 Collaboratory Applications

In order to free up storage in Google Workspace, on February 1, 2024, the Google accounts of anyone who has had no active affiliation with the university for more than 6 months as of that date will be deleted. This applies to faculty, staff, affiliates, etc. who have left the university and as a result no longer have any active affiliation with the university. This also applies to alumni who no longer have an active university Google Workspace account.

To improve email security and reduce the threat of phishing and spam, major email providers are implementing changes to verify that email is actually sent from the domain it claims to be sent from. Google and Yahoo/AOL have stated that, starting in February 2024, any piece of email that cannot be authenticated will be quarantined (in other words, sent to the recipient’s Spam/Junk Mail folder).

Case Western Reserve is offering an email redirect service to alumni to ensure continued access to new messages sent to their university email accounts.

The university will phase out Google Workspace as a service available to alumni in summer 2023. You will retain your CWRU email address and we will provide a forwarding service so you can have your CWRU email delivered to the personal email address of your choice. However, you will no longer have access to a Gmail mailbox, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Photos, or any other Google service through your CWRU account.

Box is a storage service that enables Case Western Reserve University to store, access and share files securely. Because Box is hosted in the cloud, it can be reached anywhere, anytime and from different kinds of devices. It is not a file server under a desk or a flash drive that you carry; in fact, it can replace that server or flash drive. Box is the only approved platform for storing restricted data in the cloud at CWRU so use it to store restricted, confidential data, such as financial infor

This article covers adding files and folders in Box.

This article details some collaboration options in Box.

File locking in Box allows you to prevent other users from editing or replacing a file on which you are currently working.

Your Box account contains a Trash location, which allows you to recover files and folders that have been deleted. By default, all deleted items will be moved to the Trash location and will be purged after 30 days. After 30 days, neither you or a Box at CWRU administrator can recover the purged folders or files.

This article covers how to open or edit files in Box.

The Box at CWRU collaboration system works at the folder level. Invite contacts with Box accounts to join one or more of your folders as collaborators and choose their level of access. Collaborators won’t be able to see anything outside the folder(s) to which they’ve been invited.

Box Drive is a productivity tool for use with the CWRU instance of Box. It has a similar purpose, but distinct function from the Box Sync app: Box Drive allows users to search and view all the content in their Box account (including read-only) from the desktop operating system's file system, as well as upload content to and open files from any Box folder.

Box Sync is a productivity tool that mirrors the data stored in your Box at CWRU account on your local computer. You can then navigate and modify files through your computer's native file explorer, without using a web browser.

This article provides instructions to check your cloud storage in Google, Microsoft OneDrive and Box.

CWRU offers a variety of cloud storage options.

For the best experience, members of the university community are encouraged to use Google Apps for Education. This premier suite of online tools, including CWRU Gmail and Calendar, is automatically configured for Case Western Reserve and features unlimited storage for email and files. To start collaborating, visit webmail.case.edu.

Google Takeout allows you to download all of your Google data. It does not delete your data, but allows for you to keep an archive

You can create email aliases for yourself, an organization, or an event (such as 'moviefan@case.edu') through the email alias creator. An email alias is personal to you and delivers mail into your mailbox, like your official email address does.

When creating an alias for a department or organization it is strongly recommended the creation of a Google Group.

Email service for CWRU is provided through Google Workspace for Education, a collaboration suite of services that includes a case.edu email account and access to dozens of other Google Apps including Google Sites, Google Docs and Google Chat. Email can be read in clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, and Mail for Mac.

GitHub is a code hosting platform for version control and collaboration. It lets individuals and teams work together on projects from anywhere. Case has an Enterprise account with GitHub and it is the recommended Git platform for the University.

Google Calendar, the official university calendaring system, is part of the Google Apps for Education collaboration suite. CWRU Google Calendar is a flexible application that enables users to create, manage and share multiple calendars in a variety of formats.

‌Hold impromptu meetings on the go, virtual training classes around the world, remote interviews, and much more.

