Saints email used to insure delivery of email at MHCC

For two-and-a-half months now, Mt. Hood Community College has been sending all college-related email correspondence exclusively through its “Saints email” system, via Microsoft’s Office365 service.

MHCC has had Saints email available for use for over three years, according to Don Adams, the college’s manager of IT programming and systems. He said the main reasons for the college’s decision to use Saints email exclusively were improved security, and making sure that all students receive all emails sent.

“We kind of control, a little bit better, where it’s going … where if I go to Google, I have no control at all,” Adams said of relying on the Microsoft program.

Using the Saints email system, the college can send out mass emails without relying on a different party to send them out, for a price. “We can do that through another system we have, but we’re trying to save that cost,” said Adams.

Saints email also keeps Mt. Hood’s emails from being marked as spam. Using third-party services is a risk because they might already be recognized as spam services, according to Adams.

Another reason for the change was to make sure Mt. Hood is able to send all students emails to an address that doesn’t change. “Students change their email address many times on a fairly regular basis, and then we don’t have the new email address, so they’re not getting the email from us,” said Adams.

“We thought that by going to ‘Saints,’ we can guarantee mail delivery without all the hassles of going through everyone’s individual emails.”

The Saints email system is a service Microsoft offers at no cost to all schools that use their products, according to Adams, so there was no cost involved. Mt. Hood has Microsoft platforms licensed throughout its entire campus.

Some perks that come with having a Saints email account include five downloads of Microsoft Office for five separate computers for free. The service does come with restrictions. “It’s for your use… but you can’t transfer that license to someone that isn’t a student,” said Adams.

If students want emails from Mt. Hood to be sent to another email address, they have the option to have the Saints email forward everything to any desired in-box. Forwarding emails comes with a risk, though, said Adams. “I’m only guaranteeing it gets to your Saints email account. If the forwarding fails for some reason, that’s not going to be the college’s issue and we’re going to assume that you received the email, which could be your financial aid or something rather important,” he said.

Any questions or concerns with Saints email may be addressed at multiple different locations.

The Orientation Center offers help, the Learning Center is available, and the help desk in the Library can give  help.

If a user is not on campus, questions and concerns about Saints email can be sent to: [email protected]. “We check that multiple times a day looking for challenges,” said Adams. “We’re always interested in how we can improve it to make it better.”