With so many things being improved, upgraded and built across campus, the transition from SamMail to Microsoft Exchange this semester is just one more thing students can look forward to.
While preparing for the new school year, many students were met with empty inboxes and questions about what happened to SamMail over the summer.
Mystery solved.
Sam Houston State began moving to the new Exchange system in June and it left many students in the dark as to where their e-mail messages were going and how to retreive them.
According to Mark Adams, Vice President of Information Resources, the new system was chosen for many reasons, including to allow students to better experience an e-mail client similar to what they will experience after graduation.
“[We decided to change] to provide the campus community with an enterprise-class, feature-rich e-mail system that will better prepare it for the future,” Adams said. “[Also] to consolidate the multiple university e-mail servers to a single solution to allow for a consistent set of features and compatibility among users, and to improve Helpdesk support capabilities.”
The new Microsoft Exchange system is also expected to allow students, faculty and staff to enjoy more e-mailing features, although the change will result in a slightly more complicated system than SamMail.
In addition to more e-mailing options, Adams said the university chose Exchange in order to complement the new VoIP phone system installed in the Fall 2006 semester.
With Exchange, students with phones on campus will be able to check missed calls and listen to voice messages through their Exchange e-mail service.
Fortunately, SamMail will still be accesible since it will remain the e-mail server while Exchange serves as the e-mail client.
Computer services will be e-mailing students more information on the new system, as well as offering tutorials on how to move information from the old server to their new Exchange account.