The university has begun consolidating email and calendaring services for all students and employees, Jessie Minton, vice provost for Information Services and chief information officer, wrote in a message to UO employees.

“Currently, university IT staff operate multiple, duplicative email services,” she wrote. “This results in inconsistent user experiences, operational inefficiencies and increased costs for support and maintenance. Students currently use a different email service than most UO employees, which creates a barrier for collaboration and previously hindered our ability to offer students the use of their UO email addresses after graduation.”

New UO graduates can keep their university email addresses for their lifetimes, via an email forward. Students who graduated in fall 2017 or later now have this option.

The project will move students and employees to UOmail, a cloud-hosted version of Exchange, which is the email service currently used by two-thirds of UO employees. Minton said the benefits of moving everyone to UOmail include a consistent user experience, feature enhancements, improved collaboration throughout the university, and improved information security and operating efficiency.

“Most employees will not need to make many changes when moving to UOmail because much of the work will occur behind the scenes,” the message says. “For employees who need to switch, university IT staff will coordinate the work with you and help you learn how to use the software and features offered by UOmail.”

Minton said the project will provide UOmail to all new students and employees starting in summer 2019. The next milestone will move the remaining one-third of employees from their current mail service to UOmail by September 2019. The transition will be complete by 2023, when all remaining students will be using UOmail.

More details about the transition and project are available on the Information Services website.