VandalMail Live

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VandalMail Live

• VandalMail Live Bringing a Campus into the
  Microsoft _at_EDU Program

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Introduction

• Darren Kearney
• Help Desk Services Coordinator
• Information Technology Services (ITS)
• Don C. Miller
• Systems Development Analyst
• Information Technology Services (ITS)

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Introduction

• Migrating to Live Mail
• The University of Idaho migrated to the Live _at_
  EDU program beginning March 2007 and completed
  the migration at the beginning of the summer with
  follow-up assistance until December
• At the time Microsoft was not offering hosted
  Exchange services so we migrated to Live
  Mail/Hotmail

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Agenda

• The University of Idaho (UI)
• Why Migrate?
• Pre-Implementation Steps
• Going Live with Live
• Customer Complaints
• Migration Issues
• What Features are Missing?
• Conclusion

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THE UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO
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University of Idaho

• The University of Idaho main campus is located in
  Moscow, Idaho
• Washington State University, located in Pullman,
  is 8 miles west.
• We are 300 miles east of Seattle and 300 miles
  north of Boise, just far enough away from
  parents!

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Moscow, Idaho
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University of Idaho

• Yearly enrollment is approximately 12,000
  students with 2,500 employees
• We use the SunGard SCT Banner product as our ERP
  system
• We use both eDirectory and Active Directory with
  approximately 30,000 accounts

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Joe Vandal

• The mascot is the Vandal.
• Joe is the reason for much of our marketing
  being Vandal-centric.
• We often have to refrain from saying we
  Vandalized our e-mail services.

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University E-mail Policy

• Beginning in 2003 all official e-mail
  communication to students was required through a
  University provided e-mail account
• Accounts were created on admission and students
  would receive instructions by mail on how to
  activate their accounts

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University E-mail Policy

• All forwarding functionality was disabled and
  only _at_uidaho.edu addresses could be set as
  preferred in the Banner system
• The Banner system is kept up-to-date with student
  information for easy access for faculty and staff

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Legacy E-mail Services

• Since 2002, the UI was providing Webmail, POP and
  IMAP service to students, faculty and staff
  through Sun Microsystems iPlanet/SunOne service
  platform

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Legacy E-mail Services

• In 2006, Webmail access was the top service used
  by Students at about 80 of connections while POP
  was second with a handful of IMAP users

www
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WHY MIGRATE?
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Why Migrate?

• Due to inadequate professional support from the
  company, the existing iPlanet product was not
  going to be maintained
• Plans for migrating employees to Microsoft
  Exchange were in the works and students needed a
  new home
• Due to new hosting models, from a number of
  companies, there could be a large cost saving

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Why Migrate?

• What was reviewed?
• Microsoft Exchange was reviewed initially but was
  cost prohibitive, at the time, for the number of
  students and our licensing structure
• Appliance-based services were reviewed next with
  some on-site demos of products
• And lastly, fully outsourced products were
  reviewed

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Why Migrate?

• Why was Microsoft selected?
• From the beginning it was seen as the most
  cost-effective solution
• It provided a number of cool features for our
  students
• There were future plans for integration with the
  Exchange product
• We understood and were using the Microsoft
  Premier Support structure already

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PRE-IMPLEMENTATION
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Pre-Implementation Steps

• Step 1 - extensive communication with Microsoft
• We talked about features, the roadmaps for new
  services (related to e-mail), and gave feedback
  on our customer expectations specifically
  relating to non-web access to e-mail
• We also talked with schools using the existing
  product
• During this time we invited student
  representation, purchasing, counsel and others to
  review the product, contracts and licensing

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Pre-Implementation Steps

• Who is responsible?
• Messaging Team
• Account sourcing infrastructure
• E-mail routing configuration as needed
• Customer Support
• Outsourcing e-mail puts a greater share of
  responsibility on the customer service
  organization due to the limited amount of
  visibility into the system
• Works directly with Microsoft Premier Support

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Pre-Implementation Steps

• Should we use a new e-mail domain?
• A proof-of-concept service was created to allow
  message routing within the _at_uidaho.edu domain
• One manager asked Why outsourcee-mail if there
  is still a local service to manage, maintain and
  monitor 24/7?
• A new _at_vandals.uidaho.edu domain was created
  based on feedback from a number of student groups

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Pre-Implementation Steps

• Step 2 selling the service
• Many of our departments rely on timelye-mail
  communication with students. We talked directly
  with New Student Services, Admissions, the
  Registrar and Financial Aid on the migration
  plans

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GOING LIVE WITH LIVE
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Going Live with Live

• Bridging pre-implementation with
  installation/migration

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Going Live with Live

• What is the minimum Microsoft requires/recommends?
  
