TECHNews

News from IT that isn't just for geeks

Important News About Employee Email

Posted on: April 5th, 2011 by

Faculty and staff email accounts will be migrated from the current email system, to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 by August 1, 2011.

Introduction to Exchange Server 2010

The Office of Information Technology (IT) is pleased to announce that faculty and staff email will be migrated from the current email system to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, beginning April 6th.  This change is being made to provide faculty and staff with the most up-to-date email features available.  Further, because the load on the campus network and servers is expected to grow, with another large increase occurring in August 2011, it is necessary for this change to begin now.

The deployment of Exchange Server 2010 will integrate email and calendar functions into one user account, so that both can be accessed from one email client (e.g., Outlook).  Faculty and staff will no longer have to request a separate Exchange account for calendar sharing.  This change will also effectively separate faculty and staff email from students’, so that each email system will exist independently of the other.

The Exchange platform will immediately provide a feature-rich environment whether you use Microsoft Outlook 2010/2011 or a web-browser to log in to the Outlook Web Application (OWA).  Another major benefit resulting from migration will be that your email will be in sync across multiple devices. This means that if you use multiple devices to check your email, you will no longer have to delete the same messge from each device.  As long as you leave a message in your Exchange inbox, it will be available to you regardless of the access method.

Configuration of Exchange on desktop clients (e.g. Outlook 2010/2011) and mobile devices is now much simpler because of Exchange’s Autodiscover capability.  Setup on mobile devices is easier because in most cases the user will only need to enter an email address, password, and the Exchange domain address.  The device should then be able to configure itself.

Exchange also provides for greater mobility by allowing off-campus access without having to connect to the virtual private network (VPN).  This feature is compatible with Outlook 2007 and 2010 on a PC.  For Macs, Apple Mail and Outlook 2011 are the supported email clients.

Exchange 2010 Migration Process

All faculty and staff email accounts will be migrated from the current email system to the Exchange Server 2010 by August 1, 2011.  It is important that the migration be completed by this date before the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester.  Beginning Wednesday, April 6th, faculty and staff will be able to sign up for a migration date during the months of April, May, June, and July, to have their email account migrated to Exchange.

Nine-month employees are requested to sign up for a migration date as soon as possible so that your account can be migrated before you leave for the summer.  Faculty and staff who do not sign up for a migration date before July 15, 2011 will have their email accounts migrated at the discretion of IT.  Department heads or supervisors who are aware of faculty members who are on sabbatical may need to contact IT on behalf of the faculty member to make alternate arrangements for migrating their email data to Exchange.

To migrate your account for Email Migration Registration at www.olemiss.edu/migrateme.

To migrate your departmental email address, please sign in at www.olemiss.edu/migratedept using your departmental WebID and password, and then complete the email migration registration form.

Before your migration date, IT strongly encourages you to clean up your Webmail email account and/or desktop email client by deleting old messages that you no longer need from the Inbox, Sent, and Trash folders.  By cleaning up your account prior to your migration date, the migration process will run much smoother.  Please note that on the date of your migration, you will not have access to your email from 10-11:00 A.M.  Access to myOleMiss and Blackboard may also be interrupted temporarily until after 11:00 A.M.

Supported Desktop Clients and Mobile Devices

The supported desktop email clients for connecting to Exchange 2010 are:

Desktop email clients:

Outlook 2007 [Windows]
Outlook 2010 [Windows]
Outlook 2011 [Mac OS X]
Apple Mail, iCal, Address Book [Mac OS X]
Outlook Web App

Supported browsers:

Internet Explorer
Firefox
Chrome
Safari

Mobile devices:

Windows Phone 7
Blackberry
Android
iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

Migration applies to all faculty and staff accounts even if email is forwarded to a separate departmental email server.  If you plan to continue forwarding email to another server, it is necessary to set up the forward after migration by logging into ummail.olemiss.edu.

In order to make the email migration process as seamless as possible, IT will need some basic information from you about how you access your Ole Miss email.  This information will be requested when you visit the online migration signup form.  For example, if you access your Ole Miss email through Webmail in a web-browser exclusively and intend to use the Exchange equivalent, Outlook Web App (OWA), then after IT migrates your account on the date of your choosing, you will access your email by visiting, ummail.olemiss.edu.

Alternatively, users who use Outlook 2007 or 2010, and already have an Exchange account set up for access to the shared calendar function, will not have to make any changes to Outlook unless Outlook was set up as a POP client.  In that case the Send/Receive group will need to be edited.

IT recommends that all users upgrade to one of the supported email clients listed above.  Anyone who is not currently using one of the preferred email clients, and needs their email data and address books migrated from an unsupported email client such as Eudora, will need to indicate this within the online migration form.

Training

IT plans to conduct Outlook 2010 email and calendar training sessions during the following time periods:

Week of April 11th
Week of April 18th

For information relating to these training sessions and to register, please visit ittraining.olemiss.edu.  Microsoft also provides training for Outlook 2010 which may be helpful during this transition.

Please visit the migration FAQ as well for additional information relating to the migration process.  We are currently in the process of updating our email configuration guides and will be continually updating the IT Helpdesk Web site with useful information.  Please do not hesitate to contact the IT Helpdesk at 662-915-5222, if you have any questions related to email migration.

Tags: ,