Summary of features: Spam Control Unified Web Client: https://rulink.rutgers.edu/uwc This gives you both calendar and web mail. This is now the recommended interface. The old mail and calendar interfaces are still present, but no more work is being done on them. Through web mail "Options", you can set up vacation messages, even if you read mail through another mail reader. Through calendar "Options" you can set up reminder email and notifications. Through "Manage Calendars" you can control who can see your calendar and access other people's calendars.   Setup: http://rulink.rutgers.edu/admin Through this you can add a personal email address and choose whether to read mail sent to rutgers.edu here or forward it to another address.      For people reading mail here, you can set up spam control, control who can see your mail folders and access other people's mail folders, and change your disk quota.   Thunderbird: I recommend using Thunderbird with RULink. Thunderbird is an open-source mail and calendar system. Although calendar support is new, I expect it to become a good alternative to Outlook. See Using Thunderbird with RULink.   Outlook Support: I recommend using the Outlook Connector. This makes RUlink look more or less like an Exchange server to Outlook. See Get Synchronization Software. I recommend using version 7.2, the beta version. I've used it on two machines and it has been working very reliably. Cell phone / PDA Support: There is some support for both mail and calendar in cell phones and PDAs with web browsers. This section also includes the Apple iPhone. If a calendar is set so that everyone can look at it, it can be accessed as http://rulink.rutgers.edu/calendar/CALID Your default calendar has a calid of NETID@rutgers.edu For support, contact your campus help desk, or rulink-support@rutgers.edu   Old interfaces: Web Mail: http://rulink.rutgers.edu/mail Calendar: http://rulink.rutgers.edu/calendar Calendar non-SSL: http://rulink.rutgers.edu/ncalendar A calendar interface that uses SSL only for the login screen. Use this if you have problems inviting more than 8 people to an event.

RULink is a University-wide system, providing a set of core communications services, currently email and calendaring. The software is primarily Sun's Java Enterprise System .

New users: Please read this whole page for introductory information on the services. More information is available in the documentation links on the right.

The applications links on the right are the primary entry points into the mail and calendar systems.

For support on these tools please use the normal help desk contact for your campus. For more specialized requests such as creating a new domain, you may also contact rulink-support@rutgers.edu.

How to use RULink

Anyone with an account on one of the major OIT campus systems or RIAS can use these services. Login with your NetID and the corresponding password. If you have accounts on both faculty/staff and student systems, use your faculty/staff password.

Please use the hostname rulink.rutgers.edu to access these services, except that email addresses are user@rutgers.edu, or user@domain if your department has its own domain hosted on this system.

Calendar

No special setup is needed for the calendar -- just login with your NetID and password. A calendar will be created for you the first time you login.

For instructions on support for Palm handhelds and Pocket PC, see Synchronization with PDA.

If you use Outlook, you will probably want to use the Outlook Connector. This causes Outlook to treat Rulink much like an Exchange server. However if you are using an Exchange server in your department, but still want to see your rulink calendars, you may prefer to use Synchronization with Outlook, because Outlook can only treat one server as an Exchange server.

It is possible to set up shared calendars for conference rooms, projects, and other uses. For more information on the calendar service, see the Questions & Answers about Calendar

Mail

By default, mail sent to netid@rutgers.edu is forwarded to the mail address listed for the person with that NetID in the People Database. This is the address shown in the main Rutgers Online Directory. See that link for information on how to change your email address in the People Database.

The intent is to provide a permanent email address @rutgers.edu, which will follow you should you change departments or mail systems within the University.

It is possible to create "long" email addresses for yourself, e.g. "john.smith@rutgers.edu", and to change the address to which mail is forwarded. To make these changes, use the administrative tool, http://rulink.rutgers.edu/admin

It is also possible to receive and read mail on this system. Mail/Calendar Configuration Tool, by using the use the administrative tool, http://rulink.rutgers.edu/admin to set "I will read mail on this system." If you choose to read mail on this system, I recommend using either the web interface (preferably the unified web client, http://rulink.rutgers.edu/uwc) or Mozilla Thunderbird. Thunderbird is particularly attractive if you configure it to use the LDAP-based faculty/staff directory. See Using Thunderbird with RULink.