• Microsoft Identity Integration Server (a.k.a.
  Identity Lifecycle Manager)
• A data-source

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Migration Process

• How were we going to do this?
• Due to limited staff we knew the migration
  process needed to beas automated as possible
• Students were already familiar with our web
  account management portal services so this was
  extended to provide a web migration tool

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Migration Process

• Automated Process
• It was not completely automated!
• The process handled account provisioning, inbox
  migration, e-mail routing changes and autoreply
  management
• Due to limitations with accessing Live Mail the
  process could not simply transfer alle-mail
• Access to the old web mail service was maintained
  until December 2007

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Migration Process

• The Customer Experience
• Lots of documentation was available but who reads
  it anyway?!
• Simplified, almost onebutton, web tool
• If the student wanted to migrate content it was
  recommended to stop by the Help Desk and Live
  Mail Desktop was used

Easy
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March 1st, 2007

• We made the announcement!
• As an incentive we were offering an Xbox 360, two
  Zunes and copies of Microsoft Office to the first
  voluntary students to migrate

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March 1st, 2007

• And then it started!
• Who decided on this new service?
• Will my professor have my new e-mail?
• Were Mac users considered?
• How do I connect with Outlook?
• How do I switch back?
• Where is my POP?

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March 1st, 2007

• A student in the Computer Science department
  started an efficient, well organized campaign
  against the decision and called it the POP Squad

IWantMyPop.com
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March 1st, 2007

• So
• You are in violation of FERPA
• You are in violation of your own e-mail policy
• You are wasting money on a disliked company
• You are entering into an inappropriate agreement
  with a specific vendor
• You did not adequately consult with the entire
  student population

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March 1st, 2007

• How did we respond?
• We immediately worked with the students involved
  to get to the root of the issue
• The primary problem was from technically-oriented
  students who did not want to use the Web or
  Microsoft tools to access their e-mail
• A secondary problem was with individuals who do
  not like anything associated with Microsoft

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March 1st, 2007

• We met with the ASUI, local news organizations
  and interested students
• The attendance was expected to be large but
  turned out to be about 20 in total

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Microsoft Responds

• Microsoft Comes Through
• We immediately contacted Microsoft to discuss the
  technical limitation of non-web access to e-mail
• Although POP service was originally slated to be
  available in April it had been pushed back to
  September. Based on our feedback, and feedback
  from other schools, Microsoft aggressively
  increased the timeline to May

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Microsoft Responds
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Migration Issues

• Other than POP!
• The Live Mail login page cannot be customized and
  there was confusion about this being a legitimate
  University service
• Students with existing hotmail accounts would be
  automatically signed into their personal account
  instead of _at_vandals

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Migration Issues

• The Live Mail Desktop application was undergoing
  rapid changes and caused many problems
• We recommended customers visit us so we could
  help each individual personally

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Migration Issues

• It is hard to type the entire _at_vandals.uidaho.edu
  e-mail address
• Unknown service limitations were discovered
  including 180 day inactivity, 50 recipient and
  250 message limits, and more

_at_vandals.uidaho.edu
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What Features are Missing?

• Lack of Administrative Tools
• No Reporting!! We do not know how successful the
  service is.

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What Features are Missing?

• The support infrastructure has not been as
  responsive as expected
• The account rename process should be avoided
• Lack of full integration with Exchange services
• Problems with spam control and partnering with
  third party services

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CONCLUSION
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Conclusion

• Students, you cant live with them
• Students will not proactively listen. Be sure to
  document the opportunities provided
• Student can adapt far more quickly to technology
  changes than we expect

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Conclusion

• Do not rely on cool features to sell a product
• Technology professionals sometimes over think the
  services customers really want

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Conclusion

• Work to understand the internal support structure
  of an organization

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Conclusion

• What about Exchange Labs?
• We have a test domain for this and are waiting to
  hear what migration services Microsoft with be
  providing
• Many of the missing features for Live Mail are
  built-in for Exchange Labs

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Conclusion

• Once the initial concerns of the students were
  addressed, the majority have found the system
  familiar and easy to use. Ongoing costs to the
  university have been drastically reduced allowing
  us to repurpose the funding toward other student
  technology projects. Our major challenges now
  concern waiting for promised features and
  administrative tools.

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Questions?