Faculty: Getting Started at Mills

As a faculty member at Mills, you are granted access to a Mills email account, the Resource Portal, the Intranet website for staff and faculty, dial-in service, and to personal and departmental file space on our servers.  If your work requires it, you would also use Banner, our administrative database.  And you can request a personal webpage on people.mills.edu.

For all of our campus services, you must log in with your login name and 8-character password.  For Portal also allows you to use your Banner ID (if you know it) or your SSN as your username.

First step: The Portal

The Portal is the website where individuals can see information that Mills keeps in its administrative database. You can also update some information about yourself or take a web-based tutorial on programs like Microsoft Word.  Within myMills, found in the Portal, you will be able to see class rosters for any term and if you are also an advisor, you will see information for current and former advisees. You will also use myMills to submit grades online.

To get started, you will log into the Portal.  But first you must set your password.

Click on the "Portal" button on the bottom right of the Mills College homepage.  To log in, you will need your ID number (on the back of your ID card).  Click on the link called 'Forgot your password or need to create one?'  Your email address on record with HR will be used to set your password.  If that does not work, contact the Help Desk at 510-430-2005.  During your first visit to the Portal, you will be required to accept our computing agreement, which outlines Mills' expectations of you as you use our network and our services.

On the "Home" page of the Portal, in the upper-right-hand corner, you will see your username.  Your Mills login/username can be used for other services that require authentication.  For instance, logging into computers or email.

Either now or later, make sure to browse myMills to see what services are available to you.  Visit the links that display your addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and emergency contacts.  It is important that staff at Mills know that they can reach you when business needs require it.  Contact Human Resources if you see any incorrect or missing data.  We will be adding additional services for staff in the future.

Mills offers a web-based email program that is accessible from the Mills homepage (look at the bottom right for the 'check mail' button). Your mail is accessible anywhere in the world where you can use a web browser.  This resource is also available within the Portal.

When you click on the webmail link, you will be prompted for your login name and your new password.  Once logged in, you will be presented with either your 'summary' page, or your Inbox.

Click on 'main' to see your summary page or click on 'mail' to see your Inbox. The summary page is useful in that it displays the number of new messages in your account, and a summary of pending calendar items (if you choose to use the calendar). Although this email program offers a lot of features through its 'options' button, most are unsupported. We recommend that if you change a setting and it does not work as expected, simply change it back; do not call the helpdesk.

You should see a 'greeting' message in your INBOX.  Please read it as it tells you how to get assistance and offers a quick overview of services and space restrictions. Click on 'compose' and test our address directory. Type part of person's name and click on the 'expand names' button. If the name is not unique to one person, you will see a pull-down list from which to choose. Everyone at Mills is in the directory. Close the window or complete the message.

Look to the top right for a pull-down list of folders. You should see your INBOX and a 'spam' folder. When a message arrives on campus, a central program attempts to classify it as legitimate or as spam. Once it has done its job, it delivers the mail to one of these two folders. Please check your spam folder regularly as some 'good' mail is tagged as spam.

You should also see a staff-news folder, click on it. What you will see is a read-only copy of the last thirty days on messages sent to our staff news lists. Mills offers student-news, staff-news, and faculty-news email addresses to which you can send mail to promote events on campus and assist with personal needs (car for sale, ride needed, etc). Messages sent to these addresses are delivered once per day as a digest to the intended group(s).

Third step: The Intranet

www.mills.edu is the college’s public website, geared towards serving prospective and current students.  The College also has a private Intranet for staff and faculty. Its address is http://intranet.mills.edu.

You can get there from the Mills homepage by clicking on the link “Information for Faculty and Staff.”  It is on the left side, towards the bottom. You will be asked to login with your login name and password.  If you cannot log in, send an email to postmaster@mills.edu.

Web services most often used by staff are on the intranet home page.  You will see links at the top for Portal, email and Banner.  (Banner is our administrative database. With the expansion of faculty services on myMills, faculty do not usually need to use Banner. You may if you are a budget manager.  To get a Banner account you will need to use the form 'Request a Banner account'. This form is available from the Banner link at the top of the Intranet homepage.)

On this page, there are links to calendars, forms and info from the HR and Controller’s offices, etc.  One link points to our work order system that allows students, faculty, and staff to submit requests for repairs electronically.

For faculty, there are also links to the forms that allow you to request new courses and revisions, faculty/division meeting agenda and minutes, etc.

From the pull-down list of departments, you can also get to the Central Systems intranet home page.  Here you will find links to detailed information on our services:

• Using email, including frequently asked questions and dealing with spam
• Protecting your computer from viruses
• Using your personal and departmental file spaces