Improvements to staff email system

The staff email system is being improved by the replacement of all of the servers and the storage hardware, and implementation of the latest version of the email server software (Microsoft Exchange 2007). These changes will make the system faster and more resilient in the event of hardware failures. The standard mail quota is also being doubled to 200MB per user.

 

The new equipment and software is now in place and all mailboxes now need to be moved from the old email servers to Email the new. Because of the large volume of data being transferred small groups of mailboxes will be moved at a time, usually in the evening or overnight. Each group of users will be informed before their mailboxes are moved.

 

The majority of users will continue to use the same desktop email software they use now (Outlook 2003) therefore the look and feel will not change. However, the Web Access client has been substantially improved – to look and behave much more like the desktop client.

The upgrade of the system also allows Systems and Network Services to make the further improvement to spam handling previously mentioned – namely that tagged messages scoring under 15 will be automatically delivered to the Junk Email folder regardless of any Inbox rules which the user may have set up.

More information on the changes, including advice for users of mail client software other than Outlook, can be found at http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/itsupport/email/servermove.php

Alan Richardson
Systems and Network Services Manager