Tabor Online Training Guide
Managing your student Gmail account
Student Gmail accounts.
Student Gmail is now the main way that Tabor staff, lecturers, tutors, course advisors, and admin staff will communicate with students. If you don’t regularly check this, and open emails in your Gmail inbox, you will miss important communication from staff, and from your fellow students. Also all forum postings made in any sites that you are in, including your School Student Centre, or the Library site, will go to your Gmail inbox daily as the Forum Daily Digest. You do need to check this regularly, preferably daily, as any message from your lecturer/tutor/other Tabor staff, send via an Announcements forum, will be included in the daily digest. It is not only students’ forum posts in the digest. So please don’t miss crucial information that you need to see. See further on page 4: Daily Digest. Below are some helpful ways about how to better manage your student Gmail account.
· If you have not yet activated your account: Click on the Gmail & Google Drive tab on Home page, or on any subject main page, and click on Gmail to see the Terms and conditions. Read through the conditions; and accept. This will activate your account.
· From then on, as soon as you click on Gmail under that tab, you will be in your Gmail inbox. And if you click on Google Drive you will immediately access your account.
· If you are a new student, and don't seem to be able to access your Gmail account, or see the terms and conditions, please send us a Helpdesk ticket.
· Once activated, and when you are logged into Tabor Online, as soon as you click on Gmail under that tab, you will be in your Gmail inbox. And if you click on Google Drive you will immediately access your account. You do not need a further log in.
· If you already have a personal Gmail account, you may find that you end up there, instead of to your student Gmail even when you click on your student inbox. This is because Google tends to take you to the last one you used. So just sign out of that account, and try again. To sign out: go to the dropdown arrow next to your personal Gmail address near the top right hand corner, and click on Sign out. (You will also need to do this, if you try to go to your personal Gmail account, and end up in your student Gmail account). Just closing the window that you are in, does not sign you out of an account.
· To manage your inbox:
o To delete a message: tick the little box to the left of the message (left of the star) and various tab options will appear above messages. Click on the Delete icon (rubbish bin) to delete. Or click on the message, which will open it, and also the tabs will appear.
(Note this doesn’t permanently delete; it is still in your Trash folder. You can also check out the other options here.
o To permanently delete: Under Compose on the left hand side, go to More dropdown box, then go to Trash:
· If you have a list of contacts under this list of folders you will need to hover just above contacts to see More.
· Tick any to be permanently deleted, and click Delete forever icon, which will be displayed once you select one or more to delete. You don’t get a second chance here, so be sure you do want it gone forever!
· Important: When you send an email to Trash it sends all replies to that emails to Trash as well, so if you think you might want to refer to the replies to that email, or the full thread, don’t permanently delete, as all replies back and forth will be gone!
· Also note that in Categories, under Trash, you can manage your labels, eg. which to show or hide, and you can add more labels.
· To send a new message: click on Compose button on left hand side, type recipient's email address in the 'To' field, enter a subject and type your message in the text box. Click Send in bottom left hand corner of the message.
o To reply: click on Reply arrow on the right of the email. For Forward, and other options such as Print, click on the little drop down arrow by the Reply arrow. You can also reply by clicking on Reply (or Forward) button below the message.
o Daily Digest: all students will receive an email comprising all forum posts, made that day, in any sites that they have access to; this is called the Daily Digest. If no posts that day there won’t be a digest email. Please open and look through these daily, or at least every couple of days. They will include any posts made by your lecturer/tutor/other Tabor staff, eg. in News forums. If you don’t open because you think they are all posts made by students, in forums that you will access on your site, you will miss crucial messages or information. The student can change this setting if they wish to. To do that:
· when in Tabor Online, click on your name in top left hand corner, and on Preferences.
· Go to Forum preferences under User account, and to Email digest type drop down menu, and select your choice.
You have 3 options here:
· Get an email alert for every forum posting in any site that you have access to (no digest).
· Get one email with complete forum posts for all postings for that day – this is the current default setting.
· Get one email per subject (or other site, eg. Library) that you are in, per day, with just the subject, not full posts.
· Save changes.
o Redirect your student Gmails: You can redirect your emails to another email address if you would prefer to have all emails to one inbox. Many students do find, once they are used to their student account, that it is helpful to keep Tabor emails, and personal emails separate, in which case they don't redirect. However if you prefer to have them all in one account, redirect according to these instructions: How to redirect to another email address. In Student Helpdesk, you will find this page, under Student Gmail and Google Apps section.
· When redirecting, you have the option of whether to keep emails in the Gmail account unopened, keep but mark as read, archive, or for them to be deleted from there, once redirected.
· We recommend you keep them there, just in case you did not receive something you were expecting to your other email address.
· To reverse this redirection at any time, go through the steps again, and delete the email address that you had forwarded your Gmails to.
· However, you can also disable forwarding for a period of time, without reversing, as above, by clicking on the Disable forwarding option.
o Google Apps: Note that when you are in your Gmail account page, you can quickly go to Google Documents, Calendar, Images etc. as these Google Apps are all linked. Tabor offers students the use of Google Docs, and Calendar, as part of the Tabor Google suite, so please avail yourself of these very useful online tools. Click on the little Apps button (9 tiny squares) just to the left of your photo (or blank spot if you haven't added a photo), near top right corner, and click on the application you want to access.
And when you are in Google Drive you can quickly access Gmail in the same way; most web browsers will open this in a new tab, so you can have both open. If not, just do a right mouse click on the little squares to open in a new tab, or window. There are some other helpful tools here, eg. creating your own web site!
If you would like some help with any of the above, please send a Student helpdesk ticket.
Enjoy your student Google Apps and Gmail.