Alumni Email Service Level Agreement (SLA)

1 General Overview

This is a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between graduates of UC Berkeley (“Alumni”) and Berkeley IT to document:

• Alumni Email Service Description
• General levels of response, availability, and maintenance associated with this service
• Responsibilities of Berkeley IT as a provider of these services
• Responsibilities of alumni receiving these services

This Agreement is valid from January 24, 2023. Review will be completed every year, or as otherwise needed.

2 Service Description

2.1 Service Scope 

The alumni email service includes access to UC Berkeley’s primary email service, operated as part of Google Workspace for Education.

Other tools available as ancillary services include:

• calendar
• chat
• contacts
• drive 
• meet
• sites
• tasks

Alumni email accounts are provided as a privilege to all graduates by the university and managed by Berkeley IT.

Please note: additional Google Consumer services are available for your use, but are not covered under our UC contract. View full list of enabled Consumer services here.

2.2 Service Eligibility

Berkeley IT is evaluating how Berkeley leverages Google’s email and data storage services following recent changes to Google’s pricing structure for educational institutions. Beginning September 6, 2023 the Cal Alumni Network (cal.berkeley.edu) will no longer process new alumni email account requests.

Alumni are currently granted access to other Google services in addition to email, but these are not included in the scope of eligibility.

Alumni are not eligible for the following services:

• Create new email aliases (existing aliases will remain)
• Create new Google Groups/email lists

2.2.1 Quotas

A Google quota applies to email, Google Drive, and Google Photos, combined.

• All new accounts created after January 24, 2023 are assigned a quota of 150 GB. 
• As of January 24, 2023, all existing accounts are assigned a “containment” quota, which are constructed in tiers designed to contain storage growth while not inhibiting day to day operations.
• Quotas will not be increased under any circumstances.
• These quotas are subject to change in the future. 

2.3 Operating Parameters

The alumni email service is provided to people who have official alumni affiliation with UC Berkeley and is approved for personal use only. Collaborators outside of UC Berkeley can use their own consumer or enterprise Google Workspace accounts to access content shared with them from UC Berkeley Google Workspace accounts.

2.4 Service Level Performance

For support requests submitted online via ServiceNow, response times will be tracked and reported as part of the Berkeley IT and Campus SLA. 

3 Roles and Responsibilities

3.1 Parties

The following Service Owner(s) will be used as the basis of the Agreement and represent the primary stakeholders associated with this SLA:

3.2 Berkeley IT Responsibilities 

Berkeley IT responsibilities and/or requirements in support of this Agreement include:

• Manage Google Workspace environment for UC Berkeley, including provisioning and deprovisioning of accounts 
• Provide timely notice to customers if costs will be introduced for additional storage consumption beyond their quota.
• Meet response times associated with the priority assigned to incidents and service requests in the IT Request ticketing system (ServiceNow).
• Follow the principle of least perusal, policy for access without consent, and other specifications in the UC Electronic Communications Policy. 

3.3 Alumni Responsibilities

Alumni responsibilities and/or requirements in support of this Agreement include:

Following acceptable use guidelines within the Google Workspace terms of service

• Customers should not use Google Workspace as a primary data backup repository or for the storage of data that is not intended for regular access and use, such as operating system files, application files, backup or archival storage. 
• Google Drive & Gmail are approved for use up to the P3 data protection level. Other Google ancillary services like Sites, Calendars and Chat should be limited to P1/P2 data where possible to prevent inadvertently exposing sensitive information.  P4 data is not permitted anywhere in Google Workspace.
• Adherence to the following policies: 
  • UC Electronic Communications Policy 
  • Campus Online Activities Policy
  • Computer Use Policy for UC Berkeley
  • Data Use Agreement for Google Workspace and Google Apps for Education
• Maintaining storage consumption within the allocated quota

The alumni email service is provided by UC Berkeley.  It is intended to facilitate communication among individual members of the Berkeley community defined as "customers" (including alumni, students, staff, and friends), and between such customers and UC Berkeley.

Certain uses of the alumni email service are inconsistent with this purpose, including, but not limited to:

• Activities that are illegal or fraudulent
• Use that inaccurately implies endorsement, approval, or sponsorship by UC Berkeley (or any individual officer of the university)
• Use that can be confused with official communications of UC Berkeley or its officers
• Use that can be confused with official communications of the California Alumni Association or its officers
• Personal mass mailings of any size beyond 5 recipients
• Activities that violate the privacy of other customers, such as transferring membership access to the system or releasing personal information about others (for example, name, address, email address, or phone number)
• Activities that further commercial or other personal financial gain
• Activities that solicit donations
• Harassment of any individual

UC Berkeley reserves the right to deny any individual access to the alumni email service.  This exclusion applies expressly to those who violate the above standards or other applicable policies and procedures. Participants in the alumni email service who misuse information and communication services may be permanently removed at any time from the alumni email service, and risk legal action for failure to abide by these policies and procedures. Please contact support for feedback or to report violations of this code of conduct. UC Berkeley is not responsible for the content of in-system messages, email service, and public profiles and will not routinely monitor content. The University, however, reserves the right to reorganize or delete any messages, photos, and public profiles and may at its discretion reassign registration or ownership.

Cause for such termination of alumni email service shall include, but not be limited to:

• Breaches or violations of the alumni email service SLA (this document) and related university policies
• Requests by alumni for self-initiated account deletions
• Discontinuance or modification to the alumni email service
• Technical or security issues or problems

When possible, customers will receive a single warning about behavior that violates the Code of Conduct and policies governing the alumni email service. The warning will cite the specific behavior or behaviors that violate the policy, invite the user to respond, and explain that rights to the alumni email service will be terminated if the cited behavior is repeated.

When a user’s alumni email service is terminated, UC Berkeley will:

• Notify the holder of the account via email that their access to the alumni email service is being terminated
• Terminate the access to the alumni email service, including the email service and ancillary services

4 Requesting Service

Beginning September 6, 2023 the Cal Alumni Network (cal.berkeley.edu) will no longer process new alumni email account requests. Existing alumni email accounts will not be affected at present, pending a formal announcement on the new scope of Berkeley’s alumni email services. 

5 Hours of Coverage, Response Times and Escalation

For all requests, the Berkeley IT goal is to have a staff member assigned and acknowledge requests within four business hours of receipt. Campus priorities may require exceptions to this goal during certain periods of the academic year, including curtailment and holidays. 

5.1 Hours of Coverage

Google Workspace Service staff coverage is provided 8AM - 5PM PT, Monday - Friday except for holidays including curtailment days, and campus closure. Alumni customer service requests are processed during regular office hours of 8AM - 3PM PT, Monday - Thursday. Alumni can expect to receive a response within one to two business days. 

5.2 Service Outages and Major Incidents

The alumni email service is monitored by the Google Workspace service team. Any outage that impacts standard operability will be posted at https://systemstatus.berkeley.edu/. Outages classified as a major incident will follow major incident protocols. Information about Google Workspace service disruptions is available at https://www.google.com/appsstatus/dashboard/.

6 Maintenance and Service Changes

The alumni email service abides by the standard maintenance and service change process whenever possible. Changes are listed on the Berkeley System Status page: http://systemstatus.berkeley.edu/

7 Pricing

Alumni email accounts are currently funded by the University as a privilege. There are no charges to alumni for using the alumni email service.

8 Reviewing and Reporting

First-contact response time to incidents and service requests are published here: https://berkeley.service-now.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0013436