Work e-mail addresses of the faculty employees
For work-related purposes, each faculty employee has to use an e-mail address, which:
- conforms with the advice no. 3 of the university data protection officer and
- is recorded in the Amoeba database.
The first requirement is met by all addresses in a form *@*.cuni.cz (i.e., with the suffix .cuni.cz) plus several others (see the advice).
The basic e-mail system available to MFF employees is the university cloud service Microsoft 365. Accounts in this service are automatically created for employees no later than the day the employment contract begins and, except in special cases, they are automatically assigned an address of the form name.surname@matfyz.cuni.cz.
In addition to an e-mail account in the Microsoft 365 system, MFF employees can also have an account on one of the traditional faculty e-mail servers. These traditional mail servers are operated either by the IT departments in the particular faculty locations (Karlín, Karlov, Malá Strana and Troja) or directly by particular departments. E-mail addresses are then of the form e.g. doe@karlin.mff.cuni.cz or doe@ufal.mff.cuni.cz.
In addition to the addresses already mentioned, which are directly linked to specific accounts in the given e-mail system, employees have the option of creating a so-called faculty alias, which is an address of the form name.surname@mff.cuni.cz (see also Dean's Directive No. 5/2017). The term alias means that it is an address that is not firmly connected to any physical e-mail box, e-mails sent to an alias are always forwarded to another address.
Addresses of the types name.surname@mff.cuni.cz and name.surname@matfyz.cuni.cz are visually very similar, but it is important not to confuse them. Each of these address types is technically handled quite differently.
If you use the alias name.surname@mff.cuni.cz as your personal address, you should keep in mind that e-mail sent to this address goes through a spam check not only on the target system, but also on the mail server serving the address name.surname@mff.cuni.cz. It is known that automatic e-mails from online stores do not pass this check, so we strongly recommend not to register in online stores with an alias name.surname@mff.cuni.cz.
Since MFF employees can use different e-mail addresses, it is necessary for them to register the address they actually use in the Amoeba database.
The Amoeba database is a primary data source for storing contact information about employees (and external fellows and selected students), managing the faculty (physical) access system, etc. Data from Amoeba are shared with a number of university systems, e.g., the university WhoIs system.
In a case, you email address is not stored in Amoeba, then most probably is not in other systems and you may miss important emails from them. Colleagues or students may also miss your contact information.
You can easily find out which address is registered as a contact for your person in the Amoeba database by viewing the page with data about your person in the organizational structure on the website of the faculty.
Most of the employess can modify the email address in Ameba directly — see the guide How to change registered contact details. Also, you can contact an authorized person, which is typically a deparment secretary.
Most e-mail systems allow incoming e-mails to be forwarded to another address. We strongly recommend using this option only in clearly justified cases. The forwarded mail may be evaluated as spam on the target system with a higher probability, it may also happen that it is not forwarded because the forwarding system evaluates it as spam. The target system can also perform a check based on SPF records, and the likelihood of a forwarded mail failing this check is significant. These situations are then non-transparent for the user and it is easy to get the impression that e-mails "mysteriously disappear". Forwarding to addresses that do not comply with advice no. 3 of the university data protection officer is completely undesirable (it is the same violation of that guideline as the direct use of a non-compliant email address).
Last update: 8. 1. 2024
