Students may add additional email addresses to Handshake and opt to use them to receive communications from your team and from Handshake.
Institutions may import multiple .edu email addresses per student account. Unlike emails that students can add, these must be associated with your institution's email domain and end with .edu. To import additional email addresses, refer to Importing Student Data.
Topics:
- Additional email addresses configuration
- Student login and data imports
- Check-In Kiosk and Importing attendees
- Deleting an additional email address
- Additional Resources
Additional email addresses configuration
Student email addresses will fall into one of these definitions below:
- Primary email address: The email address where students receive all emails that your team sends via Targeted Emails, and all emails from Handshake.
- Institution email address: The email address your team imports into Handshake.
- Additional email address: Any other email addresses that a student shares with Handshake. These could be personal emails or alternative .edu emails. Students can enter as many additional email addresses as they wish.
Note: when "viewing as" a student, you will be able to view the student's institution provided email address, the designated primary email address (if they have added an additional email and marked it as Primary), and there will be no option to add another email.
In order to access the exact view students have, you will need to "switch users" to your student account. Read more on Switching User Views.
For the steps students take, refer to (and share!) our student-facing article: Update Your Primary Email Address in Handshake.
Student login and data imports
With the introduction of additional email address support for students, there are no changes to our login flow. If your institution uses single sign on (SSO), that'll still be the login method that’s displayed most prominently for students.
As far as login is concerned, the update is focused on helping students continue to access Handshake after graduation if they lose access to their institution email or SSO.
The institution provided email address imported by your team will be the student's default primary email address. If you import any additional .edu emails, or if the students choose to use an alternate email address as their primary email instead, the main institution provided email will still be:
- associated with their student account
- be connected to your student file imports
- available for and included in reporting
A student’s primary email address and institution email addresses in Handshake are viewable via user account settings. This means if a student updates their primary email address, you’ll be able to capture their new, preferred contact information.
Note: when reporting in Handshake, use the dimension "Email - Institution" for email addresses imported by your institution, and use "Email - Primary" to identify the email address the student uses to receive emails sent by Handshake and your institution. This matches the institution email by default but can be updated by the student.
Check-In Kiosk and importing attendees
When a student adds an additional email to their account, all confirmed emails will work to check them into a kiosk. This is the case for appointments, events, career fairs, and FDS kiosks. The additional email will also work as a "signed out" FDS link that might be distributed.
Note: if you are importing a student attendees file for a historic event or career fair, only the institutional email will work.
Deleting an additional email address
If a student adds an email themself, they have the option to remove the email at any time in Handshake. For the student workflow, refer to Update Your Primary Email Address in Handshake.
If a student would like to remove an email that's been imported, they'll need to contact their career service center with the request and submit a ticket to Handshake Support.
Important: you'll need to reach out to the person that manages your student sync to ensure that the requested account is removed from the student syncs. This will prevent the account from being recreated in future imports.
Additional Resources
For more information about how this benefits students and your team, check out our blog post Supporting additional email addresses for students.