Data is stored on our servers where we follow all the common Microsoft practices for security. We do thorough security testing; we have third parties do penetration testing; we use best practices to maximize security of the servers and prevention of unauthorized network access; and we only allow select personnel with approved clearance to have access to the live site.

With Windows Live Hotmail, 5GB between email, contacts and calendar.

We can only offer broad data and guidance but can be more specific under NDA. The availability goal for Windows Live is 99.9%.

The offering, from the university perspective primarily includes hosted, branded e-mail, but once a student/alumni has an active ID they have access to the whole set of Windows Live services. For example, if my institution issues Joe Student the e-mail address joe.student@panthers.contoso.edu, Joe can use that e-mail address to authenticate on a number of Windows Live services, all of which are opt-in and free unless noted otherwise. Here are just a few:

• Office Live Workspace: English language for now, additional languages in mid 2008. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officelive/FX102412601033.aspx?ofcresset=1
• Windows Live Messenger: Great for audio and video conversations with friends, family, and colleagues; multi-user IM functionality for study groups, and so much more… For more info, please visit http://get.live.com/messenger/overview.
• Windows Live Spaces: So many ways to use this within a higher education environment. For example, students can create e-profiles for prospective employers. Students, alumni, faculty, clubs, and departments can use spaces to share information, photos, blogs, and more. For more info, please visit http://get.live.com.
• Windows Live for Mobile access to IM and e-mail: Students can access their .edu e-mail on virtually any web-enabled phone. For more information, please visit http://mobile.live.com/GoLive. Carriers may charge for wireless data service.
• Windows Live Expo: Buy and sell stuff within your campus and alumni community. Post an ad for free, and control who can see it.Browse for jobs, housing, and just about anything else. For more info, please go to http://get.live.com and view the Windows Live Expo demos.
• Windows Live SkyDrive™: 1 GB of password-protected online file storage http://skydrive.live.com/
  
• Access to Windows Live APIs to build your own custom apps: http://dev.live.com/
• More new stuff coming all the time: http://get.live.com/betas/home

Yes, a calendar, an address book, and calendar-sharing are included. Windows Live Hotmail also supports iCal, so students can send meeting requests to e-mail systems supporting iCal. For example, students can send calendar invites to Microsoft® Exchange Server users and vice versa.

Microsoft provides and manages advanced spam and virus filtering using proprietary technologies, including SmartScreen™ technology that learns to detect spam through user input, and SenderID Framework which matches the sender’s IP address against their from email, which is designed to defeat “spoofing”. If using the web interface, all e-mail undergoes a virus check/scan. However, since the anti-virus tools are server side, this does not apply if using POP. See http://postmaster.hotmail.com/ for more details.

We use a number of methodologies to combat spam on the Windows Live Hotmail platform. SmartScreen™ Technology learns to detect spam based on users reporting spam in their inbox. SenderID Framework matches the sender’s email address against their IP address to protect against spoofing. We block more than 95% of all spam and 99% of image-based spam. While spam traffic has increased 40% across the Internet, Hotmail spam is down 80% over the past year thanks to the work of our spam-fighting team and technologies.

Yes, users can have the opportunity to identify certain e-mails as safe versus unsafe, and Hotmail also “learns” based on user actions to mark spam and ham. Furthermore, users can set individual junk mail folder rules, block lists, and safe lists.

The end user has the ability to feed information back to the Windows Live service as well as mark email as either junk or not and tune the interface somewhat on the web to provide more consistent delivery. In addition, since we support Microsoft Office Outlook® we can also take advantage of the more advanced local junk mail processing and tuning capabilities of Outlook.

Yes this capability is a core capability of our service and we safelist the university’s IP addresses so that email sent from servers you specify are not blocked by spam filters. We also allow mail sent from one student to another in the same domain to bypass filters as well.

Yes, through ILM (or our APIs). We have password sync, reset, account hold, retirement operations in our APIs to provide the university with password reset, renewal and administrative capabilities.

We have built an API that should enable your school to provide single sign-on access to Windows Live Hotmail via your student portal. Click here for more information: http://dev.live.com/

Yes, you can set ILM to pass your school username/password to Hotmail. However, the student has ultimate control over their password and can, if they choose, set a new password. It's always in the student's control if they want the same password for email and campus services. In the future we will have a roadmap for federation that support a single credential model for campus services may be interested in our roadmap for federation.

