YorkAtlas is an online directory that allows users to search for information about individuals and organization units associated with York University. The YorkAtlas database includes:

• students with active computing accounts
• employees with York email accounts or campus phone numbers
• York departments and campus organizations
• York retirees (by request)
• individuals associated with York but not employed by the University (by request)

Employees and associated personnel are identified by individual names, email addresses and department affiliation. Other employee data includes job title, campus location and campus telephone number.

Students are identified by their Commonly Known As names (as recorded in the Student Information System) and by their primary email addresses, as listed in MAYA. Students may choose be excluded from YorkAtlas by making a simple request through MAYA.

University department data includes department name, campus location, phone, fax, email, and voice mail.

Retirees provide email addresses when they request inclusion in YorkAtlas by sending email to the phone designate of their former department. See link below.

Changes and updates

For faculty and staff, changes, additions and deletions to telephone and email listings are made by departmental Telephone Designates.

Student requests for changes are done in person at the Registrar’s Office or electronically via the Student Access System, which is available only in the West office Building. Student data changes are processed each weekend.

Searching YorkAtlas

In name searches, you can search by surname and first name. Search types are Email, Department and Title. Search scopes are Regular, Only students and Exclude students.

If you enter 'Smith' in the surname field and select email as search type and Regular search as the scope, when you click on Search Name YorkAtlas will return all full names, email addresses and departmental affiliations for people named Smith. The same data will be returned if the search type is Department or Title.

If you enter Smith in the lower name field and select email as the search type and click on the lower Search button, then YorkAtlas will return only the records that show the character string 'smith' in the actual email address.

The Title option helps you locate people according to job title. For example, if you activate the Title search type option and type 'Director', YorkAtlas will return the names and departments of all Directors in the database.

Similarly, if you activate the Department search type option and type 'Computer Science', YorkAtlas will return all occurrences of departments that include 'Computer Science' in the department name.

In an Email search, activating the Exclude students scope option and typing 'Smith' will return all records where 'Smith' is part of the email address. This search will also display the names and departmental affiliations of faculty and staff people associated with those email addresses.

The same 'Smith' entry with the Only students scope option activated will return 'No results found'. This happens because student email addresses, typically yuxxxxxx@yorku.ca, do not include their names. On the other hand, if you type 'Smith' in the surname field, select 'Email' as the search type and activate the Only students scope option, then YorkAtlas will return email addresses and full names for all students named Smith.

The same entry with the Regular scope option activated returns faculty, staff and students with the name Smith.

What if you're not sure how to spell a person's first name? YorkAtlas lets you type the first initial in the first name field. For example, to find somebody named Cecilia, you could type "Ce" or "Cec", which would return all names with that character string, including all the Cecilias.

Direct relevant questions to CNS Client Support Services at 416-736-5800 or ithelp@yorku.ca.