More Faculty and Staff Discovering the Benefits of Exchange Messaging and Calendaring

Migrations from CULink to the all-new campus Microsoft Exchange service have been progressing steadily and now approximately one-third of all faculty, staff and retiree accounts are on Exchange. Exchange is provided to all Boulder campus faculty, staff and retirees (and student employees upon request) as a common-good service, meaning there is no direct cost to you or your department.

Some people have been under the incorrect assumption that because Exchange is a Microsoft service, that one must use a Microsoft e-mail and calendaring program with the service. Just as with CULink, Exchange works with a wide variety of e-mail and calendaring programs including Apple Mail, Entourage, and IMAP (e-mail only) programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird. You can also access your Exchange messages, calendars, tasks and contacts through a web interface, just like with CULink.

The base e-mail storage quota on Exchange is 1 gigabyte. That's five times the quota on CULink. The IT Service Centerwill help you increase your quota if additional space if necessary. Perhaps a bigger benefit of this campuswide collaboration suite is the ability to view the availability of your colleagues (as permitted by each account holder) and schedule meetings and resources at mutually agreeable times with relative ease.

In order to reduce interruptions, migrations take place nightly Monday through Thursday between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. the following morning and your account can be accessed throughout the migration window. You can work with your departmental Computer Support Representative to schedule a time to migrate that’s convenient for you.  And if you desire it, an OIT Exchange migration technician can come to your office, at a time of your choice, to make e-mail program configuration changes after your account is migrated. You can learn who your CSR is at http://www.colorado.edu/its/tier2/lookup.html.

We aim to wrap up all migrations before the start of the spring 2012 semester, but the earlier you schedule your migration, the better chance you have of scheduling a time that is convenient for you and when support is readily available. Learn more about migrations.