Also, we have built an API that should enable your school to provide single sign-on access to Windows Live Hotmail via your student portal.

There are a lot of options here given that Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail are iCal compliant. For example, you could forward class schedules to students as "invites" that students then accept and populate on their calendars. There are also partners who build applications that support this (see Trumba.com). This is an area we will continue to think about and work on. Please forward thoughts and suggestions to ed-desk@microsoft.com – both are welcome.

Authentication is encrypted; the web interface is not currently.

IMAP is not currently supported but is a supported protocol in the Exchange environment described above. In addition, we do support a new protocol – Delta Synch – which performs many of the same functions as IMAP but in a more efficient way.

We do not host DNS information. All you need to do is configure your MX record to point to our Hotmail servers in order for email to be delivered properly. The Admin Guide has a chapter that specifically talks about MX record configuration. Please contact ed-desk@microsoft.com for the Admin Guide.

Yes. Because your institution creates and manages student and alumni e-mail addresses locally, you can continue to use whatever distribution list management tools you are using today.

While students can upload contacts into their Windows Live Hotmail address book, they are limited in the number of contacts they can upload. For now, your best bet is to maintain a directory within your portal. The co-branding feature in Windows Live will allow the inclusion of several URLs right in the mail interface. One of these URLs could point to your campus directory. In parallel, we will continue to investigate ways to improve on this area.

Yes, however the account will lose in-box content upon rename, but retain calendar and contact information. We're building out functionality so that the account will maintain inbox content as well. Target date has yet to be confirmed.

Microsoft Live@edu is architected such that the university’s AD or LDAP directory (or any other source directory, e.g. a SQL Server database) can easily act as the master data source for directory information provided to Windows Live for account creation. The university could use a desktop application, command line application, free set of APIs or Microsoft Identity Integration Server (part of Microsoft’s Identity Lifecycle Manager) to pass the minimal, non-personally identifiable attributes from the AD or LDAP directory to Windows Live in order to create Windows Live credentials for users, who can then utilize these credentials to authenticate to Windows Live Hotmail and other Windows Live services.

The existing term of our agreement is two years with automatic renewals. This may be terminated with notice at any time and without cost. In fact, there is no obligation to use the service other than at the sole discretion of the University. Users will be free to keep their existing email accounts. In addition, the user may use a variety of client email software to accomplish personal backups as well as move data to other email systems.

In December 2007, we will be piloting an API that supports migrating a school's existing mail from their current mail platform to Hotmail.

ILM is designed to be able to push identity information, including email aliases, from existing directories to Windows Live Hotmail. When they change their password on the Windows Live platform it does not sync back to the school’s ILM. ILM is a one way push to Windows Live. It is not a two-way sync and there are no plans to make it that way.

The school controls the source directory and what information gets pushed to Windows Live via ILM. The "applet" that handles this export to Windows Live is called the Management Agent. When the student logs into their email account for the first time they are instructed to change their password. They can select any password they want at this point, as long as it conforms to Windows Live ID standards (below).

• Contains 7 to 16 characters.
• Uses three of the following four types of characters:
• Uppercase letters (A, B, C).
• Lowercase letters (a, b, c).
• Numerals (1, 2, 3).
• Symbols (` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + - = { } | [ ] \ : " ; ' < > ? , . /).
• Isn't a common word or name, or a close variation on a common word or name.

The school can prompt a password reset via ILM at anytime, however the first time that user logs in they will again be prompted to change their password.

With Single Sign On (SSO) implemented on the schools’ portals, students will be able to authenticate to their student portal and access their email without the need to re-enter a separate password.

PCNS, like the MA, is one-way. It will push password sync from the school’s directory to Windows Live, but it will not go the other direction. Single Sign On does not push password information between systems. It essentially lets Windows Live trust the authentication that is on the school’s portal and lets the student access mail without logging in a second time.

The Human Interface Proof (HIP) is a standard internet challenge that is in use (Yahoo and Google both have similar challenges) It is something that is network wide and we are not able to remove. This HIP challenge should only take place once for most users. This is something we are regularly re-evaluating and working to improve.

Human Interface Proof. It's that bitmap of weird letters that many sites bring up to verify that they are talking with a human and not an automated system. Ticketmaster uses them all the time to help prevent people from writing programs that automatically purchase tickets. We use them to keep people from setting up spam programs through Windows Live Hotmail.

