2008 Woodie Awards
Google email to possibly become primary system
Jerry Arnold
Issue date: 11/6/07 Section: Campus News
E-Spartan beware, there is a new system in town possibly taking the place as UNCG's university-wide e-mailing system in the near future.
The new UNCG student e-mail system is powered by Google and is currently in its trial stages on campus. As of Friday, Nov. 2, there were 1,332 students using the new Google e-mail pilot.
"Our current plans are to evaluate the success of the UNCG Student Email Pilot sometime in mid to late January," says Todd Sutton, assistant vice chancellor for Application Services with the ITS department at UNCG. "At that time we will make a 'go/no-go' decision as if we will move all students to the new UNCG Student Email system."
If they decide to "go" and switch the university to the new system, ITS will begin to develop a migration strategy to move everybody to Google.
"Our initial plans are if we decide to go with Google, by the beginning of the Fall '08 semester all student e-mail accounts will be in the UNCG Student Email system and out of E-Spartan," says Sutton.
Students signing up for the pilot are assigned new e-mails, using their username@spartan.uncg.edu, rather than the old username@uncg.edu. Their username and password stay the same, and all e-mails sent to the student's E-Spartan account will be forwarded to the Google powered e-mail address.
Students who register for the new system will have 48 hours to access both E-Spartan and Google powered Spartan E-mail, where they are expected to forward any e-mails they wish to keep to their new address.
There are only a few differences between the two systems. The UNCG Student E-mail Opt In has up to 4255 megabytes of space for e-mail storage, whereas E-Spartan only had 65 megabytes.
The new system still has spam filtering, options for folders, calendars, message filtering, and message searching, but also has file sharing and instant messaging capabilities the E-Spartan system did not have. The only downside is that you can only attach up to 20 megabytes using the UNCG student Email system, which is a significant amount less than the 100 megabytes with E-Spartan.
ITS is also currently working on a project to possibly move faculty and staff to a new system.
"At this point there are still many questions left to answer and no decisions have been made," Sutton states. "ITS will be engaging several areas of the campus to assist us in looking at this issue and will keep campus community informed as we make progress towards a decision."
The new UNCG student e-mail system is powered by Google and is currently in its trial stages on campus. As of Friday, Nov. 2, there were 1,332 students using the new Google e-mail pilot.
"Our current plans are to evaluate the success of the UNCG Student Email Pilot sometime in mid to late January," says Todd Sutton, assistant vice chancellor for Application Services with the ITS department at UNCG. "At that time we will make a 'go/no-go' decision as if we will move all students to the new UNCG Student Email system."
If they decide to "go" and switch the university to the new system, ITS will begin to develop a migration strategy to move everybody to Google.
"Our initial plans are if we decide to go with Google, by the beginning of the Fall '08 semester all student e-mail accounts will be in the UNCG Student Email system and out of E-Spartan," says Sutton.
Students signing up for the pilot are assigned new e-mails, using their username@spartan.uncg.edu, rather than the old username@uncg.edu. Their username and password stay the same, and all e-mails sent to the student's E-Spartan account will be forwarded to the Google powered e-mail address.
Students who register for the new system will have 48 hours to access both E-Spartan and Google powered Spartan E-mail, where they are expected to forward any e-mails they wish to keep to their new address.
There are only a few differences between the two systems. The UNCG Student E-mail Opt In has up to 4255 megabytes of space for e-mail storage, whereas E-Spartan only had 65 megabytes.
The new system still has spam filtering, options for folders, calendars, message filtering, and message searching, but also has file sharing and instant messaging capabilities the E-Spartan system did not have. The only downside is that you can only attach up to 20 megabytes using the UNCG student Email system, which is a significant amount less than the 100 megabytes with E-Spartan.
ITS is also currently working on a project to possibly move faculty and staff to a new system.
"At this point there are still many questions left to answer and no decisions have been made," Sutton states. "ITS will be engaging several areas of the campus to assist us in looking at this issue and will keep campus community informed as we make progress towards a decision."
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