Mail Quotas
On December 19, 2005, EduTech will be modifying its e-mail service to place limits on the amount of mail that can be stored in a person’s account. This limit is referred to as a mail quota.
Quota Overview:
School staff and students will have different mail quotas:
- Students: 20 MB
- School Staff: 50 MB
If the total size of all messages and attachments in your account exceeds your mail quota, you will receive an e-mail message from EduTech explaining that you are over quota and suggesting some actions you should take. If action placing you below quota is not taken within seven days (the grace period) or if your account’s storage grows significantly larger, you will stop receiving new messages until you are below quota (quota-locked).
Quota Details:
Receiving Mail
While under quota, you will receive mail as usual. As soon as you receive a message that causes you to exceed your storage limit, a timer starts and the system identifies you as over quota. You will continue receiving mail until the timer reaches seven days (the grace period) or you exceed quota by 50% (the hard limit). This is called being quota-locked.
Notification
Each night the system will send a notification to all accounts identified as being over quota. If you already have one of these notifications in your INBOX, you will not receive another one unless it has been four days since your last warning.
Please note that if you keep deleting the warning message, you will receive a new warning message every night as long as you are over quota.
What to Do
Besides saving a lot of emails - especially messages with large attachments - there are two common causes of going over quota:
- Storing Trash/Deleted Items on the mail server: Many mail programs move messages to a different folder when they are deleted. In some cases this folder is stored on the mail server. If your mail program does this, the mail is still counted toward your quota. You should configure your mail client to eliminate deleted items automatically or save the Trash folder locally. (learn how).
- Storing Sent Items on the mail server: Just as with Deleted Items, some mail programs automatically save copies of Sent Items. This is a good thing unless the sent messages are stored on the mail server. You should configure your mail client to save sent messages locally, (learn how[link to mail documentation]).
Checking mail usage
There are two ways for you to check your quota and mail usage. Links are available in the User Resources section and also in EduMail under Options/Mail Size. Using either link will show your quota, total mail storage used, your folder sizes, and whether you are over quota. If you are over quota, the remaining grace period is also displayed.
Expired Grace Period and Hard Limit
The Help Desk will have the ability to reset your grace period to seven days if you need more time to clean things up. However, once the hard limit is reached, you must reduce the amount of mail in your account to receive any more messages.
Some mail programs create a copy of a message before deleting it. This can cause a problem if your account is quota-locked since it may cause you to be unable to delete messages. In these cases, we suggest logging into EduMail to delete messages. Since EduMail deletes messages immediately (without creating copies) it can be used eliminate mail even if you are quota-locked.
Mail Sent to Quota-Locked Accounts
Mail being sent to users that have become quota-locked is held temporarily. If it cannot be delivered within four hours, the sender of the message will be notified that delivery has temporarily failed. Held message delivery will continue to be attempted for the next five days. If you remain quota-locked and the message cannot be delivered to your account for five days, the sender is notified that message delivery has permanently failed and the held message is deleted.
On the other hand, once you are no longer quota-locked, messages still held for your account will be delivered normally. This can cause a situation where you clean up your mail folders and then receive a sufficient number of held messages to place you over quota once again.
Last Updated On December 9, 2005