Show/Hide navigation
University of Reading

New and improved Staff Email Service coming soon

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

email service

As part of the process of continuous improvement, IT Services have been installing, configuring and testing an enhanced Staff Email service that will offer many benefits to staff members. The installation process is nearly complete and we will soon be ready to move staff onto the system.

Why is this necessary?

The current email provision to staff, Exchange 2003, is coming to the end of its life, and will cease to be supported within the next few years. It is old and the latest version, Exchange 2010, provides benefits and enhancements.

What will I get?

Once a member of staff has been migrated they will see a number of changes:

  • There will be improved access to your email, calendar, contacts and task lists
  • The web interface is now available on non-Windows operating systems
  • Improvements to the setup process for desktops, laptops and mobile devices.
  • An archive mail store for the storage of larger amounts of email
  • Enhancements for users of Mail and Entourage on MacOS machines
  • Improved resilience and redundancy to the email service. The loss of one datacentre should only result in downtime measured in seconds
  • The flexibility to offer a more integrated service and one that will allow us to continue to develop and improve our communication and collaboration services.

What do I have to do?

Nothing. As always, IT Services endeavour to reduce the impact that this change has, but unfortunately there will be some interruptions to service while mailboxes are moved. Starting shortly we will start notifying staff of when they are to be migrated. The mailbox moves will take place overnight or over the weekend and we will attempt to keep the interruption to service as small as possible.

Once you have been migrated, you should be able to work as normal although you will notice the improvements to the webmail system immediately.

Remember that the larger your mailbox the longer the move will take, so if you have an unusually large deleted items folder it would be a good time to empty it.

For further information or comments please contact us by sending an email to staff.email.feedback@reading.ac.uk