The following describes how you go about requesting a NOAA email account to be used with the message boards.  The Help Desk refers to these type of accounts -- tied to a function, not a human -- as function accounts.

1. Fill out the Help Desk form.  Set the type of request to "New Account", type of account to "New Email Account", Estimated arrival date to "ASAP", First Name to a logical name for the associated category, Last name to "VLab", employee type to "function", Line Office to "NWS", Org Unit to "OST", NEW ORG Unit to "OSTI", Branch routing code to "W/STI13", Federal Manager to your federal manager if you are a contractor.  You may want to check the box "Send me a copy of my response" for documentation.
2. Submit the form.
3. After you get an email from the NWS Hot Line saying that the account has been created you will need to go up or down to the 9th floor in SSMC II and set the initial password for the account.  With my first attempt they set the supervisor on the account to Steve Smith, so he had to set the password (This doesn't seem to be the case any more.  the requester is able to pick up the password (JohnS).  After picking up the password, help desk staff will provide you instructions for chaning the temporary password.  If they don't, go to https://googlesync.noaa.gov/ and click on "Change password for both NEMS and Gmail", then enter the new email address (minus the @noaa.gov) as the login name.  Enter the appropriate passwords and click "Update password on NEMS and Gmail" button.

You should get an automated email response.  I have requested an account for the VLST message board.  I will need to create a new category within our forum and don't know if it will be possible to migrate the content from the current threads to this new category.

Ken