IOF uses your affiliated email account to verify your affiliation. IOF will communicate with your through the affiliated account. However, a Google account is needed to access IOF resources on Google Drive and participating the the IOF mailing list.
Linking your affiliated account with your google account will make it convenient for you to get email notifications (e.g., those sent to a mailing list) right in your affiliated email account. You can also use your linked affiliated account to log in to Google services used by the IOF. It is also convenient from the IOF perspective because we don't have to keep track of both of your email addresses.
Tip: If you don't want to link your personal Google account with your affiliated account, we suggest you to create another 'work' Google account.
1. Assuming you have a Google account you want to link, log in to one of the Google services, say GMail. (Tip: Some people like to separate a Gmail account for work and for personal, so you may want to create another Google account for work-related if you haven't already got one.)
2. On the top right corner of the page, click on the icon representing your identity (account), then click on the 'My Account' button.
3. On the My Account page, click on the 'Your personal info' link
4. On the 'Your personal info' page, click on the 'Email' section.
5. On the 'Email' page, click on the 'Alternate Email' section.
6. On the 'Alternate emails' page, you can add your affiliated email address. Google will ask you to verify the added alternate address, follow the instruction.
***PLEASE make sure that the affiliated account is not already linked with another Google account.
***It is important to note that in order for you to be able to post to the mailing list from your affiliated email account/client, your alternate email addresses need to include the one used by your email client as a 'from' address.
You can test the success of the accounts linking by logging in to your GMail using your linked email address as a log in ID.
7. You may want to navigate back to the 'Email' page (see the figure under #5) and click the 'Contact email' and set it to point to one of the linked accounts. If you don't check your Gmail often, this may help.