Email & Calendaring Project

Communication Points

7.19.13

Project:

  • The project continues to move along as planned –the decision to move the campus to Office 365 as our enterprise solution for email and calendaring has been reaffirmed by the Provost and Vice Chancellor.
  • Decisions and changes under consideration for this project have potential implications for current and future IT systems the UW-Madison deploys. Office 365 presents an opportunity to think through how the campus implements IT services.
  • Office 365 is a strong solution, and includes important elements that other options – Google – can’t provide, such as HIPPA compliance and domestic data storage.
  • The DoIT Help Desk is assisting both the technical community and end users with any questions they have about the project and/or product.

Office 365 Features and Use:

To address some common questions we are hearing about the product:

  • Having an enterprise-wide calendaring tool does not mean the whole campus can automatically see your calendar. Everyone can selectively share their calendar with their colleagues and students as they see fit.
  • The Scheduling Assistant application will be adapted to work with Office 365 so you will not lose use of that tool's functions.
  • Office 365 does work with Apple products and on mobile devices. The tech team is testing platforms, clients and apps so they can advise everyone on what’s optimal, and what tradeoffs users might encounter with certain choices.
  • Each individual will need to set a primary address if they have more than one campus email address. As a policy matter, deans/directors, departments or individuals (in that order) will determine the preference for which address will be set as the primary address after the migration. In any case, you will be able to continue to receive email at any current addresses you use if you choose to.
  • Campus users will be given a new, additional email address in the new default campus structure of . This structure was determined with input from numerous campus technical and administrative partners.
  • IMAP and POP protocols will be enabled, meaning that non-Microsoft mail clients can be synched with Office 365.
  • It’s important to note that performance will vary by client, particularly for calendaring. The tech team has tested many systems and posted a Knowledgebase document with detailed results.
  • As with email addresses, each dean/director, department or individual (in that order) will be responsible for selectingan email and calendaring software (client) for their campus unit.

Current Activities:

  • The team is working with more than 170 migration partners identified as the technical leads for schools/departments on completing a census about their current systems. This census process will help uncover the best candidates to be early adopters.
  • Microsoft consulting has been retained to help create an end-to-end solution for campus, including mapping out the best tools and plans for migration and how to best configure and deliver the system.
  • A significant amount of work has been going into preparing campus infrastructure to support the Office 365 service. This includes work on email account provisioning, directory services, routing, and virus and spam protection among other things.

Migration Planning:

  • The project team is discussing a phased migration approach, including plans for a technical staff preview and early adoption for some groups. It is our goal to have the bulk of campus migrated by August 2014. Specifics about this plan are being discussed and will be finalized in the next couple of months.
  • A number of units have volunteered to be early adopters. Project teams are developing criteria for early adoption and will work with those units that are interested.
  • The project team will meet with schools, colleges, and divisions to outline the migration plan and discuss any specific concerns for that unit. A complete organizational readiness plan is being developed.
  • Work has begun with the Dean of Students and Enrollment Management to best schedule student migration. In many instances students will need to migrate at the same time their employing unit or advisors migrate.
  • Discussion is also underway regarding email and calendar data migration – what to migrate, how much and when. This may vary for each system moved to Office 365, the capabilities of the migration tools, and the migration policy set by the project team and leadership.

Companion Projects:

  • Resources have been allocated to solving identity-related issues that have posed problems for campus system synchronization in the past, including Manifest, a directory toolset that manages groups and facilitates the creation of new NetIDs.
  • The Directory Services Team continues work on enhancing the Active Directory structure that will support Office 365. Full implementation of a centralized Active Directory will follow the rollout of Office 365.