Who can have a Rutgers Connect account?

According to Office of Information Technology guidelines, only the following classes of people are eligible to have Rutgers Connect accounts:

• On-boarded (current and future) employees of Rutgers University
• Current students that handle Protected Health Information (PHI), such as RBHS students
• Professor Emeritus

The following groups of people are not automatically eligible for Rutgers Connect accounts:

• Former employees (including teaching/graduate assistants who may still be students but are not actively working for Rutgers)
• Employees of other organizations who are performing work at Rutgers
• Students (current and future) who do not handle PHI
• Alumni
• Retirees

Students from other units may be eligible if the departments or divisions they work for wish to sponsor them. Additionally, Rutgers Connect accounts may be provided to Guests, who are individuals who are conducting University business and are directly associated with the University, but are not officially on the University’s payroll. Examples of guests include visiting professors/scholars, members of auxiliary groups, and others who are working on University business or affiliated with the University.

These guests and students may be eligible for a Rutgers Connect account if a department or division of Rutgers is willing to sponsor them. Please contact your Rutgers Connect Delegated Administrator for details.

Recently hired employees may be on-boarded to payroll by departmental HR staff, even with a future start date. The Rutgers Connect account will then automatically be available. If full on-boarding is not possible, departmental on-boarding staff may use the Early Employee NetID form to request early provisioning from OIT.

Note: Most students, retirees, and alumni are not eligible for Rutgers Connect; however, these groups are automatically eligible for an account on Rutgers ScarletMail. Please see the ScarletApps page for information about opening ScarletMail accounts.

How can I keep my Rutgers Connect account?

We determine which accounts should be closed by comparing Rutgers Connect accounts with the active roles (e.g. Faculty or Staff) of NetIDs listed in the University’s OpenRegistry (OR) service, which is used as the basis for the Rutgers Online Directory. The OR may have some information which needs to be corrected.

If you have received an account closure notice and you believe that this is in error, please find the group you belong to in the appropriate subsection below (Current Employees, Students, Guests, Others) and follow the instructions there.

Current Employees

You may not be listed in the OR as a current employee. To check this, go to the Search for People tool and search for your name. Review each result if you get more than one. If your name does not appear, contact your department’s Human Resources person.

When your entry appears, review the information there. If it is incorrect, contact your department’s Human Resources person.

After your department’s Human Resources person has corrected your record, your department’s Rutgers Connect Delegated Administrator can verify that your account is no longer subject to closure.

Students

OIT cannot permit prior students (such as students on leave and alumni) access to Rutgers Connect, as the system contains Restricted data such as Protected Health Information (PHI). Students who are still in need of a non-PHI email account may use ScarletMail.

If you are a current student, first verify your status in OR. To check this, go to the Search for People tool and search for your name. Review each result if you get more than one. If your name does not appear, please inquire about your registration via One Stop.

When your entry appears, review the information there. If it is incorrect, please inquire about your registration via One Stop.

After you have corrected your course registration(s), your Rutgers Connect Delegated Administrator can verify that your account is no longer subject to closure.

Guests

Guests will have to determine with their sponsor if Rutgers Connect, ScarletMail, or even no Rutgers email account (for example, using a home institution’s email service) is appropriate for their needs.

If you are affiliated with Rutgers but not actually employed full-time by Rutgers, you may request a guest account. Have a sponsor at the department you are working with go to the Guest Account site, and submit a request for you, which will be sent to our Accounts Office for processing. NOTE: A domain administrator within your department must activate a Connect account for you.

Every year, you must renew your guest account. You will be notified when the time to renew your account arrives (30 days prior to the expiration of the account).

Your Rutgers Connect Delegated Administrator can assist your sponsor with submitting a Guest Account request and creating your Rutgers Connect account, if necessary.

Others

Retirees and alumni are automatically entitled to an account on Rutgers ScarletMail.

If you do not fit into any of the above categories, you may want to try contacting a department at Rutgers related to the work you do and ask if they would be willing to sponsor a Guest account for you.

We have no mechanism for people no longer associated with Rutgers to pay a fee and thus keep their accounts. These people should be able to pay for a full account on any number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or obtain a free email account from various web services. Rutgers cannot recommend one such group over another.

What is the typical account audit timeline?

Once an account is found to be ineligible for Connect:

• On day one, i.e., same day found to be ineligible: The account is sent an email notification.
• On day seven, i.e., approximately one week later: The account is locked out of Connect.
• On day thirty-five, i.e., approximately 5 weeks later: The account is deleted from Connect.

If the account is found to be eligible for Connect at any time prior to deletion, the account will exit the audit.

Like all Rutgers NetID services, Rutgers Connect is subject to OIT NetID authentication processes. These practices may lock your Rutgers NetID – including Rutgers Connect access – on a different timeline. Visit https://eas.rutgers.edu/?ht_kb=off-boarding-process for details about NetID authentication off-boarding. Please note that recent students in the “grace period” status described on that site are ineligible for Rutgers Connect service. However, OIT will maintain data for the full duration of the “grace period” – the “day thirty-five" deletion does not apply in this case.

What should I do before the account is closed?

If you will be losing your Rutgers Connect account, you may want to take some of the following steps.

• Use the Manage Email Addresses function to ensure you continue to receive Rutgers email. For example, retirees and alumni may be entitled to continuing email service on ScarletMail. They can set that as their delivery address and consider Migrating Rutgers Connect Personal Data to ScarletMail if appropriate.
• Contact the IT staff in your department to determine the correct protocol for the data (email, contacts, and calendar) in your account. Departments that handle PHI or other sensitive data may have procedures put in place for security.
• Notify your regular correspondents, mailing lists, etc., about your change of address. We cannot forward mail from a deleted account to another address.
• You may want to use the “automatic reply” feature (available in the Settings after logging in at https://connect.rutgers.edu) to set up an automatic response, telling correspondents of the account’s eventual closure. Remember that the automatic reply feature will no longer work for you once your account has been fully deleted.
• If you have it configured, remove your Work Hours and Location on your calendar. 
• You will lose access to your Office 365 data once your account is deleted, so you will want to save your OneDrive for Business files to another location. Please contact your local IT staff to assist with this process.

What happens after the account is closed?

After your account is closed, you will lose access to your Rutgers Connect account. Your account will still receive email and any Office 365 applications associated with your account should still function as expected; however, you will no longer be able to sign in to the account.

Approximately 4 weeks after your account is closed, your Rutgers Connect account will be deleted.

After an account is deleted, you will no longer be able to access Office 365 services like email or OneDrive for Business. Your Office applications will move into a read-only, reduced functionality mode and display Unlicensed Product notifications.

Any e-mail addressed to such an account will be returned to the sender (“bounced”) with an automatic message of the type “Access denied”.

For further assistance

If you have questions about any of the above, you can send e-mail to help@oit.rutgers.edu or contact the OIT Help Desk.