If you have problems with IMAP hanging or giving timeouts, here are some suggestions: With Thunderbird, see Using Thunderbird with RULink. With Mac OS X mail, try changing the port to 143. When you click SSL it will change the port to 993. You will need to change it back to 143. With other mail programs, if TLS is available in addition to SSL, try using TLS. In some programs (such as Mac mail) you get TLS by checking SSL and forcing port 143. [SSL and TLS are two different protocols with the same purpose: Both encrypt the connection between you and the server. This protects your password and other sensitive data. TLS is simply a newer version, which appears to work better with this server.]

The mail system does virus protection.

For more information, see the mail documentation.

Additional Options

Mail/Calendar Configuration includes various configuration tools. These allow you to determine whether mail sent to you at rutgers.edu will be left here for you to read or forwarded to another address, and to do certain uncommon operations on calendars.

It is possible for departments and other groups to create shared calendars and various types of special-purpose mailboxes. Please see the web page For Dept Administrators for more information.

While the central directory server, ldap.rutgers.edu, is not strictly speaking a part of RULink, information about it will be listed here. Announcements and failure information will be shown in the NEWS section.

Information You Should Know

New users should look at the sections on privacy and accessibility later on this page. By default, anyone can see certain information from your calendar.

The applications links in the right margin are the easiest way to get to the calendar and mail system.

Issues with Specific Browsers

The following section has not been checked with the new software version. In general current versions of IE, Mozilla, Firefox and Safari should all work. Sun does not support older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 and IE 5, and some things I've done make it impossible to use them.

Note that some commands use pop-ups, so browsers that block popups will need to be configured to permit rulink to generate popups.

If your browser can be set to pretend to be another browser, beware of pretending to be Netscape 4 if you aren't. Doing so may lead to failures when you try to delete a message.

Windows: Older versions of IE have had problems with mail and been slow with calendar. We recommend that IE users update to the newest version of IE 6. Netscape 4.7 is not currently supported. Mozilla 1.4 and later, Firefox, and Netscape 7 should work.

NOTE: IE 6 has problems with some operations in the old calendar interface. This is due to SSL problems between IE and the calendar server. If you notice it hanging, use the special URL labelled "for IE". This will use SSL for the login to protect your password, and disable SSL.

Mac OS X: Camino, Mozilla 1.4/Netscape 7 and Safari all work. IE 5 does not. In the past I've said that Safari is slower, so I have recommended Firefox or Camino. However I compared them in 10.4.8 and found Safari just as good (tested on an Intel iMac). Safari 3 in Leopard actually seems just a small fraction faster in some operations.

Non-Roman text: We believe that the web mail system will properly display email using standard encodings such as Big5, as long as you have an appropriate character set. However experiments to date suggest that you can only send mail using Unicode. This appears to work properly with current versions of IE, and Netscape, but not Netscape 4.7. While we don't have specific information, I would assume that it would work with the newest Mozilla software. You will need a Unicode font that has the appropriate characters. We are continuing to investigate options.

In the calendar, pop-up menus are very slow in Internet Explorer. You'll get better performance using Netscape, although Internet Explorer will work as long as you wait.

Privacy

This section will give a summary of who can access your data in the calendar, mail, and directory components of these applications.

Calendar

The calendar system permits you to control who can see your calendar. By default, everyone can see what times are free or busy, but nothing about the events and appointments themselves. By default, anyone can invite you to an event. This invitation will put a tentative entry on your calendar, which you can confirm or reject, and send you email.

To change permissions

• Login to the unified web client, https://rulink.rutgers.edu/uwc
• Choose the Calendar tab
• In the "Current Calendar" box in the upper right, choose "Manage Calendars".
• You'll now see a list of your calendars. Click "Edit" next to your primary calendar.
• Right under the primary information you'll find a list of checkboxes that control how much information others can see from your calendar.
• Somewhat lower down the screen, you'll see a section that lets you give specific users the ability to do things that others can't do.

Here are changes you should consider:

• If you don't want everybody to be able to see when you are busy, remove the check from "Anyone can view my availability."
• If you don't want everybody to be able to invite you to events, remove the check from "Anyone can invite me to an event." If you do this, any attempt to invite you to an event will generate email to you, but will not put a tentative event on your calendar.
• If you want everybody to be able to see your actual events, and not just when you are busy, check "Anyone can read my calendar". If you do this, it is still possible to make specific events private, using the "Privacy" pulldown in the box where you create and edit events.
• If you want someone else to be able to make changes to your calendar, one approach is to type their NetID in the blank next to "Name:" in the "Permissions List" section and then hit "Add". That will add an entry for them to the permissions table. At that point you can give them whatever permissions you want. For assistants, you would typically give them all permissions. Another way to do this would be to go down to the "Owners" section, and add them as a secondary owner of your calendar. If you do that, you do not need to list them in the Permissions List.

