Recently in Email Category

This morning around 1:00 AM the University's Internet Service Provider (ISP) reported network problems affecting multiple customers. Off campus users were not able to access any SHU IT services, including the SHU Web site, campus portal, email, and Banner. Users on campus were not able to access external Internet sites. Service was restored around 8:30 AM this morning.

Beginning about 5:30 PM this evening the Seton Hall University data center on the South Orange campus experienced a problem with the storage area network (SAN). Multiple systems were affected. Most critically, Piratenet, the SHU community portal, was down, so users were unable to access Webmail, Blackboard, or Banner Self Service. All services were restored by 8:00 PM.

Stephen Landry, CIO

Seton Hall University
South Orange, NJ 07079
Tel.: 973-761-7386
Email: stephen.landry@shu.edu
Web: pirate.shu.edu/~landryst/

For the latest news from SHU IT, see the IT News and Announcements blog at: http://tltc.shu.edu/blogs/projects/DoIT/
For the latest news on technology in teaching and learning, see the ePirate blog at: http://tltc.shu.edu/blogs/projects/epirate/

For the latest information and advice on using SHU's IT systems and services, see the IT Tech Tips blog at: http://blogs.shu.edu/projects/tech_tips/

PC Support Services and the Computer Training Center are working together to bring the University community the new "Tech Tips" blog. This blog discusses some of the most frequently asked questions to the Technology Help Desk, as well as more general advise on how to make the most of the technologies available at Seton Hall University.

Check out the Tech Tips blog at:
blogs.shu.edu/projects/tech_tips/

This is a reminder to the University community that next week the email accounts for all adjunct faculty will be migrated from Lotus Notes to MS Exchange. The migration will begin Monday morning, May 11th. Adjunct faculty have received detailed information in an email regarding the migration process, including instructions on how to access their new MS Exchange email accounts.

From Information Technology Services

Approximately 400 University faculty, staff, and administrators have moved from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange for their email and calendar. University IT Service plans to have all members of the community moved to MS Exchange email by the end of May. University IT Services wants you to be aware of some issues that everyone will encounter during this transition, as members of the community are in each system.

For example, while you can schedule meetings across both systems (that is, if you send a meeting invitation, it will appear in the calendars of all recipients, whether they are using the MS Exchange or Lotus Notes calendar), until everyone is in one system, rescheduling meetings will not work as expected (moving a meeting in one system will not move the meeting for users in the other system). If you have scheduled a meeting and need to make a change to the original meeting for any reason (e.g. new date, new time, new location), instead of "rescheduling the meeting" or updating the meeting invite, as you might now, you should cancel the existing meeting, notify all the participants via email and then issue a new meeting invite/request.

Microsoft has announced a new release of Live@EDU, the hosted email that you are using today. The new service, coined Microsoft Live R3 will include a variety of new features, including the following:

• Multibrowser support. Access e-mail over the Web using Windows Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari.
• Enhanced conversation view. Organize e-mail in a new way that cuts down on unnecessary inbox clutter by combining multiple e-mails into a single conversation.
• Integrated instant messaging and presence. Access communications right at your fingertips in a single interface that marries e-mail and instant messaging from Windows Live Messenger or Microsoft Office Communicator.

A date for Seton Hall University's upgrade has not been set as of yet but we can look forward to having the new functionality in the next month or so, we'll let you know when it's happening.

If you have any questions or need to report a problem please call the Technology Help Desk @ 973-275-2222.

Paul Fisher
Director, TLT Center

Now that all students have been moved from Lotus Notes to MS Live@EDU, University IT Services (UITS) is focusing on expanding the pool of "early adopters" of faculty, staff, and administrators for MS Exchange.

This week, UITS successfully added MS Exchange to the list of systems that support "single sign-on" through the new PirateNet portal. The PirateNet portal is based on Banner Luminis, and provides enhanced access to the University's Banner system, as well as providing single sign-on for most commonly used campus systems.

Next week early adoptes from the Law School and Housing and Residence Life will be migrated to the new MS Exchange email system. This will provide UITS an opportunity to test the migration process and user training.

There are four ways to access MS Exchange email. Using MS Outlook is one of the most common, and allows users to download their email to their computer and work "off line." Outlook Web Access (OWA) works in MS Internet Explorer and provides roughly the same functionality as MS Outlook over the Web. OWA Light works in any Web browser and provides an interface similar to MS Hotmail. You can also access MS Exchange email from other devices and clients, including the Blackberry and iPhone, using IMAP.

As we get more early adopters converted to MS Exchange email, UITS will share a more detailed conversion schedule with the University community. Look for this later in February.

Steve Landry, CIO

As previously reported, some Lotus Notes users receive attachments from MS Live that are unreadable. Microsoft has resolved this issue. This was traced to the way MS Live encoded MIME extensions (the character sets used in email attachments), and this was adjusted for all SHU MS Live accounts.

Please report any problems related to the new MS Active Directory login process, the new PirateNet portal, or the new MS Live student email system to the Technology Help Desk.

Stephen Landry, CIO

Some Lotus Notes users have reported that attachments sent from students' new MS Live email accounts are not coming through correctly to Lotus Notes and are unreadable.

University IT Services is working with Microsoft and Lotus to resolve this problem and a permanent solution is under development.

This does not affect all users or all attachments. If you are experiencing this problem and need to obtain documents from your students using MS Live, there are several "workarounds" that can be used while Microsoft develops a permanent fix to this issue.

• Students can add recipients to whom they wish to send email attachments to their Microsoft Live Contact List. Click Here to learn how.

Members of the University community have been using the new campus portal for over a week now. Here are few observations, comments, and suggestions.

By the end of this week the new PirateNet portal was getting about 10,000 logins from over 4,000 unique users each day. This is about the same level of use as the old Blackboard portal, showing that most users have successfully moved to the new system.