UCT staff members, third parties and students use various electronic services on campus – such as mailing lists, network drives and email. Most individuals (other than emeritus professors) lose access to these services when they leave the university.

How should you manage these aspects of your departure? Read on for critical steps to take before you leave UCT.

What happens on your last day?

Several automatic processes run when your relationship with UCT ends. On the IT side, your UCT network account will be de-provisioned on your last day at the university. From this point, you won’t be able to access the network, your UCT email, PeopleSoft or any of the other systems. Three months later, your account will be permanently deleted from the UCT servers.

However, there are a number of exceptions to these processes:

  • Emeritus professors retain their network accounts and full access to services.
  • Retired staff members retain their email address - only if they have opted for this service.
  • Alumni retain access to their UCT email for life via myUCT. Read more about email for alumni .
  • Alumni (and retired staff members who opted in) retain access to Password Self-Service, which enables them to manage their email password.

Consider these questions before you leave UCT

Information
Email
Hardware
Software

Information stored on your computer and network drives (F: and G:)

  1. Personal data
    • If you've used a UCT computer, browse the computer’s hard drive, your personal F: drive and your department’s shared G: drive and find all personal data you have stored in these locations.
    • Repeat the process for any other UCT-owned devices that you won’t take with you (e.g. a tablet, laptop or external hard drive that UCT purchased for you).
    • Repeat the process for any cloud storage tied to your UCT account (e.g. OneDrive and Google Drive).
    • Copy all this personal data to a backup storage medium – such as a flash drive, external hard drive, cloud storage, etc. Learn more about backup and storage.
  2. Work or study-related data
    • If you're a staff member, browse your computer’s hard drive, your personal F: drive and your department’s shared G: drive and find all work-related data you have stored in these locations. Repeat the process for any other devices that you won’t take with you (e.g. a tablet, laptop or external hard drive that UCT purchased for you). Copy all this work-related data to a backup storage medium and give it to your line manager or to your colleagues who will need the data. You can also copy the relevant files to your department’s shared G: drive.
    • If you're a student, log on to Vula and back up any important information you may need in future. Repeat the process for any study-related information you may have stored on network drives (F: and G:), OneDrive, and Google Drive.
  3. Restricted access on the shared G: drive
    • If you have sole rights to any work-related network folders, log a call to ensure that a nominated person is given access to these folders.

Email account

  1. Clean up your UCT mailbox
    • If you're a staff member, forward any relevant work-related emails to your colleagues.
    • If you're a staff member, forward any personal emails to a personal email account (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo, etc.).

      (Note that if you're a graduating student, you won't need to forward emails as you'll still have access to your UCT mailbox after graduation.)
       
  2. Set up rules to manage new mail that may come to your UCT mailbox after you leave
    If you’ll be retaining your UCT email address (either post-retirement or as an alumnus), you will continue to receive emails to your UCT mailbox.

    However, if you don’t fall into these categories, you’ll need to set up different mail rules to deal with incoming mail:
    • Set up a vacation reply informing correspondents that you’re no longer at UCT and giving alternate contact details.
    • Set up mail rules to forward incoming email messages appropriately (i.e. personal messages should go to your personal email account, while work-related messages should go to your colleagues).

      Remember that these rules will only remain active for 3 months after your last day.
  3. Nominate someone to take over shared folders, proxy access, nicknames and resources
    • If you share a mail folder with a colleague, manually forward the folder’s messages to that person and then unshare the folder.
    • If you gave a colleague permission to share your mailbox, revoke that access.
    • If a colleague gave you permission to share their mailbox, ask them to find someone else to take over that role.
    • If you are the owner of a nickname email address, log a call to get that nickname moved to a colleague.
    • If you are the owner of an Outlook resource (data projector, booking venue, car, etc.), log a call to move that resource onto a colleague's account.
  4. Remove yourself from mailing lists
    • Un-subscribe from any UCT mailing lists you subscribed to. Note that this applies only to optional mailing lists you chose to subscribe to. It does not apply to compulsory lists - such as the all staff and all student mailing lists, which you will be removed from automatically.
    • If you are the owner of a UCT mailing list, log a call to move that ownership to a colleague.

Hardware

If you’ve used any UCT-purchased hardware (e.g. a PC, laptop, tablet, external hard drive, etc.):

  1. Ensure that you’ve properly dealt with any personal and work-related data on the device.
  2. Log a call asking the IT Helpdesk to format the device and reinstall its original operating system.
  3. Ask your line manager to transfer or dispose of the equipment in accordance with the official UCT disposal policy.

If you fail to follow this procedure, the device’s software licences will deactivate after 180 days. This means that your operating system and site-licenced software will either become inaccessible or will be reduced to limited functionality (e.g. you won’t be able to edit documents anymore).

Software licences

  1. If UCT purchased any software for use on your computer/device, hand the software media and licence documentation to a colleague.
  2. If the above-mentioned software will not be used again on your UCT computer / devices, uninstall it.
  3. Uninstall any UCT site-licensed software that you are using on your personal devices (laptops, home PC, etc.). The same applies for any other UCT-purchased software on your personal devices.