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When you become a student, accounts are created for you in various systems based on your role as a student, such as in D2L and Office 365. These accounts give you privileges based on your status as a student. For example, with your Office 365 account you are given a university student email address, and access to OneDrive, Word, Excel, and more.
Similarly, when you become an employee of the University, accounts are created for you in various systems based on your role as an employee that give you different privileges. For example, employees are given access to additional apps or functions in Office 365 such as access to edit in SharePoint or the ability to use Microsoft Bookings.
Your role as an employee, and as a student are not completely dependent on each other. For example, you could decide you don’t want to work as an employee, but you want to continue as a student. For this reason, these roles are managed separately from each other. As an employer, the University must remove access to information systems when your employment ends so that you can’t continue to access information that is meant only for employees. Or you may complete your time as a student but are staying on as an employee of the University. Your privileges with your student account will be reduced, but your privileges as an employee will remain.
How are these accounts managed in Office 365? When you become a student, an account is created with the login of YourStarID@go.minnstate.edu. When you become an employee, an account is created with the login of YourStarID@minnstate.edu. Please note that these are not your email addresses, they are only meant for logging in. Your email address will be something like firstname.lastname@mnsu.edu, and you will be given a different address for your student and staff accounts. Please also note that while these accounts are separate, they are each accessed using the same StarID password and multifactor authentication.
This idea of two separate accounts for two different purposes makes a lot of sense, though, as a person, especially a person that is trying to keep track of all of this on a single computer or phone, might rather not have to log into two different accounts just to check your email. Fortunately, there are mechanisms built into your computer or phone that allow for managing multiple accounts.
One common method of managing multiple roles on a computer is to use a different web browser for each role. For example, you could use Chrome for your student role, and use Firefox for your employee role.
If you strongly prefer to use the same browser, most computer browsers support multiple profiles (except Safari on Apple products).
For managing email, you can add multiple accounts if using the Outlook application on Windows, Mac, iPhone, or Android operating systems, which will give you one view into all your email inboxes. This makes it so that you don’t have to keep track of which account you are viewing. (Note that this is only for the installed Outlook application, and does not work the same when viewing Outlook on the web)
Using Profiles in Web Browsers
Most modern web browsers support multiple profiles. This allows you to use the web in the various roles that you might have in your life. Some people may only need one profile, but if you are a student, and have a job at the University, and have a personal email address, which are all provided from Microsoft, then you will want to use web browser profiles to move between these roles. If you try to use a single browser and browser profile, you will find that you need to frequently sign in and out of accounts to access the emails, documents, or Teams chats for that role.
Here are instructions for how to add and manage profiles in some popular web browsers:
Managing Multiple Email Inboxes
Most modern email applications allow for adding multiple accounts. This allows you to keep track of all the email sent to you without having to move between different applications.
Here are instructions of how to add email accounts to your preferred mail application:
Alternatively, for email you could decide to use a different application for each inbox which can have its advantages. Here is an example: I personally use Gmail as my personal email account, and I use the Gmail application on my phone. To access my work email on my phone I use Outlook, which is a great application that allows for multiple email accounts. While I could add my Gmail account to my Outlook application, I prefer to keep my work and personal emails separated so that when I am done working or on vacation, I can turn off notifications on my work email application (Outlook) but leave my personal mail application (Gmail) notifications turned on. This helps me in achieving the work/life balance that I prefer.
Which Student Employees Get Staff Accounts?
Currently, only Graduate Teaching Assistants automatically get staff accounts with an A1 license. Other student employees could be given staff accounts if there is a business case for them needing one.