Email

Next Steps with Exchange

October 4, 2012 by Brian Buckler

The transition from Oracle Calendar (OCal) to Exchange calendar took place on August 6th. Exchange offers the potential for email service that is integrated with calendaring, and OIT is examining options for implementation of Exchange email.

Many faculty and staff currently use OIT Mailbox Services for email, which you may know as imap.uci.edu or webmail.uci.edu, and which you may access using Webmail or Thunderbird. Outlook Web Access (OWA) and Outlook are among the tools commonly used to access Exchange services.

We have developed a process for migrating email from OIT Mailbox Services, and we will be pilot testing the process soon. Considerable manpower is required for email migration; it could take a year or more to move everyone. We are assessing costs and alternate strategies.

One possibility for speeding the transition is to allow receiving and sending new email using Exchange, but to defer moving stored email. Users would continue to access pre-existing mail using Thunderbird or Webmail, or as secondary folders mapped to Outlook. OIT is conducting a second pilot for this model.

Finally, we are working on a pilot of Office 365 (Exchange in “the cloud”), and reviewing recharge rates for Exchange and related services.

We appreciate your patience while we continue planning efforts. Please share any thoughts you have on migration options with OIT Director Brian Buckler (bbuckler@uci.edu) or CIO Dana Roode (dana.roode@uci.edu). Please contact our help-desk (949-824-2222 or oit@uci.edu) for assistance with Exchange.

Email Disk Management Tips

July 28, 2011 by Lyle Wiedeman

Many faculty and staff, especially those filling multiple roles, find their increasing use of email and email attachments makes it difficult to do University business and remain within their disk quota limits.

While the ideas below won’t apply to all people or all situations, being aware of these strategies should prove useful to many.

Empty your trash

Depending on the program you use to access your email, deleting messages may not actually get rid of them – they may accumulate in your Trash folder and take up space you could use more productively. If you have messages in your Trash folder, your email program will offer an option to empty it. Example: in Thunderbird, select “Empty Trash” from the File menu.

Check your drafts and sent-mail folders

There are many circumstances in which partially-written messages are saved to a “drafts” folder. You should check that folder periodically and delete messages that you no longer need.

Email programs save copies of every message you send. While many of these messages constitute an important record, it may prove worthwhile to discard messages beyond a certain age or with little long-term value.

Watch your spam

UCI gets a large volume of unwelcome commercial and malicious email and central UCI systems test and repel millions of messages a day. As a complement to this filter, each account has settings for spam (see My Email Options) which defines a threshold for considering a particular message to be spam, and may quarantine it for inspection and discard. If you have a spam folder, examine it and empty it regularly.

Ask for more space

If you have already checked that you haven’t lost space to spam and deleted mail, your University role may simply require more space than the default quota provides. Contact the OIT Help Desk (oit@uci.edu, x42222) to review your particular disk usage and quota options.

Partition your usage

If you have multiple University roles, consider directing email for each role to a separate account. Quotas are applied to accounts, not people, and this may provide all the additional space you need, or at least protect one account with modest use from the email associated with another. Group UCInetIDs are available for a small monthly fee which can be used (for example) as mailboxes for deans, directors, and chairs.

Use local storage

Most email programs offer the option of creating “local” folders – i.e., the ability to store email messages on the machine you are sitting at. The advantage of this is vastly increased storage, but it has the downside that email stored in local folders can not be accessed from other computers.

The most common phenomenon that creates large mail storage is email attachments. Messages, even those with HTML and a few images, take up little space. Large documents, high-resolution images, sound files and videos consume your mail storage when they’re associated with your email as attachments. Consider storing your attachment as a local file and deleting the email that carried it. If you want access to these documents from multiple computers, consider storing them on OIT’s Webfiles service.

OIT is ready to assist you in assessing your usage patterns and needs, and matching them to available options.

POP or IMAP – Which Protocol to Use?

January 5, 2011 by Lyle Wiedeman

Using email generally requires three components: a “mailbox” (a computer or “server” to which mail is delivered, and where mail is stored until acted upon), a mail reader (the method you use to access, read, and manage email, which might be a program such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or might be integrated into your Web browser – Webmail), and a method of moving information (messages and commands) between the two.

Fifteen years ago, the most popular of these methods was the Post Office Protocol (POP). POP worked well for the habits of email readers then, and may potentially still offer benefits now. Today, many more people use the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). IMAP is better suited to the volume of email exchanged today and the connectivity and mobility of today’s readers. Your choice between POP and IMAP will probably be determined by the difference in how each protocol approaches message storage.

POP is designed to work like a postal mail box: mail is dropped off, but it is expected that you will empty the mailbox and be responsible for the mail thereafter. The definitive copy of each email message is on the computer you use to read mail. This is ideal if you are always using the same computer, and especially if you are not always on line.

IMAP uses a different idea. The definitive copy of each message is kept on the server. This provides two advantages. First, no matter what computer you are using, or what kind of email reader, you are shown the same picture of your mailbox. This makes it very easy to move among computers, but requires each one to have Internet access to manage your mail. Second, central storage makes it possible for the central IT organization (OIT in this case) to maintain backups of everyone’s email.

But it also means that every email user is sharing the storage space of the mailbox system, and it is possible to fill up the amount of space allocated to your account. Webmail requires IMAP; it operates as if there is no local storage.

So, consider what your email habits and needs are. Most people will find that IMAP offers the most flexibility, fastest service, and least bookkeeping. If you’d like help analyzing your email needs, please call the OIT Help Desk.

Phishing Attempts Continue

October 28, 2009 by Isaac Straley

On October 9, 2009, more than 6000 UCI affiliates received an email message claiming that they were required to click on a link which would take them to a web site to update their email accounts. This message has been confirmed to be an example of “phishing,” a malicious attempt to have you divulge personal information in order to allow someone to gain access to your information or services.

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) would like to remind you that you will never be asked for, and you should never provide, your password or other personal information by email. If you ever question a request for information, please contact the OIT Help Desk at (949) 824-2222 or oit@uci.edu so we can help you check its validity. If you suspect that you have received a phishing email, do not respond to it or click on the links. You may optionally report it to the Anti-Phishing Workgroup, but in any case delete it.

Spear phishing emails are a special type of phishing email targeted to a select group of users. These emails tend to be more specific than a regular phishing email, including information more detailed and familiar to the recipient. As with standard phishing emails, these messages often include a request for personal information and a notification of account suspension or closure for failing to reply. At UCI, such a message will often simulate official notification from a real campus department such as OIT, and may make reference to your actual account or email address.

More information on phishing and how to protect yourself can be found online. If you have not already done so, OIT strongly recommends you take the online “Information Security” tutorial available on TED.

Thunderbird Rolls Out in A&BS

July 22, 2009 by Dee Cart

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.