Penn Live FAQ

The University is partnering with Microsoft to launch "Penn Live," a new option for email and other online communications services for Penn students. The University hopes this will provide a rich communications platform that will make it easier for students to communicate and collaborate.

Who is the Penn Live program for?

The School of Arts and Sciences and Wharton are planning on offering Penn Live services to many of their students beginning in the fall of 2007. Additional schools have the option to join the program in the future should they choose to do so.

What features and products are included?

The Penn Live program includes:

• Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft's new "Web 2.0" email system with an intuitive desktop look and feel
• A Web-based calendar that allows other students to see when you are available and schedule appointments with you
• Contacts management
• Windows Live Messenger instant messaging and file sharing, including multi-way instant messaging features to communicate in real-time and share files with schoolmates and members of your study team
• Windows Live Spaces, where you can establish your personal Web presence, including a blog, photo-sharing, and other Web publishing features
• FolderShare, a private peer-to-peer network that lets you synchronize your files between multiple devices and share files with other students
• Mobile access to your email through the mobile browser on your cell phone or PDA with wireless data access
• Offline access to your mail from Windows PCs using the beta version of Windows Live Mail Desktop. Live Mail Desktop also allows access to multiple email accounts – including Gmail and AOL mail – and can include RSS feeds to your favorite blogs and news sources together with your email. Students will also be able to use POP to access their Windows Live Hotmail using other email clients.
• More to come. The participating schools plan to work with Microsoft to continue to enhance the Live platform. See http://ideas.live.com for some of the products Microsoft is working on as part of its Live initiative.

How large is the email quota (storage space)?

Windows Live Mail currently provides 2,000 megabytes (2 gigabytes) of storage for email and calendar content. This should be enough for all of the important email you receive while a student at the University.

How does the Penn Live service differ from the free Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail service?

There are a number of differences between the Penn Live offering and the Microsoft Live Hotmail service generally available to other users.

• The Penn Live service does not include any advertising in the basic Web-based applications: mail, calendar, or contacts. In addition, students will be able to turn off advertising on their Windows Live Space site. The desktop software used with Live Messenger and FolderShare include the standard ads that appear in their free versions.
• Your email address shows that mail you send comes from your school account rather than from "microsoft.com," "hotmail.com," or "live.com."
• The University will work to integrate additional University services into the Penn Live offering such as content from Penn Portal and Wharton's SPIKE.

Do I need to use a Windows-based PC? Do I need to use Microsoft Internet Explorer?

No. All the Web-based services included in the Penn Live suite can be accessed from Windows, Mac, or Linux using Internet Explorer or Firefox.

The only exceptions are Live Messenger, which is available for both Windows and Mac OS 9 and OS X; the FolderShare Satellite sync software, available for Windows and Mac OS X; and the Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta application, which is only available on Windows. Students may use POP to access their Windows Live Hotmail via e-mail clients on the Mac or other non-Windows computers.

Will my email address be the same as that of my Penn email account?

Yes, your email address will be the same as if your mail account were hosted by your school. For example, if your PennKey username is bfrankln and you are an SAS student, your email address will still be bfrankln@sas.upenn.edu. If you are a Wharton student, it will still be bfrankln@wharton.upenn.edu.

If you elect to join the Live program, mail sent to your University address will be forwarded to your Penn Live inbox. When you send email from that account, your "From" and "Reply-To" addresses will also be your University email address.

Will I be able to access my Penn Live email using clients like Thunderbird, Windows Mail, Outlook and Apple Mail?

Yes, Penn Live supports POP access from e-mail clients. In addition, Microsoft provides a client for Microsoft Windows called Windows Live Mail Desktop that allows offline access to Windows Live email.

What if I'm currently using the school's email service and I want to switch to the Penn Live service? What happens to my existing email?

You can access your existing email by logging onto your old account on mail.sas or Wharton's Exchange server. There is currently not a method for migrating your existing email to your Penn Live account.

You can, of course, forward messages from any other account to your Penn Live account, but the "Sent" date will be the date you forwarded the message, not the original date it was received.

You can import your personal contacts or address book into your Windows Live Contacts list by exporting them as a CSV (comma separated values) or similar file from Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and other email programs. For more information, select Contacts from your Live Mail account and then select Options and Import Contacts.

What if I already have a Windows Live Mail, HotMail or Gmail account? Can I move my mail over to the Penn Live account?

See the response to the previous question.

What happens to my email, contacts, and calendar once I graduate?

One of the advantages of Penn Live is that you won't have to abandon or export your email, contacts, and calendar items when you graduate from the University. If you choose to do so, you can continue to use Penn Live services after you graduate.

Once you are no longer a full-time student at the University, the standard Microsoft Live Mail advertising will appear in the interfaces for your email, calendar, etc.

Will my account expire?

You can keep your Penn Live email account for as long as you wish, even after you graduate. You will simply need to log in at least once every 365 days. After that, the contents of the inbox will be deleted, but the account itself will remain, and the inbox will regenerate the next time you authenticate.

Does Penn Live include SPAM filtering?

Yes. The SPAM filtering included with Penn Live takes advantage of SPAM reports from all 270 million Hotmail and Windows Live users.

Will someone from Microsoft be reading my email?

No, Microsoft will not read your email. See Microsoft's statements on this at http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx and http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/fullnotice.aspx

While an automated process indexes your email content for fast search retrieval, no humans at Microsoft will be looking at your email.

How can I set up a Penn Live account?

Information on how to set up your Live account and forward your University mail will be provided late in the summer.

Am I required to use the Penn Live service?

No. While the University expects you to read mail sent to your University address, where you choose to read that mail is up to you. The schools currently offering Penn Live to their students (SAS and Wharton) also provide an internally hosted email service (mail.sas for SAS and Wharton's Microsoft Exchange service) and both also provide the option to forward your email to another service provider of your choice.

What do I do if I do not want to participate in the Penn Live program?

If you are currently using your school's email system and you don't want to use Penn Live, you don't need to do anything.

What if I want to forward mail sent to my University account to a different email service such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or my existing Windows Live Mail or HotMail, account?

No problem. The email forwarding service provided by SAS and Wharton allows you to send your email to whatever email service you choose. During summer employment, for example, some students prefer to have their University email sent directly to their employer's email address.

While other external services may not offer some of the benefits of the Penn Live service – such as the lack of advertising and automatically setting your University email account as the "From" and "Reply-To" address – you are free to use whatever email service you prefer.

Will student feedback continue to shape this service in the future?

The University plans to continue working with Microsoft to develop additional Web-based services that will provide a rich environment for communications, teamwork, and information sharing (some of which are in beta at http://ideas.live.com/). The students who choose to use Penn Live in 2007 will be a valuable source of feedback for Penn and Microsoft. To develop a communications suite that meets the specific needs of Penn students, the schools will solicit feedback on features and possible enhancements from student users and will work with Microsoft to implement additional functionality in the future.

Contact your school's computing support help desk. For SAS, send email to penn-live@sas.upenn.edu For Wharton, send email to consultant@wharton.upenn.edu