Yes – Note that if you re-name the account (eg. to Neena@student.contoso.edu from Neena@alumni.univ.edu) renaming will recycle the mailbox. If there is no re-name they can go from alumni to student and keep their inbox content.

Answer is no, not today, but it is on the roadmap and will be coming soon. Until then you can configure ILM to create a new account for users when you rename their account and then that user can migrate their email and settings. Premier Online can help with this configuration.

We do not have an integration solution today, but it is on our roadmap to be able to roll out and allow users to search a GAL of a school. Currently we suggest a school host the address list on their portal and students can authenticate to view.

The school could host their own password reset site, and pass that new password along to Windows Live or the school can point the student to the Windows Live platform to change their password there.

PCNS (Password Change Notification Service) is a good solution for syncing passwords if that's what the school wants to do…however, some schools do not want to have the passwords synchronized.

PCNS = Password Change Notification Service. PNCS is the password sync functionality that is in the Admin Guide and it “sniffs” the sourced directory and when a password change takes placed it resets the password on Windows Live ID. It keeps the passwords in sync because PCNS turns off the "force change password" flag on the users' profile which requires users to set a new password.

PCNS is separate from SSO but they work well together as a solution for schools which want to have the perception of one set of credentials. i.e. the student does not have to now that they have a Windows Live ID and they don’t have to remember multiple passwords.

When an account goes dormant, it does indeed bounce mails back.

No. But reporting is on the horizon that the school can use to pull that information.

Their only limit is users can only send OUT of Hotmail 500 mails per day. Each mail is essentially an alias in the to, cc or bcc line. That means they can send 100 mails to 5 people or 5 messages to 100 people.

Think about this in the terms of a Hotmail account. The school is not on Hotmail, they are on their enterprise email system. The individual Hotmail account can only send to 500 per day, and can receive unlimited email per day (up to their remaining storage limit).

Note that emails sent between users in the same domain do not count against the daily maximum. So a TA who needs to send email to 3 classes of 250 students each can send all 750 emails, and they do not count against the 500 maximum.

Between 14 and 42 hours. But this is only the initial account creation. ILM management agents run in a single thread and you can expect an approximate rate of 2-6 seconds per account, depending on network traffic, connectivity etc.

When students graduate, the school must alert us of this change so that banner ads can be turned on. This is accomplished by setting an attribute called OfferID (1 for active student, null for inactive student or alumni).

If the student retains the same address when they graduate, the only change they will see is the banner ads. All emails and contacts are the same. If the account is renamed upon graduation (eg. to alum.contoso.edu from student.contoso.edu) then this generates a new inbox. The student will need to manually move their email and contacts over, possibly by forwarding the email or using a POP client to download it and then manually move it.

You continue to manage DL's just as you do today. Students can create their own DL's within Hotmail, using their contact lists.

SSO can be used to allow users to log into their mail after having logged into a portal that might use Active Directory® authentication, but there is still a component that would require authentication against Windows Live.

Yes, we can support this but the school would need to manage a mail relay solution of some sort and determine which mail needs to be relayed to the Hotmail platform.

There are three methods by which we can help assure you of delivery:

• We safelist the IP addresses associated with your faculty/staff servers such that e-mail sent from your faculty/staff to your students on Hotmail will bypass our spam filters.
• We enable forwarding as an option for students. You can opt to suppress this option. Doing so will prevent your students from forwarding e-mail from faculty/staff to unknown destinations (e.g. AOL, Yahoo!, Comcast, Gmail, other Hotmail accounts) where the mail could get caught as false-positive spam.
• We offer a new feature for Microsoft Live@edu called "intra-domain delivery". With this new feature, students who are on the same domain (e.g. @contoso.edu) can send e-mail to each other with their Microsoft Live@edu Hotmail accounts, and that e-mail will bypass our SPAM filters.

We can only offer broad data and guidance but can be more specific under NDA. The availability goal for Windows Live is 99.9%. The service is distributed (multiple data centers), with distributed front-end and back-end (database) servers. (It is currently averaging at 99.9% – avg between Dec-June '07).

Yes. There are many aspects of Microsoft's comprehensive approach to this area. Hotmail currently hosts over 300 million email accounts worldwide and follows a rigorous set of disaster and security practices. All e-mail is stored redundantly and is restored shortly after loss of the primary storage device. We are in the process of deploying Windows Live Hotmail servers across multiple data centers. We have architected redundancy within our data center.

