Every member of Bordeaux Academy staff is assigned a professional email address when they take up their post. To access this mailbox, the academy provides a web interface called Convergence, available through the webmail.ac-bordeaux.fr portal. The two terms are often confused: “email” refers to the academic email account itself, while Convergence is the online software used to read it.
This confusion is not harmless. It leads some users to believe they have two separate mailboxes, or that a change of interface has deleted their old messages. Here is what these two terms mean and what the distinction entails in everyday use.
Academic email account and Convergence interface: two separate layers
The professional email account is created by the academy’s information systems department. It includes an address in the format [email protected], a username and a password. This account exists independently of any email client: it stores messages on the academy’s servers.
Convergence, on the other hand, is webmail, not a standalone email service. It provides a graphical interface in your browser for accessing the contents of the account. Bordeaux’s login page also presents Convergence as a simple access portal, with two fields (username and password) and a password reset link that leads to the HR portal.
This distinction has a direct consequence: removing access to Convergence (for example, during webmail maintenance) does not delete messages. They remain on the server and become accessible again as soon as the interface is restored, or through another email client. Many staff members discovering Bordeaux Academy’s Convergence email service confuse these two layers when they first log in.
Accessing Bordeaux academic email without using Convergence
Bordeaux Academy’s official guide does not limit email access to webmail alone. Staff can configure an email client on a computer, tablet or phone to receive and send messages from their academic account. This is a point that most competing articles do not cover in detail.
Two protocols come into play, and choosing between them changes how messages are managed:
- IMAP synchronizes folders between the server and each device. An email read on your phone appears as read in Convergence, and vice versa. Deletions are also synchronized.
- POP downloads messages locally and may remove them from the server, depending on the settings. An email retrieved on a laptop may no longer appear in Convergence if the settings specify that it should be deleted after download.
- Server settings (SMTP address, ports, encryption) should be checked against the academy’s official instructions before configuring an account, as they may change.
The choice of protocol therefore has a practical impact on continued access to messages. A teacher who uses POP on a personal computer and Convergence at work may end up with unsynchronized mailboxes without understanding why.
Academic email security: what Convergence handles and what falls outside the interface
Convergence includes server-side filtering tools: antivirus and antispam systems process incoming messages before they reach the inbox. These protections work regardless of how the account is accessed, since they operate at the account level rather than through the interface.
The limitation arises when users check their email through an external client. Third-party software does not apply the same filtering rules as webmail. Depending on the email client, a message classified as junk by the server may end up in a different folder or not be flagged at all.
Password management also illustrates this separation. The academy’s guide describes two procedures: changing the password through a dedicated tool (the HR portal or the “forgot password” link on the Convergence page), and another internal method. The changed password applies to the email account and therefore to all access points, including Convergence. Changing the password saved in an external client does not change the password for the academic account.
Bordeaux professional email: the remaining gray areas
The French Ministry of National Education describes professional email as a central tool, but the available information does not cover every use case. Several points remain unclear in the public documentation.
Email storage quota and archiving
The exact storage capacity of Bordeaux’s academic mailbox is not specified in the guides available online. Staff who accumulate large attachments over several years are not given a clear indication of the threshold beyond which new messages might be rejected. The only documented workaround is to regularly empty the trash and delete items from large folders.
Mobile compatibility and Convergence updates
Convergence is described as accessible from smartphones and tablets. The interface version listed on Bordeaux’s login page (3.0.2.4.0) does not say whether a dedicated mobile app is available or whether access is only through a mobile browser. Without a dedicated app, users have to use a browser, which can make notification management more difficult for some.
The academy’s documentation distinguishes between two situations: staff who have an assigned computer and those who do not. For the latter, Convergence webmail remains the only guaranteed access method that requires no prior configuration, making them more dependent on this interface.
Ultimately, the distinction between academic email and Convergence is less a matter of technical choice than of an imposed architecture: one account, several ways in. Keeping this structure in mind helps prevent most of the synchronization and security issues that Bordeaux Academy staff encounter in their day-to-day work.
