WebMail User's Guide

Login

The first screen you will encounter while working with WebMail is the 'Login' screen. Type in your assigned login name and password and click ‘Submit’ to access to WebMail's functionality.

If you have forgotten your password, click on the 'Forgot Password' link, and your WebMail password will be mailed to you at your alternative email address.

Mail Application Screen

After login, the Main Application Screen will appear. This screen will provide information on the amount of space you are using and whether you have unread messages.

The upper part of the screen lists main menu of the application. The functionality of the menu items will be described extensively in the course of this document, but below is a short overview of the functionality:

• Home takes you back to this screen.
• Compose allows you to create/write new messages.
• Address Book allows you to manage (add/edit/delete) entries in your address book.
• Options allow you to configure a variety of parameters controlling the functionality of your mail system.
• Logout takes you out of the mail system.

The left part lists your defined folders, allows you to add/edit folders, and gives you a search capability.

• Folders allow you to manage (add/edit/delete) email folders.
•   Search allows you to search for messages using a multitude of criteria (content, sender, folder, message size, date, etc).

Folder List

The application first lists the default folders (Inbox, Drafts, Deleted Items, Sent Items), and any folders you have defined.  To view the contents of a specific folder, click on the folder name in the folder list. The main area will list of the messages in the selected folder:

The first line informs you of the total number of messages in the folder.

Below you will find a table containing a list of messages in the current folder. The table header contains elements that allow you to exercise specific actions on the messages in the list:

• The checkbox allows the selection of all the messages in the current view.
• The ‘!’ sign represents the priority of the message (blank - normal priority, ! – high priority, down arrow - low priority).
• A paperclip, if the message has attachments.
• Clicking on the ‘From’ field heading, will sort the messages alphabetically by the sender.
• Clicking on the ‘Subject’ field heading will sort the messages alphabetically by subject.
• Clicking on the ‘Received’ field heading will sort the messages by the receipt date.
• Clicking on the ‘Size (kB)’ field heading will sort by size (sizes are displayed in Kilobytes, 1024 Bytes).

If the message subject appears with a white background, it means that the corresponding message has not been read. Click on the subject of a message to open the message in full view. A number of controls at the bottom of the screen allow you to perform certain actions on groups of messages (all the messages that are selected):

Moving/Copying Messages:

• The first pull-down menu allows you to specify whether you want to move or copy the selected messages to a new folder. 'Copy to' will leave a copy of the messages in the current folder and should be used with care as it increases your space usage. 'Move to' will erase the messages from the current folder, and this is the action you will use foremost for organizing the contents of your mailbox. You can also setup rules for automatic filing of incoming/outgoing messages.
• The second pull-down menu contains a list of your folders, and you will have to select from here the folder to which the messages are to be copied/moved.
• The ‘Go' button will trigger the specified copy/move action.

Deleting Messages:

The 'Delete' button deletes the selected messages by moving them into the Deleted Items folder. If the Permanently checkbox is checked, the selected messages are destroyed, so use this feature with care. Before destroying the messages, the system will display a confirmation dialog box, giving you one more chance to make up your mind before removing the messages.

The message list is broken down in groups of 10 messages per screen. Use the Next and Previous links to move between screens.

Message View

You will use the Message View to display the content of a message (sender, recipient, message text, attachment list):

The menu at the top allows you to take one of the following actions:

• Previous takes you to the previous message (if there is one).
• Next takes you to the next message (if there is one).
• Reply takes you to the compose form for replying to the sender.
• Reply To All takes you to the compose form with the 'To' field pre-populated with all the recipients of the current message.
• Forward takes you to the compose form for forwarding the message.
• Hide Header/ Show Header hides or shows the header of the message (To, Cc fields).

The next line of controls (as well as the last line) is functionally equivalent to the one in the message list view, but the actions apply only to the viewed message.

The message content is broken down in a number of lines. The sender is displayed in the first line, followed by the message header.

If the message has attachments, the list of attachments is displayed following the header. Click on any attachment name to open the attachment (or download it to your local computer). The last items are the subject line and the message text area.

Compose

Click on the 'Compose' button in the main menu to open the message compose screen.

If you have an address book, you can choose the recipients directly from the address book by selecting the recipient and clicking the ->To, ->Cc, ->BCC buttons depending on the intended placement of the address book entry.

You can also manually enter the recipients into the To, Cc, and BCC fields. If you have more then one recipient in any of these fields, use either a comma (,) or a semicolon (;) to separate the entries.

Enter the subject of your message in the Subject field and the actual message body in the Message field.

You can choose to save a copy of the message prior to sending by clicking on the Save a copy to Folder checkbox and selecting the destination folder from the pull-down menu.

If you want to attach files to your message, click the Browse button to pick a file from your local hard drive and click the Add button to add the message to the attachments list.

If you want to remove an attachment from attachments list, select the attachment from the list and press Remove.

Use the Send button to send your message. If you would rather send your message at a later time, you can do so by pressing the Save Draft button.

Address Book

There is a table with a list of the contacts in your address book. The table header contains a checkbox (for selecting all contacts in current view), the Type of the contact (User or Group), the Name, and the Email/Description of the contact. You can also order the list according to one of the last three columns.

When selecting a contact name, you can edit the selected contact (explained in New Person and New Group sections).

Clicking on the ‘New person’ button opens a form in which you can add a person.