With Google Chat and Meet, you can exchange chat messages or hold video meetings with multiple people across the globe at once.

Google Drive is a cloud-based service that offers the CWRU community with space for storing files. Drive simplifies your work by automatically synchronizing the latest version of your files across the web and all your devices.

If you prefer to work on non-Google formatted files from your desktop, you can install Google Drive for desktop.

Google Groups is available to CWRU students, faculty and staff as part of G Suite. Groups makes it easy for organizations, such as departments, project teams and student groups, to collaborate and communicate. Google Groups contains the email addresses of its members and allows users to reach all participants by emailing one address.

When a new Group is created, the person requesting the Group is automatically added to that Group with the role of Manager. The Group Manager may then add more members to the Group in one of two ways: by adding people directly to the Group (Direct Add Members) or by inviting people to join the Group (Invite Members).

You can choose who receives email replies to posts in your Group. Using the “Post Replies” setting, Group managers can decide if an email is automatically sent to the entire Group, or if it’s shared with a smaller group of people.

To control whether your Group's posts appears in Google Groups search results and under the Recent Discussions section on the Google Groups Welcome screen.

This article highlights how to create or delete a CWRU Google Group.

When you create a new topic you are also creating the first post in the topic. A topic is analogous to an email thread.

This article highlights how to create a welcome message in Google Groups.

A separate page has been set up for the creation and deletion of Google Groups at case.edu to ensure that a group’s email address does not conflict with a format reserved for other uses.

Permissions determine what actions individual Group members, or entire roles, can take on that Group. By editing permissions, you can change who can post to the Group, who can subscribe to it and more.

Depending on the group settings, membership to a group is granted in one of three ways:

An open group is configured to grant you immediate membership.
A restricted group requires approval from an administrator before you are added to a group.
A private group requires you to click on a link to request membership from the owner.

Group managers may choose to hide their Group from CWRU’s Google Groups directory. Managers may wish to use this setting if their Group is private and they intend to add subscribers directly. Groups are visible in the directory unless otherwise specified.

You can use message moderation to approve messages before they’re sent to the rest of the Group. This gives you the opportunity to make sure messages are appropriate for the entire Group before they’re shared.

Depending on how a Group is configured (and your personal settings), you will be able to read and respond to posts either through groups.case.edu or through email.

The General Information section contains the name, description, and email settings for your Group. The Group Name and Group Email Address settings are presented when creating a Group within the case.edu domain.

Roles are groups of members who have the same permissions within your group. For example, you might have a role for all members who just read questions and another role to read and respond to questions. A member can have multiple roles.

There are three default roles created for every Google group. These default roles are: Owner, Manager, and Member.

How to unsubscribe or leave a Google Group

You can communicate with your Group through email. Members of the university community can switch between groups.case.edu and email for sending and receiving Group messages. However, external users who do not have a CWRU Network ID and password will need to use email to send and receive Group messages.

This article provides links to Google documentation around various Google Apps topics.

There are three primary ways by which to use Case Western Reserve email from your mobile device: the Gmail mobile app, the device's built-in email app or the device's web browser.

Google’s new Privacy Policy took effect March 1st, 2022 and combined nearly 70 separate privacy policies into one. The revision allows Google to combine information provided in one app with information gained from other Google apps, which allows for app interactivity. For example, Google can offer spelling suggestions for friends’ names based on how you’ve typed them in the past.

FAQ around Google Shared Drives

Google will end unlimited Google Workspace (Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos) storage for Case Western Reserve users starting July 2024—a change that requires the university to reduce its storage in those platforms by roughly 75%. [U]Tech will apply a 100 GB cap per user for Google Workspace beginning 11/2/2022

Google Takeout allows you to download a data archive from Google.

Starting April 24, 2023, Gmail will begin rejecting messages that contain more than one RFC-mandated single instance header in order to better protect you from spam and abuse.

Microsoft does not permit CWRU to provide the client versions of Office (i.e. “A5” licenses) to individuals whose primary affiliation is with a hospital, i.e. individuals who are paid by a hospital rather than CWRU.