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Heads up on Upcoming Ole Miss Today Changes

Posted on: June 6th, 2011 by kfg

Over the next few weeks, the Office of Information Technology (IT) will be rolling out several new features and changes associated with “Ole Miss Today.” Most of these ideas were suggested by faculty, staff, and students through individual comments, focus groups, or committee meetings such as with the UM Web Planning Committee.

The biggest change will be in the name and overall look. To help promote the idea that these are “official” university announcements, IT will be implementing a slight branding change from “Ole Miss Today” to “UM Today.” You will see a new header with visual cues to indicate that the set of messages is customized for each person. Once this change is implemented, the daily summary will come from the email address, “umtoday@olemiss.edu” instead of “omt@olemiss.edu.”

Next, there will be a change in how the messages are organized. Each message type will fall into one of the following categories:

  • Emergency and Weather Alerts
  • My Messages and Alerts
  • Essential Announcements
  • Recommended Announcements

You will be able to prioritize message types within the Essential and Recommended Announcement categories according to your own preferences. For example, if you want to see “Human Resources” messages first then you will be able set this. Similarly, you will be able to opt out of Recommended Announcements if that is what you prefer. If you do not want to receive the daily summary, e.g., you are out of the country, you will be able to set this too.

Two changes are planned to help with the viewing of the daily email summary. First, an additional “rich text” version will be offered that minimizes graphics. Some mobile devices are unable to display the current version that includes graphics. Also, some people just prefer a text-oriented version. You will be able to choose between the current version and the new text-oriented version. Second, WebMail is being configured to, by default, display the graphics in the daily email summaries. Up until now, this has required a proactive step by students.

Lastly, those who submit messages have requested the ability to edit the long text that is entered in addition to the subject and summary fields.

These changes will start going into effect this week and will continue for several weeks. We appreciate your patience and support as we make these changes. Please send any comments or concerns to it@olemiss.edu.

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