Kicking off the Email, Calendering, and Collabortion Tools project

As Gayle Barton recently announced, ITS will be working on a project this year to update the tools we use for email. Because of the way that email programs have evolved, the project will also present us with the opportunity to look at a number of other collaboration tools, such as calendaring and document sharing.

In this initial phase, we’ll be focused on two things. First, we will facilitate moving as many faculty and staff as possible off of Eudora as the main email program on your desktops. This is essential because Eudora is a long-discontinued application. Second, we will start the process of looking forward, where better web tools and other enhancements hopefully await the entire College community.

There will be several ways for you to find out more and contribute to the project:

Survey
Next week we’ll distribute a short survey to everyone on campus. The survey will both help us to better understand the current use of tools on campus and to identify the top priorities as we move forward. We’ve kept the survey short; most people will easily complete it in under five minutes. Please take part when you receive the invitation to participate.

Open meetings (with food!)
We’ll hold two open meetings for anybody who would like to hear more about the project. We’ll give a brief overview of the project goals, what we’ve learned so far, and the roadmap for moving forward. We’ll also want to answer your questions and collect further input from you.

  • LUNCH: Monday, April 14th, 12:00-1:00. Cuniff Lecture Hall (Science 199)
  • COFFEE & COOKIES: Tuesday, April 15th, 3:30-4:30. Hicks Mural Room (Hicks 312)

While the meetings are open to all, we would appreciate it you would RSVP for the lunch event in the College’s event calendar so that we have an idea of how many people will attend.

News and announcements
We will post important milestones and announcements on the ITS web site. If you’re an email enthusiast and would like to stay abreast of just the news specific to the project, you should bookmark this link for Email project news now.