Change of E-Mail addresses
During the course of this year, all active employees will be given a new primary e-mail address @unibe.ch without an abbreviation of the name of the institute. The Campus Account user name will also be adapted to the new e-mail address as part of this change. The change will take place institute by institute. It will be planned and executed in consultation with your IT manager. The current institute address @institute.unibe.ch will continue to be used as an alias for an indefinite period of time in order to ensure reachability.
Reason for the change
The e-mail addresses are being changed for a number of reasons. The University of Bern is taking a step other organizations, including the Canton of Bern and other universities, took some time ago. The change therefore does not serve a purely technical purpose; it also aims to strengthen the uniform appearance of the University of Bern as an umbrella brand.
The University Executive Board approved the change in the summer of 2020. The affiliation to a specific organizational unit is already not terribly clear from the mail address itself, since the short name does not always clearly indicate the full organizational name.
On the technical side, this conversion is necessary to ensure compatibility with existing and future cloud services of the University of Bern.
What is being changed
In the change, all employees of the institute will be given a new, primary e-mail address in the form first_name.last_name@unibe.ch.
Non-personal e-mail addresses such as info@institute.unibe.ch will also be changed. These will be modified to info.institute@unibe.ch to keep the example from above.
For existing accounts, the previous, institute-specific e-mail address will continue to be used as an alias to ensure reachability.
Accounts created after migration will only be given a @unibe.ch e-mail address.
In the same step, the so-called User Principal Name (UPN) will be aligned with the e-mail address.
Systems and services you have been logging on to using user_name@campus.unibe.ch will thus be available to you with the e-mail address first_name.last_name@unibe.ch.
Nothing changes for systems you logged on to with the out-of-date sAMAccountName (“ab12c345”, “CAMPUS\ab12c345” or “jdoe”, “CAMPUS\jdoe”).
The changes for existing employee accounts in detail
To date
sAMAcountName: ab12c345
User Principal Name: ab12c345@campus.unibe.ch
Primary e-mail address: first_name.last_name@institute.unibe.ch
Now
sAMAcountName: ab12c345
User Principal Name: first_name.last_name@unibe.ch
Primary e-mail address: first_name.last_name@unibe.ch
E-mail alias: first_name.last_name@institute.unibe.ch
Frequently Asked Questions
Will the old @institute.unibe.ch address be retained?
For user accounts already in existence at the time of migration, the @institute.unibe.ch e-mail address used to date will be used as an alias.
This means you can be reached at your previous e-mail address for an indefinite period of time, but when mails are sent, the @unibe.ch e-mail address will be used.
New employees, however, will only be given a @unibe.ch e-mail address.
What happens to non-personal e-mail addresses such as info@institute.unibe.ch?
Non-personal e-mail addresses will also be changed to @unibe.ch.
info@institute.unibe.ch will thus become info.institute@unibe.ch.
Here, too, the previous address will be retained as an alias.
What happens if an e-mail address is already assigned?
If an error should occur due to a duplicate during the creation of the @unibe.ch e-mail address, a number is added as is the case for student e-mail addresses.
For example:
jane.doe@unibe.ch is already assigned.
=> jane.doe2@unibe.ch will be assigned.
I have several campus accounts. Do I keep them?
In this project "Mail2UPN" no accounts will be merged yet.
So you will keep your accounts for the time being, but you will also get multiple @unibe.ch email addresses:
Account 1: first_name.last_name@unibe.ch
Account 2: first_name.last_name2@unibe.ch
Account 3: first_name.last_name3@unibe.ch
etc.