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live@UCL Service Reference

The email and calendar service is called live @ UCL and is available to all members of UCL and recent Alumni.

The live @ UCL service is hosted on Exchange Online part of Office 365 and encompasses the following main elements.

  • A personal mailbox
  • The ability to send and receive email based messages and attachments inside and outside of UCL
  • A personal calendar, contacts and tasks space
  • The creation of email accounts and allocation of email addresses
  • The creation and management of distribution groups
  • The creation and management of shared mailboxes
  • The creation and management of bookable resources
  • Management of the address book (Global Address List)

Who can access live @ UCL

Any member of UCL who has been allocated a UCL user ID and password will be provided with an email account.

Only one personal UCL account will be allocated per individual with a live @ UCL account.

Role based accounts can be created on request for specific business needs.

Any student who has left since September 2009 will continue to have access to live @ UCL as UCL alumni.

Your personal mail address

Every 'person' account will be provided with a friendly email address (alias) with their account. If you wish to add additional friendly addresses please contact the ISD IT Services.

Your identity and address book

Your name and other details such as your department and telephone number that are displayed in the Global Address List are provided by the UCL Directory service.

Any changes made to the UCL Directory, may take up to 24 hours to be reflected in the live @ UCL Global Address List.

Shared Mailbox

A shared mailbox is a type of mailbox that is accessible by more than one person at a time and are ideal for business functions where more than one person is involved.

Bookable Resources

Rooms and equipment can be made into bookable resources using the live @ UCL calendar. Do not put rooms that are already managed by central room bookings into live @ UCL.

Secondary Mailboxes

live @ UCL started with a mailbox size of only 10GB, it was then increased to 25GB and is now 50GB. During the migration from departmental mail servers it was necessary to provide a 'secondary' account as 10GB or 25GB were not always sufficient. These are sometimes referred as archive mailboxes but are not strictly archive mailboxes in Exchange terms.

Role accounts

Role accounts can be provided with mailboxes and follow a naming convention as set out in the email policy. Role accounts are subject to review on a timely basis.

Room lists

For any building that contains 4 or more rooms a list with the building name will be created to speed up discovery of spare rooms in a single location. If customisation is required please contact the ISD IT Services.

Naming convention

A naming convention for all objects where appropriate is enforced.

Sharing and delegation

You can share your calendar, contacts, tasks and folders with anyone also on the live @ UCL service. It is possible to add delegate functionality.

Send As and Send-on-Behalf

It is possible to send-as a mailbox owner or send-on-behalf of a mailbox, send-as does not inform the recipient who actually sent the message where as send-on-behalf does.

Service data classification level

Currently the live @ UCL service should only be used to store and transmit information classified up to and including highly restricted for more information on the classification levels at UCL please see guidelines published by the Information Security Group.

Office 365 compliance

Microsoft Office 365 complies with industry standard regulations. For more information, see Regulatory Compliance.

SAS 70 / SSAE16 Assessments

ISO 27001 certified

EU Model Clauses

EU Safe Harbor

HIPAA-Business Associate Agreement

FISMA Authority to Operate

Microsoft Data Processing Agreement

Privacy, security and trust

live @ UCL is hosted on Microsoft's Office 365 platform. For more information on security, compliance and trust please Microsoft's web pages. 

Data at rest (whilst stored in the microsoft data centre)

In Office 365, email data at rest is encrypted using BitLocker Drive Encryption. BitLocker encrypts the hard drives on a computer to provide enhanced protection against data theft or exposure on computers and removable drives that are lost or stolen, as well as more secure data deletion when BitLocker-protected computers are decommissioned or recycled.

Messages during transit

When possible messages are transmitted using Transport Level Security, if you are working with a trusted partner and you have compliance requirements it is possible to enforce TLS. Contact the Service Operation Manager (SOM) for more information.

Applications and Processes that use Email

Consideration is required if you want to use the email facilities provided by the live @ UCL service for automated applications, scripts and process. Please contact the ISD IT Services or Service Operation Manager if you wish to be considered.

Mail Merge and bulk email

live @ UCL imposes limits on the number of messages per minute and total number of messages.

Backup

Messages and mailboxes are not backed up in the traditional sense, ISD do not hold copy of your mailbox. If you do delete a message and you want it recovered you have up to 44 days to recover the deleted items.

Some clients do not follow this retention policy procedure and messages are deleted immediately and permanently - this includes Mac Mail!

IP address ranges

Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges

Change log for Office 365 IP addresses and URLs

Information on limits and quota and throttling for mail

Mailbox capacity alerts

Warning: The user receives an email warning that the mailbox is approaching the maximum size limit. This warning is intended to encourage users to delete unwanted mail.

Prohibit Send:  The user receives a prohibit-send notification email when the mailbox size limit is reached. The user cannot send new messages until enough email is deleted to bring the mailbox below the size limit.

Prohibit Send/Receive : Exchange Online rejects any incoming mail when the mailbox size limit is reached, and sends a non-delivery report (NDR) to the sender. The sender has the option to try resending the mail later. To receive messages again, the user must delete email until the mailbox is below the size limit.

Mailbox Size Limit50GB
Warning Sent49GB
Prohibit Send49.5GB
Prohibit Send/Receive50GB

Message size Limits

The following limits are applied to every email message.

Message size limit: Message size limits are necessary to prevent large messages from blocking delivery of other messages and affecting service performance for all users. These limits include attachments, and apply organization-wide to all messages (inbound, outbound, and internal). Messages larger than this limit will not be delivered, and the sender will receive a non-delivery report (NDR).

Subject length limit: The maximum number of text characters allowed in the subject line of an email message.

