Another E-Mail Program?

Yes, it is true. LIT has been converting the e-mail of faculty and staff to Microsoft Outlook. Outlook offers many more features and options for viewing and storing e-mail. For example, users can easily set up their own auto reply or out of office messages. Outlook has the look and feel of other Microsoft products and is integrated with Word and Excel, which makes it possible to perform tasks such as e-mail merges.

Mac users also received an upgrade for e-mail with the Entourage program, which offers features similar to those in Outlook. For example, Entourage connects to shared calendars (including Outlook calendars), and stores the user’s address book, notes, and to-do list.

All e-mail will now be kept on the server, which means messages can be retrieved and read from any computer, anywhere. With the old system, all accessed e-mail was downloaded by default to the end user’s computer and messages could no longer be read from elsewhere.

And Now, Featuring…

Several departments have already begun to use the calendar feature. It gives the option of allowing other users to see one’s calendar, which makes the scheduling of meetings and appointments easier. It is possible to invite people to a meeting, which they can decline or accept. When they accept, each participant’s calendar is automatically updated to include the meeting. There is also a to-do list function that will alert you to meeting dates and other deadlines. When the reminder pops up, a “snooze” option is available which can be selected an unlimited number of times, politely reminding you that your task is, for example, 2 weeks overdue. Perhaps unfortunately, using the “snooze” option will not automatically delay a meeting.

More Than Just A Pretty Face
The new web interface is called Outlook Web Access (OWA). Students use this interface, as do faculty and staff when viewing e-mail from off campus. Use the address webmail.lakeforest.edu — even when using a Mac — to access all of your e-mail in your Lake Forest College account. It is an improvement over our old web interface, which offered only the most basic functions. OWA allows you to access your address book, calendar, and all of your saved e-mail messages. Unlike the old DMailWeb system, which became full with 100 messages, OWA has no limit on the number of messages. Perhaps the most welcome difference is that a session will not time out. However, all browser windows must be closed to completely to logout of your e-mail on a public machine.

All Aboard!
LIT will discontinue support for other e-mail programs very soon. The only e-mail applications that will be supported are Outlook for PCs, Entourage for Macs, and OWA for both Macs and PCs. OWA will be the only program officially supported for off-campus use.

If faculty need assistance with e-mail, please contact the Help Desk at x3456.