Setting up and Displaying Email Alias

[Debbie]

Only the students in our district are using gmail. Their accounts are: student ID#@school-student.org. I have been asked to look into how we could set up an alias or nickname within the accounts they already have so when students are emailing people outside of the district a name will appear as the Sender rather than a number.  

Would we set that up with an alias or nickname and what would be the easiest way to do this? 

Debbie Heck

Systems Support Analyst

Eden Prairie Schools 

[Joseph Hartman]

Hi Debbie,

You can do this with aliases/nicknames, but it is still dependent upon the student to manage unfortunately.

Google has instructions on how to send mail from a nickname here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370

However, this does not automatically send all mail as the nickname. Instead, it creates a drop-down option on the "from" field of a message and allows the student to decide on a message by message basis which account they would like to use to send the message. See the screenshot here:

http://screencast.com/t/qJOEpZSNLI1

You are probably best off to change the primary email address for your students to avoid this issue. That or just turn off the ability for them to send mail outside of the domain. Most of the districts we work with follow nomenclature along the lines of first.last##@school.edu for student email accounts.

Good luck! -Joe