O365 - Telling students and teachers apart by email address

[OffAndOnAgain]

Hi all,

 

Across the board, our users are on a LastnameFirstinitial type username format, and automatically created from SIMS - eg SmithJ for John Smith.

 

Lets say John Smith is Mr John Smith, a teacher with the email [email protected]

 

If a Jenny Smith joins the school as a student her account becomes SmithJ1 and her email becomes [email protected]

 

Autocomplete will still complete the "to" field to to either Jenny Smith or Mr John Smith by name, but this isn't quite obvious enough for letting a rushed teacher know that they're about to send sensitive information to a student.

 

Apart from changing all staff emails to something like [email protected] and causing a huge job, do we have any options within browser-based Outlook for being better able to differentiate teachers and students, or to prompt the user to check email addresses before sending?

 

Many thanks for any help!

Edited February 3, 2021 by OffAndOnAgain

[TechMonkey]

We use completely different formats for students and staff as well as different formats for Display Name so it should be obvious. Though not always a guarantee. We also have set all pupil photos to the school logo, where as all staff have their ID badge picture. So looking at a list of emails you should see which are staff and student. Still doesn't help though.

[OffAndOnAgain]

Thanks There's only so much we can do if a teacher doesn't check the "to" field at all, but I like the idea of changing display pictures to the school logo for all students, at present we've left things as default.

[Norphy]

We do similar - staff are just A.User for their account names and A User for their display names. Students are .AUser for their user names and "STUDENT - A User" for their display names. This has the nice side effect of clumping all of the students together in the GAL.

[TechMonkey]

This is what I have said to management. We can try and make it easier but we can't hold their hands. At some point they need to actually look, think and own their actions. I stopped short of the usual idiot-proof quote.

[Michael]

All pupils I manage have the year of intake in their address to make it easy between the two.

 

I'm amazed you've managed to run O365 for this long without running into issues early on - sending emails to the wrong John Smith!

[FragglePete]

For us, Staff will always have the display name showing their title, ie. Mr J Smith - and their e-mail address will be [email protected]

 

Students, have their first and last names as their surname, ie. Joe Bloggs, and e-mail address shows their intake year, ie. [email protected]

 

As Office365/Outlook resolves to their Display Names in the to.. field it pretty obviously if it's a member of staff or not.

 

Pete

[mavhc]

I have JohnS for pupils and JSmith for staff

[jnfarmer]

We use for staff emails and just for display name.

 

Pupils are for their email and , for display name.

 

This has just gone out from our Deputy Head in an email, so you can see how well that is going.

 

Wait – wait a minute before sending an e-mail, to give you time to check

Check – double check all the recipients to make sure it is going to the correct person. Staff should have a photo, so it's easy to check, and students' emails are in CAPITALS

Send – once you have waited, double checked, and are happy that it is going to the correct person, you can send

Edited February 3, 2021 by jnfarmer

[HPlum78]

So we have @student.x.y.z and no suffix for staff

[clareq]

We've just found out that, in OWA, you can set a delay before an email is sent, during which time you can undo the send.

Outlook settings - All Settings - COmpose and Reply - Undo send.

[mdrabble]

We have a similar setup to @fraglePete with usernames

 

Our display names are Title initial Surname eg. Mr M Drabble

 

Student display names are (Student) first name last name eg.(Student) Mark Drabble

 

It makes it obvious who are students and who are staff.