MSU Launches New E-mail Service
On December 22, 2008, Michigan State University's Academic Technology Services department launched a major upgrade to MSU’s centrally supported e-mail service, mail.msu.edu.
Users will find the look and feel of the new service to be significantly different but will retain their @msu.edu e-mail address.
Enhancements include:
- Calendar ( users can subscribe to other mail.msu.edu calendar system users)
- Advanced search system
- Sorting based on date, subject, from, etc.
- HTML inline and compose
- Global address book
- Importing and exporting features for calendar and address book
There is also a place for:
- Notes
- Tasks
- Categories for color coding tasks, notes, and appointments
One of the most noticeable changes is the improved graphical interface with a portal which allows users to choose from three modes—standard, enhanced and basic. Users can choose from a variety of themes which will change their general formatting (e.g. background and text colors).
In addition, storage space has increased from 128 megabytes (MB) of storage to 512 MB for students and to 1 Gigabyte for faculty, staff and graduate students as part of this upgrade.
“We are looking at keeping both systems up until everyone is comfortable with the change, providing sufficient time to convert to the new system. Students, faculty, and staff will not have to make the change immediately as both systems will run concomitantly for a few months,” said Katherine Ball, communications manager for ATS.
It is an Internet browser-based e-mail system with many of the features typical of software-based applications, but with no required software to download or install.
Any user can access a full-featured version of the system anywhere in the world on any operating system and through many up-do-date Web browser types.
The default option for spam filtering on the new service has been turned on in light of recent phishing attaches by criminals who attempt to obtain personal information by posing as a trustworthy entity.
To learn more about this new e-mail service, please read knowledge base article number 10902 at help.msu.edu or contact the ATS Help Desk at (517) 432-6200.
Background
- Mail.msu.edu was originally launched in March of 2003, replacing the previous ten-year-old system, Pilot. A beta version of the new service was launched in August of 2008. The former (legacy) service will remain available until Spring 2009.
- There are currently 176,000 e-mail accounts on the system.
- Six terabytes of the seven terabyte maximum system allowance was in use prior to the 2008 upgrade.
- Three million e-mails are processed each day.
- There are 225,000 webmail logins per day.
- Virus filtering plus three levels of spam filtering are in place.
- Spam filtering is set as an opt-in system under old mail service; however, only 20 percent used it. Spam filtering will be turned on as default when the new e-mail service is rolled out in December 2008.
- Forwarding to other e-mail accounts is available (approximately 20 percent of student use this)
