Sharing Between VCU Domains
VCU maintains two Google domains, the faculty/staff domain (vcu.edu) and the student domain (mymail.vcu.edu). Faculty/Staff are on a different domain because they are covered by Message Discovery and Security restrictions that do not pertain to students. It is possible for a dual role employee/student to maintain two email accounts in separate domains to comply with these requirements. Please review the best practices for VCU's two domains to assure accurate sharing and collaboration.
Faculty/staff email accounts cannot be delegated to student email accounts or any account outside the VCU domain. Faculty/staff calendars may be delegated/shared with outside accounts. Please take care in sharing your calendar with outsiders.
If you need to delegate an email account with a student employee, Collaboration Services will create a student worker account in the faculty/staff Google domain that will allow delegation with the student worker.
For calendar invitations and calendar delegation from a faculty/staff account to a student, use the student's eID@mymail.vcu.edu address.
For calendar invitations and calendar delegation from a student account to a faculty/staff account, use the faculty/staff member's eID@vcu.edu address.
Calendars may be delegated between the two domains.
Google Docs created in Google Drive may be shared between faculty/staff accounts and student G Suite accounts. Use the @mymail.vcu.edu address when sharing to a student account.
When sharing between faculty/staff and student domain or to someone outside of VCU, you will see a share outside the organization prompt: "email address is not in the G Suite organization that this item belongs to. Are you sure you would like to share with this address? Yes or No." Click "Yes" to share.
Sharing options defined
- VCU faculty/staff selecting On - Virginia Commonwealth University when sharing a document only shares with those users in the faculty/staff VCU domain.
- Selecting Get shareable link defaults to “share with anyone” with the link in the same domain you are currently in. VCU has two domains so selecting Virginia Commonwealth University option will not share to accounts in the other VCU domain
- Share to specific people, using @mymail.vcu.edu address for students, or click Advanced - then select another option as appropriate.
- If sharing to a large group and sharing to anyone with a link is not available or appropriate, please request the creation of a Google Group via a support ticket.
Google Forms may be shared between faculty/staff accounts and student G Suite accounts.
A VCU user must log into their VCU G Suite account first in their browser. This is critical to successful access to VCU shared data, especially Google Forms. Users may receive a Google Apps - Invalid Email error when they try to access a form that is restricted to VCU users. They should open an incognito window, sign into their VCU account, then try again, or log out of their personal account and log into their VCU account in their existing browser window.
Form creator tips
A form has a default setting to restrict access to VCU and trusted domain users (students). This can create a login issue. If you wish to collect data using VCU authentication, this will work if users have first signed into their VCU G Suite account. To turn off the default if authentication is not needed, click on the gear and uncheck the option to “restrict to VCU users and trusted domains.”
Restriction: Groups created in the faculty/staff domain can add new users to the group by email invitation and direct add option for users with faculty/staff accounts.
Students can only be added by the 'direct add' method to a Google group in the faculty/staff domain using the @mymail.vcu.edu address. Please review the steps to add people to your group directly in the faculty/staff Google domain.
Google Sites may be shared between faculty/staff G Suite accounts and student G Suite accounts. There are restrictions for faculty/staff handling senstive data in some university departments, and Google Sites may not be available to those faculty/staff members.
Google+ is available in both the faculty/staff domain and the student domain. There are restrictions for faculty/staff in some university departments handling sensitive data, and Google+ is not be available to those faculty/staff members.