New E-mail System and Open Information Session
Dear Faculty and Staff,
The e-mail situation at Trent has been changing over the last number of years. Faculty and staff currently utilize an in-house implementation of an e-mail system known as Groupwise. This in-house implementation has served the university well, but is aging. Both the hardware platform and specifications are in need of review and renewal. This fact was very apparent during IT’s consultation on the Strategic Plan last year. Some feedback from the university community included;
- The platform is not user friendly
- The mail box size is too small, which is problematic
- The mail, calendars, and contacts are not accessible from all devices
- The size of attachments is very restrictive
In response to the student feedback and in consultation with the TCSA, we have moved the student e-mail in September of 2012 from an aging Netmail platform to Google Apps for Education. This has been a successful move for the students; increasing their e-mail box over 100 times and giving them better integration with mobile devices.
Following a thorough review of our options, we are opting to partner with Microsoft to utilize the Office 365 (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/) product as a replacement to our current solution for faculty and staff. The new solution will
offer;
- An e-mail system that can be accessed via Outlook or through a new, easy to use, web interface.
- A new mailbox size of 25GB. This is 50 times larger than our current standard mailbox.
- Native access to your e-mail from anywhere and from any mobile device.
- Increased attachment size of 25 MB per message. This is 2.5 times larger than the current limit.
In anticipation of this e-mail change, I have met with your representatives from TUFA, OPSEU, and CUPE. It was requested that IT host an open information session regarding the e-mail change and that both faculty and staff be given the opportunity to raise any questions or concerns that they may have regarding this change. We welcome this and have scheduled an open information session as follows:
Date: Monday, July 22nd, 2013
Time: 1:30pm - 2:30pm
Place: OC 203
This session will also be webcast with the opportunity to ask questions online during the broadcast. To join the webcast, please use the following instructions;
http://www.trentu.ca/it/overview_viewingaPanoptoWebcast.php
Myself and other IT representatives will be available to answer any of your questions.
Our current plan is to run a number of pilots on the new platform this summer and to begin a phased implementation beginning in the fall.
Hoping to see you at the session