Once you have made the changes you want, click "Save" in the lower right of the dialog box.

Mail

There are no privacy issues unless you use this system for email. If you do, then of course you will have messages stored on this system. By default, no one else can see any of your messages, nor see whether you have email.

To control who can access your messages, login to the unified web client, choose the Mail tab, and click on "Manage Folders", which is an icon at the bottom of the list of folders that appears on the left. Select the fold you are interested in (your default folder is "Inbox"), by clicking the radio button to the left of it. Then pull down "Folder Actions" and choose "Share". This will bring up a dialog box that lets you select who can access messages in this folder.

As with the calendar system, initially there is only one entry, which controls whatever "anyone" can do. By default, they can do nothing. However using the pulldown menu, you can give them various permissions, which should be self-explanatory.

You can give specific people other permissions, by adding an entry for them. Put their NetID in the "User ID" box, and click "Add". Then you can give them whatever permissions you want.

If you have folders other than Inbox, when you look at "Share" for them, you'll see a checkbox at the upper left of the dialog box. Choosing it will permit users to send mail directly to the folder, using a syntax such as yourname+foldername@rutgers.edu.

Note that there is a subtle difference between "anyone" and "everybody". Everybody, the default entry for the calendar system, includes users from anywhere on the Internet, who can look at calendars anonymously. Anyone, the default entry for mail, refers to any Rutgers user who is logged into the mail system.

The Sun JES mail system fully supports the IMAP features that permit an IMAP client to adjust permissions. If you are using a client that implements these features, you can adjust permissions from your client. Making changes from the web application and from your client will have the same effect. (Unfortunately I don't know of any clients that implement this feature.)

Directory

RULink uses a directory of its own. This directory is not typically accessed except from mail and calendar.

This section describes using the directory from the Unified Web Client. The old interfaces have similar features.

It can be used from Calendar when you are inviting someone to an event. The dialog box for creating and editing events has a box for inviting other people. Next to that box is a button "Add from addressbook", which will let you look for people in the directory.

It can be used from Mail from the Search Address Book dialog, which is accessible from several locations. The most visible is the button labelled "Search" from the "Addresses" tab. However when you are composing a message, you can look up addresses. The initial dialog box accesses only your personal address book, but the "Search" button" will look at the full directory if you choose "Corporate Directory".

Every person who has an active account on any of the Rutgers campus systems (rci, eden, andromeda, pegasus, crab or clam) is listed in the directory. The directory implements the same access restrictions as the Rutgers Online Directory. Thus, students who have chosen not to release information through the Online Directory will not have it released through this directory either. In order to be visible in this directory, an entry must be visible in the Rutgers Online Directory. For students who are not also faculty, staff or guests, the entry will be hidden if the email address is not visible in the Online Directory.

There is one exception to this: A few people have accounts on one of the campus systems, but are not registered with the Rutgers central directory system at all. Typically these would be guests whose accounts are created by campus staff without going through central guest procedures. For these people, information will be visible in this directory. However the information for their entries is based on the "finger" information from their accounts. This information is under the control of the user. (It may be changed using the "account tools" for the system on which the account is located.)

Directory entries on this system show a subset of the information in the Online Directory.

Accessibility

The mail and calendar web applications do not appear to comply with the W3C recommendations for handicapped accessibility. For certain individuals, screen magnifiers may be sufficient. They should work fine with these applications. However individuals that need to use alternative browsing applications may have problems if those applications don't support Javascript.

For the calendar system, we recommend using the Calendar small-screen interface, https://rulink.rutgers.edu/cal/login.php3. This interface is primarily intended for use with PDAs, but should also work with alternative browsers. It is a very spartan interface, using pure HTML. See Other Calendar Details for how to login directly to today's calendar or the list of events.

For the mail system, we recommend using a POP or IMAP client to access mail.

The "Mail/Calendar Configuration" screen, which includes options to control the major features of the email system, uses very straightforward HTML, and should present no problems.