File attachments limit   The maximum number of file attachments allowed in an email message. Even if the total size of all the file attachments doesn't violate the message size limit, there is still a limit on how many attachments are allowed in the message. This limit is controlled by the multipart message limit.

File attachment size limit: The maximum file size of a single attachment.

Multipart message limit: The maximum number of message body parts that are allowed in a MIME multipart message. This limit also controls the maximum number of file attachments that are allowed in a message.

Embedded message depth limit: The maximum number of forwarded email messages that are allowed in an email message.

Note:

  • Particular email clients may have lower message size limits or may limit the size of an individual file attachment to a value that is less than the Exchange Online message size limit.
  • This is the maximum file size of a single attachment. Individual client programs, including Outlook Web Access, may limit the size of attachments below this maximum. Exchange ActiveSync does not implement attachment size limits on an individual attachment basis. The total size of all attachments to an Exchange ActiveSync message must be less than the message size limit.
Message Size Limit25MB
Subject length limit255 characters
File Attachment limit250
File attachment size limit25MB
Multipart message limit250 parts
Embedded message depth limit30

Recipient and sender limits

These limits are applied to messages, senders, or recipients to combat spam and mass-mailing worms or viruses.

Recipient rate limit: To discourage the delivery of unsolicited bulk messages, Exchange Online has recipient limits that prevent users and applications from sending large volumes of email. These limits apply to all outbound and internal messages.

For distribution groups stored in an organization's address book, the group is counted as one recipient. For distribution groups stored in the Contacts folder of a mailbox, the members of the group are counted individually.

Recipient limit: This is the maximum number of recipients allowed in the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: fields for a single email message.

For the purposes of the recipient rate limit and the recipient limit, a distribution group that is stored in the organization's shared address book counts as one recipient. In a personal distribution list, each recipient is counted separately.

Message rate limit: Message rate limits determine how many messages a user can send within a specified period of time. These limits help prevent overconsumption of system resources and guard against inappropriate use. If a user submits messages at a faster rate, Exchange Online will deliver the messages but will queue them at the server and throttle the rate of delivery.

Recipient rate limit10,000 recipients per day
Recipient limit500 recipients
Message rate limit30 messages per minute

Mailbox folder limits

These limits are intended to limit mailboxes to known dimensions that can be supported in Exchange Online. The goal of these limits is to prevent an infinite number of mailbox items per folder or an infinite number of folders per mailbox

Maximum number of messages per mailbox folder: Specifies the maximum number of messages for a mailbox folder. New messages can’t be delivered or saved to a folder when this limit is reached.

Warning for number of messages per mailbox folder: Specifies the number of messages that a mailbox folder can hold before Exchange Online sends a warning message to the mailbox owner. When this quota is reached, warning messages are sent once a day.

Maximum number of messages per folder in the Recoverable Items folder: Specifies the maximum number of messages that can be contained in each folder in the Recoverable Items folder. When a folder exceeds this limit, it can’t store new messages. For example, if the Deletions folder in the Recoverable Items folder has exceeded the message count limit and the mailbox owner attempts to permanently delete items from their mailbox, the deletion will fail.

Warning for number of messages per folder in the Recoverable Items folder: Specifies the number of messages that each folder in the Recoverable Items folder can hold before Exchange Online logs an event to the application event log.

Maximum number of subfolders per mailbox folder: Specifies the maximum number of subfolders that can be created in a mailbox folder. The mailbox owner won’t be able to create a new subfolder when this limit is reached.

Warning for number of subfolders per mailbox folder: Specifies the number of subfolders that can be created in a mailbox folder before Exchange Online sends a warning message to the mailbox owner. When this quota is reached, warning messages are sent once a day.

Maximum folder hierarchy depth: Specifies the maximum number of levels in the folder hierarchy of a mailbox. The mailbox owner won’t be able to create another level in the folder hierarchy of the mailbox folder when this limit is reached.

Warning for folder hierarchy depth: Specifies the number of levels in the folder hierarchy of a mailbox folder that can be created before Exchange Online sends a warning message to the mailbox owner. When this quota is reached, warning messages are sent once a day.

Maximum number of messages per mailbox folder1,000,000
Warning for number of messages per mailbox folder900,000
Maximum number of messages per folder in the Recoverable Items folder3,000,000
Warning for number of messages per folder in the Recoverable Items folder2,750,000
Maximum number of subfolders per mailbox folder1000
Warning for number of subfolders per mailbox folder900
Maximum folder hierarchy depth300
Warning for folder hierarchy depth250

OWA is limited to 10,000 folders even though the mailbox can support more, if you have more than 10,000 folders it is recommended you use Outlook 2010/2013.

Distribution group limits

These limits apply to live @ UCL distribution groups.

Maximum number of distribution group members: The total recipient count is determined after distribution group expansion.

Limit sending messages to large distribution groups: Distribution groups that contain the number of members specified by this limit must have delivery management or message approval options configured. Delivery management specifies a list of senders who are allowed to send messages to the distribution group. Message approval specifies one or more moderators who must approve all messages sent to the distribution group.

Maximum message size for large distribution groups: If a message is sent to 5,000 or more recipients, the message size can't exceed this limit. If the message size exceeds the limit, the message isn't delivered, and the sender receives a non-delivery report (NDR). The total recipient count is determined after distribution group expansion.

Maximum number of distribution group members100,000 members
Limit sending messages to large distribution group5,000 or more members
Maximum message size for large distribution groups2MB

Retention Limits

These limits control the length of time that items in specific folders in the Inbox can be accessed.

Retention period for items removed from the Deleted Items folder: The maximum numbers of days that items removed from the Deleted Items folder are retained before they’re permanently deleted.

Retention period for items removed from the deleted items folder14 days