NIH Directory and E-Mail Forwarding Service—Available on the Web

The NIH Directory and E-Mail Forwarding service allows people to lookup e-mail addresses and other information about NIH employees. It also provides an e-mail address that can be used to forward mail to the mail system of your choice.

When the Directory began in 1994, relatively few NIH e-mail users had direct connections to the Internet. Users with access to UNIX accounts and some Macintosh users could directly query the Directory using Gopher or Ph, but a large number of people (e.g., those using 3Com e-mail systems) could not. For this reason interacting with the Directory was often done using the "lowest common denominator"—e-mail.

Now that most computers at NIH have direct Internet connectivity, the best method of interacting with the Directory is the World Wide Web. A new Web site is now available for the NIH E-Mail Directory. Along with the ability to make queries to the Directory, a new Web-based change form will make it easier for people to keep their entries in the Directory up-to-date. The new site is located at http://directory.nih.gov.

The E-Mail Directory is most accurate and effective when all individuals keep their own entries up-to-date. Because half of all the people in the Directory have more than one e-mail address, only the entry’s owner can know the best forwarding address.

Keeping your directory entry up-to-date

To update your entry, go to the NIH Directory webpage and click on the link "change." Because your browser attempts to make a secure Web connection to the Directory server, you will probably get a warning dialog box. (In some cases, your browser might not recognize the Verisign-issued "certificate" that the server presents. In this case, you should "walk" the browser through the series of dialog boxes that will allow your browser to "trust" the Directory server. You should only need to do this once.) Once your browser has made the secure connection, a "Change Entry" form (Figure 1) will be displayed that requires you to fill in your alias (NIH unique ID) and your Directory password.

Figure 1

If you don’t know your password, send a blank piece of e-mail to getpass@nih.gov. You will be sent your alias and your current password in a return message.

Note: As is the case when using the previous system based on e-mail change forms, the Directory server will reply to your mail to getpass@nih.gov only if it "recognizes" your return e-mail address as one that an administrator has registered to the Directory on your behalf. If you get an error reply indicating that the Directory does not recognize your e-mail address, you should contact your local e-mail administrator.

Filling Out Your Directory Entry

Once you have your alias and password you can update the data in your Directory entry in the online "Change Form" (Figure 2). Here are some suggestions about filling in the fields:

You cannot change, correct or add to your name in the Directory. Please send mail to phadmin@nih.gov to request the change. This is the address to which your mail addressed to your Directory address is "forwarded." Note: do not try to set e-mail to any address containing @nih.gov—that would result in a loop. Some ICDs use the Directory as the basis for creating a mailing list of the ICD’s employees. To ensure being properly selected, use the correct ICD initials in the ICD field (e.g., NCI, NIAAA). These are other names that you want to have the Directory match against. The Directory will already match against your name, so if your name is "William Gibson," you don’t need to use any of the following as nicknames—"William," "Gibson" or "William_Gibson." If you are also called Bill, use "Bill" as a nickname so that "Bill_Gibson" will automati-cally match (thus, you will not need to add "Bill_Gibson" as a separate nickname). Because the e-mail you received from the server contained your password "in the clear," you should be sure to change it. Since your browser formed a secure connection to the server, your new password cannot be "snooped."

 

Figure 2
 Exchange Users

People who use the NIH Exchange system for their e-mail have access to a global address list (GAL). This listing is updated every day from information included in the Directory. Because the GAL is not itself the NIH E-Mail Directory, changes to the Directory are not reflected immediately in the GAL.

Netscape Messenger and Microsoft

Outlook Express

Netscape’s Messenger (the e-mail portion of Netscape version 4) and Microsoft’s Outlook Express (the e-mail portion of Internet Explorer) each have an interface to Directory services using the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), the emerging standard. Although the NIH E-Mail Directory does not itself use LDAP, a copy is available via LDAP.

The changes to the Directory are not reflected immediately; they must wait until the copy of LDAP is updated every evening.

• To configure Messenger for the NIH Directory, see the LDAP configuration instructions in

http://helix.nih.gov/documents/messenger.imap.config.html.

• To configure Outlook Express for the NIH Directory, see

http://helix.nih.gov/documents/outlook_express.imap.config.html

 For More Information

The User’s Guide to the NIH Directory and E-Mail Forwarding Service is available online at the Directory webpage. You can also get it via e-mail by sending a blank e-mail message to dir-guide@nih.gov.

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