shared mailboxes, as delegates. Students’ inability to hold delegate permission on shared mailboxes is a limitation in the CUNY M365 cloud configuration. While this situation may change in the future, it will not change before the Graduate Center’s faculty and staff email migration on February 9, 2023.

Due to increased cyber threats and Microsoft's plan to disable support for Email Basic Authentication, The Graduate Center stopped supporting less secure email authentication protocols. This change impacts username and password authentication for IMAP and POP3 Office365 email functionality.

Basic Authentication is an outdated authentication standard that allows and poses serious security risks to the Graduate Center community and their privacy.  Any apps connecting to Graduate Center email that do not use a technology called Modern Authentication will no longer be able to connect. Email apps compatible with Modern Authentication are listed below.     

Make sure you use one of these compatible email apps. See Microsoft's website for instructions on finding what version you use. 

Also, remember to remove your Graduate Center email account from any older, unused, or incompatible app to prevent it from trying to connect and slow down the computer, phone, or tablet.  It is also best practice for security to ensure that anyone else who may end up using the device will not be able to see messages or other data that they are not authorized to view.    

MFA is a requirement before the email migration to the cloud. MFA creates an additional layer of security when logging into your Office 365 account.

  • The first authentication factor is your account password (CUNYfirst login credentials). 
  • The second factor of authentication can be one of the following three options:
    • Use the Microsoft Authenticator mobile app on your smartphone to approve the sign-in. 
    • Receive a text message sent to your mobile device providing you with a code to enter into the login window. 
    • Receive a voice call to a designated phone number providing you with a code to enter to sign-on.  
  • For more information and detailed FAQ’s about Microsoft’s MFA tool, visit CUNY’s MFA page.
  • The date for enabling MFA is Monday, September 19th, 2022