Gmail and Google Drive

Gmail

Each group gets one @yusu.org email account as standard. This account is accessed through Gmail just like your University account is - go to mail.google.com and sign in with your @yusu.org email and password.

We recommend that all your signatories (usually Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer) sign in to your group's @yusu.org email and check it regularly, though you can share it with other committee members if it's useful.

YUSU staff and other student groups will only ever contact you on your @yusu.org email, so make sure you check it regularly! We recommend at least one committee member adds it to their phone.

If you forget the password to this account, contact your link staff member from your University email and they can reset it.

Additional Accounts

Each group gets one @yusu.org email as standard, but we can set up extra accounts for your group if it's useful. For example, some clubs have a separate email for their welfare contact, or a dedicated email for planning a specific event that's accessed by other members of the committee.

Do note that, while we can set up an email for a committee role, we can't set up named emails for individual members. For example, we could create calvinball-welfare@yusu.org, but not joe.bloggs@yusu.org (even if Joe is the welfare officer).

If this would be useful, fill out this form and we'll be in touch.

Please do not use @gmail.com accounts for your group's activities. This is a violation of our data protection policy. Instead, please request an additional @yusu.org email. If you already have an external email, let us know on the form and we can help you with moving it over.

Google Drive

Your @yusu.org email also has access to Google Docs and Drive, Google's cloud file storage service.

Your group's Google Drive is a safe place to store documents you use to run your group, including student data (as long as it's deleted when it's no longer needed).

We also recommend storing documents like your group's committee handovers in your group's drive to ensure that future committees have access to them.

By default each account has 50GB of Drive storage, but if you need more, email it@yusu.org with the details (how much you need and why) and we can increase it.

Shared Drives

One very useful feature of Google Drive is shared drives. Shared drives let you organise your group's files and manage access without having to deal with individual shared folders.

Each shared drive has 15GB of storage initially, but if you need more, email it@yusu.org with the details (how much you need and why) and we can increase it.

You can also add non-YUSU accounts (for example UoY accounts) to a shared drive. For example, if you need to share files with all your committee members, we recommend creating a shared drive from your @yusu.org account and inviting their @york.ac.uk accounts.

Changes to Your Gmail Email Address 

As part of the University of York Students' Union rebrand, we will be changing what we call ourselves by removing the YUSU acronym, which we found to be exclusive and inaccessible. To reflect this identity change, we’ll be changing our domain from yusu.org to yorksu.org.


This means both the website URL and our email addresses will change. Here are some examples:


The change will take effect from Monday 29th July.

We will be making the changes to our Google domain on Sunday 28th July, and although we expect no disruption to student groups working on this date, to be safe, we’re asking staff and student groups to treat all work done during 10am and 3pm on Sunday 28th July to be at risk. This means that you should avoid writing any critical or important emails and documents during these hours. If you know that this might be a problem for you, please reach out to York SU IT ahead of time to discuss options. 

What will happen when people use our old email addresses or website URLs?

We know that it will take time for the change to reach all our students, suppliers, contacts, and website users. Any emails sent to old email addresses after the change will be automatically forwarded to the new email addresses, and any old website URLs will forward to the new URL.

 As some examples:


This means we can be assured that we will not lose any incoming emails or website users through the domain change. It also means that any link to our site from external websites (e.g. University of York, other charity pages etc) will not become broken links.

What will you need to do differently?

From Monday the 29th July, you will need to use your new email when logging into Google. Although your old email address will remain as an ‘alias’ secondary email, Google will not recognise it as a login. You will also need to remember to use your new email address for logging in to any systems that you sign into with google.


Some examples of systems where you can sign in with google:


Note that where you use accounts that you don’t sign into through Google, you may need to either continue using your old email to access, or update the account settings to register your new email address - these may be things like JustGiving accounts.


If you use a SumUp account, you will need to use your new yorksu.org email from 29th July.


Signing into your Member Dashboard uses your University account, so will work in exactly the same way. The only thing you’ll need to do differently is to visit https://yorksu.org, then click “Student Sign In”.


We appreciate that this may be frustrating to remember at first for some members! But we hope that with time it will become easier and in turn have positive effects on our branding and identity.

Will there be any changes to your Google Drive or past emails?

There will be no changes to your Drive contents, or past emails and chats. Your google account will be exactly the same, except for the email address. 

Updating the York SU website with new email addresses

We will be updating the student group web pages with the new email addresses on the 29th July.


We are aware that some groups will use ‘yusu’ in your accounts with suppliers or elsewhere. In these instances we ask that you update references to ‘yusu’ where possible to ‘York SU’, but if you are unable to do this until a later date (for example in the case of a subscription renewal) then that’s fine. If you are unsure please contact communications@yusu.org or your direct staff member. 

Support and Troubleshooting

If you’re unsure about anything, please feel free to contact York SU IT at it@yusu.org.

If you do run into issues following the domain change, some troubleshooting tips you can try yourself include:


York SU IT will also be on hand to help either by emailing it@yusu.org from any email address.

To ensure the change is delivered as smoothly as possible, there will be further reminders shared between May and July, and we will also publish a copy of this email in the Student Resource Hub.

Questions?

Contact your link staff member or our IT Team (it@yusu.org)