IAT-AdCom has recently completed the process of helping UCI administrative departments migrate to a new email service structure.  12 departments and 570 users have been assisted in this process since January.

The migration involved three changes, each intended to improve email service to affected users.  The most obvious change was moving from Eudora, a program that is no longer supported by its developer and has become increasingly error-prone and insecure, to Thunderbird.

However, behind this obvious change, users were also migrated from the POP protocol for email delivery to IMAP.  There are many advantages to IMAP, not least of which is the ability to see the same email messages from every computer, and even from Webmail.  IMAP also allows the server to tell the user when new mail has arrived, rather than the user creating an unnecessary workload for the server by polling it: “Is there new mail yet?  How about now?”

Finally, users were migrated to the campus’s main Enterprise Services email server, allowing for more cost-effective support, and providing better response time and more space for email storage.

Candidate users were given a choice of making the change themselves, using online self-help instructions, or waiting for their department’s turn and getting personal assistance.

While change is never easy, many people have already commented that the new system is an improvement.