When Woodring College of Education Post-Baccalaureate student David Brannon changed his Western e-mail account to the new Microsoft Outlook system three weeks ago, he was pleased to see the new program better resembled other e-mail software compared to Western’s previous e-mail system.

However, Brannon said the most common difficulty many students are experiencing in the new system is finding e-mails that were migrated over from Western’s old system.  The problem most likely stems from the different forms Outlook takes when students access it through Web browsers other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, such as the Firefox Web browser, he said.

“[Academic Technology and User Services] should use technology that is versatile,” Brannon said.  “I think they have restricted themselves with Outlook.”  

The majority of student feedback ATUS has received about the new e-mail system has been positive, said Rick Nichols, the help desk coordinator for ATUS.  Of the 6,000 students who have migrated their saved e-mail messages to Outlook since the April 1 start date, only 300 have contacted the ATUS Help Desk for assistance in the process, Nichols said.  

The majority of complaints have been related to students not being able to find the folder that holds their migrated e-mails, he said.  

ATUS originally scheduled the e-mail system switch for fall quarter 2008, Nichols said.  One of the main reasons for the delay was the time it took for ATUS programmers to develop the software that would efficiently migrate students’ e-mails to the new system, he said.  

Students still have the option to postpone migrating their e-mails when they log in to their myWestern accounts.  However, the option will be removed May 5 to help ensure students will switch over to the new e-mail system before Dead Week, said Linc Nesheim, manager of consulting and development for ATUS.  

The expected increase in students accessing the ATUS Web site will most likely not cause a crash similar to the one that Western’s housing Web site experienced since ATUS’s server can handle more traffic at one time, Nesheim said.  

While students will have to switch to the new e-mail system, ATUS plans to forward all e-mails sent to the “cc.wwu.edu” address to the new “students.wwu.edu” address for at least the next few academic years, Nesheim said.  ATUS will most likely continue to forward e-mails until all students who had the “cc.wwu.edu” address have graduated, he said.

From conception to testing, development of the migration software spanned four to six months, ATUS Director Frank Roberts said.  A large amount of testing was involved in making sure the migration software worked with different computer operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X, and other Web browsers, Roberts said.  Developing software from scratch is seldom an easy process, he said.

“Those things are never simple,” Roberts said.  

Without the e-mail migration software, ATUS would have had to forward students’ saved e-mails from the old “cc.wwu.edu” address to the new “students.wwu.edu” address one by one, Roberts said.  This process would have taken much longer and most likely ended with more complications, he said.  

As for why Outlook is displayed differently based on what Web browsers students use to access it, Nesheim said Microsoft is working to handle that specific issue with a new version of Outlook set to be released some time in the near future.  Despite the few problems involving display, the program has enough positive aspects that ATUS decided it would be the best choice, he said.

“We decided the [Web browser] problem was not a show-stopper,” Nesheim said.  

While admittedly different from Western’s 6-year-old system, known as SquirrelMail, Roberts said ATUS chose Outlook from several different e-mail program options, such as Google’s Gmail service, because it had the best combination of features that ATUS felt were most important.  He said ATUS was limited in the number of possible programs because of the requirements for security of student information and the desire to have no advertisements displayed while students access their e-mail accounts.

ATUS decided to make the switch to provide a much needed update to the outdated SquirrelMail system, Roberts said.  Not only will Outlook give students the same e-mail system Western faculty and staff use, the change will get students more familiar with the system, which is most commonly used in the workplace, he said.  

The selection process involved input from members of Western’s faculty and staff, in addition to discussions with other universities who used Outlook or Gmail e-mail systems, Nesheim said.  Conversations with other universities around the world through online forums and discussion boards led ATUS to the decision that Outlook fit best with Western’s requirements, he said.  

The safety of students’ private information was one of the biggest concerns for ATUS and was another main reason for the delay of the new e-mail system’s implementation, Nesheim said.  Outlook’s privacy features were the best out of any other e-mail systems considered because they allowed Western to maintain control of and understand the exposure of all students’ private information, he said.

“[ATUS] wanted no surprises on how student data was treated,” Nesheim said.

In addition to the security measures Outlook uses, ATUS took other features into account, such as its ability to effectively filter out junk e-mails, when deciding on Western’s new e-mail system, Nesheim said.  A common complaint from students about SquirrelMail was its tendency to assign “junk” status to e-mails that were not, he said.

Outlook is designed to make decisions on what is considered junk mail based on the kinds of e-mails students commonly delete, Nesheim said.  While the new e-mail system is better equipped than SquirrelMail to make those kinds of decisions, students still have an obligation to check their junk mail folder periodically to make sure Outlook is not assigning junk status to important e-mails, such as those from Western, he said.

Despite some initial confusion about the location of his migrated e-mail and the Web browser issue, Brannon said he is generally pleased with the features, such as the visual interface, Outlook offers.  Since he is training to be a teacher, Brannon said he appreciates Outlook’s ability to use characters found in languages other than English; something SquirrelMail could not do.  

“One of the principles of education is including people,” Brannon said.  “You have to make your infrastructure support diversity so diverse people can operate in your system.”  

However, Western junior Julie Messinger said the fact that Outlook runs most effectively with only Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and not software developed by Apple Computer Inc. caused the biggest problem she has had with the new e-mail system.  

Messinger said she migrated her e-mail to the new system a few days after she received an e-mail from ATUS informing her of the impending switch.  While she has no issues with the design of the program, she said she found herself unable to forward e-mails sent to her Western address to the e-mail program she most often uses; a program similar to Outlook but designed for the computer operating system found on Apple computers.  

“It’s weird that [ATUS] would say [Outlook] works best with Internet Explorer when the [AIC] has a large Mac lab,” Messinger said.  

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