Technology Considerations When Planning Retirement

Overview

Your friends at Pitt IT wish you a most fun and relaxing retirement. However, before you move on to that well-deserved life of leisure, please take a few moments to wrap up some important technology items.

 

Detail

✓ University Email Account

  • Emeritus faculty will automatically retain their Pitt email address.
  • Staff in good standing may request to keep their Pitt email address or obtain a new Pitt email account when they retire. 
    • To request that you retain your email address, contact your department for approval.
    • Each department has its own policies regarding continuation of email addresses, based on their security or business continuity needs. Permission is not guaranteed.
    • Upon approval, your department will identify that you should retain your University email account when they process your termination within Pitt Worx.
  • You can access Pitt email through myPitt or most licensed email apps. Note: Your Pitt email account does not provide a license for Microsoft Outlook.
  • An out of office message will need to be placed on the account for six months after the effective date of retirement to ensure business communications are routed to the department.
  • Contact your departmental IT administrator for help moving personal, data, or archive folders to your home computer. 
  • You should remove yourself from any ENS/NotifyU opt-in notifications you signed up for
  • Retired staff email accounts that are not used within one year will be disabled.

 

✓ Save Your Personal Files

Emeritus faculty will continue to have access to OneDrive.

All personal files on University-owned devices or cloud storage accounts should be removed prior to your last day. If you wish to keep them, save them to a personal USB drive, cloud account, or computer. Both Box and OneDrive offer free account options. To transfer files from your Pitt accounts into these accounts, download the files from your Pitt account to your computer, and then upload them to your new personal account. 

 

✓ Turn Over Departmental/Shared Files

All University business-related documents (files, records, correspondence), including emails, must be provided to the department supervisor, or other appropriate person assuming such responsibilities.

  • Employee must forward and then remove all University files saved on any personal drives prior to final day of employment.
  • If documents are saved on a department-purchased external disk, flash drive, or other external storage device, those devices should be returned.
  • All work-related files in a Box, OneDrive, or other cloud accounts should be transferred to a network drive or ownership should be transferred to a supervisor.
  • If you own collaborative files/folders/queries on sites like DocuSign, LabArchives, Qualtrics, Cognos, etc., make sure ownership is transferred to someone else in your department.
  • If you manage a Pitt website, make sure someone else has full administrative access to it. 
  • If you have sole access or administrative rights to files, databases, shared drives, applications, or servers, new administrative rights should be created for any individual taking over responsibility for them.
  • Move work-related email messages to a special folder in your inbox and ask your IT administrator to export the folder to a departmental server.

 

✓ Software You Will Lose Access To

Emeritus Faculty

You will continue to have access to all of the same software packages and licenses as a non-retired faculty.

Note: For Microsoft products, it's important that you change your Pitt account password at least once a year, or your access to Microsoft products will be depreciated. To regain access, you'll need to reset your Pitt account password.

 

All Other Retirees

Most of the software titles that you obtained as a Pitt employee are not available for personal use upon retirement. Uninstall any software you received from Pitt that were downloaded to a personal device. Most subscription-based titles, such as Office 365 and Creative Cloud, will cease to function very shortly after your Pitt employment status changes. You can convert some software services to personal accounts, or purchase an individual copy on your own.

 

✓ Software/Services You Can Continue to Use or Purchase

  • LastPass: You will no longer have access to your Business account as well as any data and saved password information stored in it upon retiring. If you have a personal account with Pitt linked Premium status, your data and saved password information transition to a LastPass Free account that you can access.
  • PittNet Wi-Fi and Eduroam: You will still be able to connect to these services when on campus, using a valid Pitt email username and password. 
  • myPitt: You will retain limited access to your myPitt account. Multifactor Authentication will no longer be required, and you will still be prompted to change your password every six months.

 

✓ Return University Equipment

All retiring employees must return any University-purchased office equipment to the School or Department, including your computer, keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, scanner, webcam, speakers, headphones, docking station, chair, manuals, cell phone, etc. Contact your departmental IT administrator to arrange a date and time to return the equipment.

 

✓ Purchase Discounted Devices and Services Before You Retire

You can utilize the University discount program (Pitt Perks) before your retirement date. This includes discounted devices from Dell or Apple, or cellular plans from major carriers.

Just log into PittPerks and search for the provider to see your options. Note that required service renewals required after your separation from the University will no longer be eligible for Pitt discounts. 

 

Print Article

Details

Article ID: 284
Created
Tue 8/8/23 8:28 AM
Modified
Wed 9/25/24 10:51 AM

Related Articles (1)

Beginning with spring 2015 graduates, graduating students can keep their Pitt Email (Outlook) mailbox, including all of the contents, for as long as they like. As an alumnus, you will also have access to a variety of other IT services.