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MSU email on last legs, official says

February 25, 2015

With thousands of freshmen expected to come to MSU next fall, changes will have to happen.

“That mail system is probably several years at the end of its life and is hanging on by a thread,” Young said. “We are in pretty much a crisis situation with this mail system. We can’t put those freshmen on this email system. It will break.”

Zoology sophomore Kristi Smiley also agrees that the current MSU email system is less than stellar.

“It doesn’t really work that well. I can’t really get it on my phone so I think that’s a pain. It sorts things weird sometimes and when I try to find specific emails, it’s harder to do that,” Smiley said. “And it’s slow. It’s pretty slow.”

To combat this problem, Young says the university will be transitioning to Microsoft Office365.

“That system has been recommended several times over the past few years,” Young said. “It was most recently formally recommended to me again by a group of IT leaders on campus known as the IT Council.”

Young said the process of transitioning the school to the new email system will begin with next year’s incoming freshmen, followed by the rest of the students as well as any units at the university who would be interested in making the change.

“It’s better. It’s like a normal email,” said construction management sophomore Jordan Jelinek, who already has experience using Office 365. “With MSU’s (email system), you can only see new messages and then you can’t sort it to see only unseen mail ... I accidentally hit the ascended thing one time and it took me two hours to get it back to be sorted by date. With Office 365, it’s simple to use. Not anything hard.”

Office 365 is much more than an email system, Young said. It also offers features such as the OneDrivestorage system, in addition to tools for collaboration as well as the general Microsoft Office tools

“It’s going to be extremely useful and valuable to the university,” Young said. “I have done migration from a legacy email system to Office 365 before, so I know it can be done. It’s the process of being very carefully planned.”

Young said the changes will be coming in about a month, but it won’t be until next school year where the university will begin moving anyone but the students off the current email system.

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