Here is a snapshot of this view:

To add a person, fill in the required fields (shown in bold) and click on OK.

To enter home and business info, click on the links next to labels and complete the required fields on the Add Postal Address form and press ‘OK’ (or UPDATE if editing). To enter home and business info, click on the respective text links and complete the required fields on the Add Postal Address form.

Clicking New group opens a form for adding a group.

Here is a snapshot of this view:

Enter the group name, select the members of the group from the right list, and click OK (or Update if editing).

Clicking on the Remove All button will delete all selected items in the list.

Folders

Here, you can manage your folders:

On the Folder Manager page, there is a table containing the list of your folders. The table header contains a checkbox for selecting all editable folders (you can't edit/delete the default folders) and the Name of the folders.

You can edit one folder by clicking on its name or enter a new folder by clicking on the New button.

Clicking on the Delete button deletes the selected folder(s).

Options

Here, you have the ability to make changes to your WebMail account.

User Settings

Account Information

You can modify your personal information in this area.

The boldfields are required.

The email address is composed of login name and domain name.

Click on OKwhen finished or Cancel to delete the changes and return to the options page.

Mail Handling

Filters

A filter consists of a set of rules to apply to a message and a set of actions to take when the rule meets the conditions in the filter.

This is what the Filters main page looks like:

On the Filters page, there is a table with a list of all filters defined by the user. The header of the table contains a checkbox (for selecting all filters in the current view); the ‘Filter Name’ column, the ‘Active’ column, which specifies if the filter is active or not; ‘Stop Processing’, which specifies if the processing of the filters stops after a message meets the conditions in the filter and, and the ‘Move’ column, which contains buttons for moving filters up and down (to modify the order the filters are processed). Clicking on a filter name takes you in the edit form for modifying the filter (this is explained in the New button section).

New button allows you to add a new filter. Here’s a snapshot of the form:

You can set the filter as Active or Inactive using the radio button group. Then you must enter a filter name.

You can set up to three conditions by checking the checkbox for every condition. For the first two conditions you choose the field (From, To/Cc, Subject, Body), the condition (contains, does not contain, begins with, ends with, is, is not), and the phrase. For the third condition, you choose a time interval (to do something with the messages received between 2 hours).

Then you can set up to three actions to perform if the message meets the condition(s) you selected.

In the first action, you can choose to move a message to some folder (by checking ‘Move to’ radio button and selecting the desired folder), to delete the message (by checking ‘Delete permanently’ radio button), or to copy a message to some folder (by checking ‘Copy to’ radio button and selecting the desired folder).

Check the second action if you want the message to be forwarded to one or more people (selected from address book or manually entered in the ‘Forward to’ text field).

By checking the third action, you reply to the message sender with the message text that entered the ‘Message’ text field and the signature selected from the ‘Signature’ select box.

If you check ‘Stop processing more filters’ no more filters are processed if this filter was applied (the conditions were satisfied).

Press ‘OK’ button (or ‘Update’ if editing) to save the changes.

‘Delete’ button on the filters table deletes the selected filter(s).

‘Run’ button allows you to run one or more filters on one or all folders for some messages. This is what it looks like:

There is a table with a list of all the filters defined. The table header contains a checkbox for selecting all the filters in the list, a ‘Filter name’ column and ‘Filter Description’ column, which describes what the filter does.

Check the filters you want to run, select the folder where you want to apply the filters (by selecting All or a specific folder from Run in folder select box), select all, unread or read messages (from Run filters for pull-down menu), and click on the ‘Run’ button to run the filters.

Click on the Back to return to the filters list.

The ‘Back to Options’ button in the filters view takes you to the Options page.

Forwarding

This feature allows you to forward your messages to one or more addresses. Here is the form:

You can set the forwarding feature as Active or Inactive.

Select the addresses to forward to from the address book by pressing ‘->Forward to’ button or enter the addresses manually in the ‘Forward to’ text field).

Clicking ‘Clear forward to’ clears the ‘Forward to’ text field.

Check ‘Keep a copy...’ if you want to keep a copy in the folder selected from the select box.

Click ‘OK’ to save the changes, or ‘Cancel’ to discard them.

Auto responding

This is more like a vacation or out of office reply. The form looks like this:

First, set the autoresponder as active or inactive.

Select the start and the end date, fill in a message to respond with, and choose a signature.

You should keep checked the ‘Keep a message...’ checkbox.

Press ‘OK’ to save the changes or ‘Cancel’ to discard them.

Aliases

This feature allows you to set different alias names for yourself, which can be used in your email address. So, if your login is john and your email address is john@domain1.com, and you use the alias John. Smith, you can also use the address John.Smith@domain1.com.

Here is a snapshot of the view:

There is a table with a list of all aliases for current user. Check the checkbox on the table header to select all aliases.

Clicking an alias takes you to a page where you can edit the alias (explained on ‘New’ button).

‘New’ button takes you to a form for adding an alias:

Complete the name of the alias and press ‘OK’ (or ‘Update’ if editing) to save the changes or ‘Cancel’ to discard them.

‘Delete’ deletes the selected aliases.

‘Back to Options’ takes you to the Options page.

Additional options

Signatures

Here you can manage more signatures for yourself:

Enter the new signature and description and press ‘OK’ for saving or ‘Cancel’ to discard the changes.

Log-out

Ends current session and opens the login page.