If you have an enterprise email system, we highly recommend a tertiary domain such as your school mascot or "my", "mail", or "2009" (year of graduation). This will allow you to point the MX records for that particular domain (e.g. @my.contoso.edu) at Windows Live Hotmail. You keep the MX record for the top level domain used by faculty and staff (e.g. @contoso.edu) pointed at your locally-hosted enterprise e-mail service. This takes the student email traffic and spam off your servers and points them to the Hotmail servers.

We do not recommend using forwarding tables or mail gateways, regardless of other offers that might encourage you to do so. However, if this is a must for your institution, please contact ed-desk@microsoft.com to discuss.

We also suggest that you choose a tertiary domain name that will not require your students to give up their e-mail address post-graduation. Instead, try to choose one that will enable your students to keep their e-mail address for as long as they would like. For example, it would make sense for Jane Doe to keep Jane@my.contoso.edu after graduation, whereas it might be more awkward for her to keep Jane@students.conosto.edu as an alumna. That said, you will be able to rename accounts for your users from one tertiary domain to another at any time, e.g. Jane@student.contoso.edu to Jane@alumni.contoso.edu. Unfortunately, such a rename will result in loss of Jane' inbox content, but we're working to enable Jane to keep her inbox regardless of account rename.

Exchange is not required for this program. That said, by deploying Microsoft Live@edu for students and alumni, you may be able to free up funds and resources to deploy faculty and staff on Exchange if you haven't already.

We will remove the banner ads for third-party products and services from the web UI for Windows Live Hotmail at no cost to your institution. We reserve the right to display information about Microsoft products and services, but of course recognize the need to do so in a manner that is tasteful and not overbearing. For example, we may opt to show "tips and tricks" to enhance usage of Windows Live services or occasionally display information about special Microsoft offers for students (again, without being overbearing).

Alumni, parents, applicants, and other users of Windows Live Hotmail under this program will see banner advertisements for third-party products. And, we will return banner ads to the web-mail user interface for students upon graduation.

In general, advertisements are family-safe and promote common consumer products like cars, movies, restaurants. You can check the creative acceptance policy at this location. http://advertising.microsoft.com/creative-acceptance-policy

No, we don't share or sell any contact information unless the user opts in. This is covered in Microsoft's comprehensive privacy and disclosure policies which are available not only to Microsoft Live@edu participants but to all users of Microsoft's online services. See microsoft.com/privacy

No, there is no signature transmitted or attached to emails sent by students to other email recipients.

Part of the business model supporting the web today involves advertising so in considering the exposure to ads, we ask that this general environment be factored in to consideration. Our intent is to provide an ad-free web email environment to students and are working on other areas within Windows Live where that experience can be extended (Windows Live Spaces, for example). From logon, through initial landing page to email the student account holder would not be exposed to third party ads and we provide a number of ways to go directly to the inbox to tune the number of pages a user may navigate to get to email. Alumni users (actually non-students, in general) will see an ad-based environment, but again we highly value feedback in ways that we can tune and optimize this experience from our program participant.

We have policies (see above) on acceptable use and content and notification and escalation policies for both end users and administrators for objectionable content. This includes strict guidelines that prohibit ads that could be considered pornographic or offensive to the general population.

Not today. However, this is an area where schools have expressed an interest and we are looking at it.

No. Email content is not scanned for the purposes of delivering advertisements. Email can be scanned if the student initiates a search of their inbox. Also, in Windows Live Mail beta, the student can turn on a window that would scan their email content and show relevant search results, but this window can be turned off.

Not at this time

Yes. Users can use POP or the Outlook Connector to pull their email from Hotmail into Outlook. For more information on Windows Live Mail, please visit http://get.live.com/betas/maildesktop_beta.

Get the Outlook Connector download

It's important to use a very efficient protocol when synchronizing millions of e-mail accounts with large (5Gb) in-boxes between cloud and client-side stores. POP really isn't the most efficient way to do that. That said, Windows Live Mail allows users to use POP to access any e-mail account whose servers support POP. We've built a new ultra-efficient protocol called Delta Sync to synchronize between Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Mail beta. We may add other protocol options shortly.

No. All the Web-based services included in Windows Live can be accessed from Windows, Mac, or Linux using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Safari and other browsers are also supported. We have an Open Standards mentality with this product and will continue to have the philosophy of offering flexibility to users.