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Transition of Informatics staff mail services to Staffmail

Project ID: 
48
Current stage: 
Manager: 
What: 

Description: This project will decide whether the time is right to delegate Informatics staff mail services to the Staffmail service provided by EUCS and, if the decision is taken to proceed, plan and carry out the move.

Deliverables:

  1. A decision on whether the move to Staffmail should be made at the current time
  2. Procedures for carrying out the move if necessary.
  3. The transition to the new service if necessary.
Why: 

Customer: Users currently using the staff mail service provided by Informatics.

Case statement: Delegating staff mail services to EUCS would free up the personnel and hardware resources currently dedicated to supporting the Informatics staff mail service. In addition, responsibility for supporting the service would devolve to EUCS lessening the load on frontline support. Finally moving from school/department based computing services to centrally provided ones, where possible, is part of the University's overall computing policy.

When: 

Status: This project has been delayed by the delay in the upgrade of the Staffmail service. The upgrade has now taken place and this project can now move ahead.

The move of all staff was completed by Nov. 2008.

The move of the shared mailboxes was completed Mar. 2010.

Final report available on the DICE wiki FinalProjectReport-48

Timescales:

Priority: Low. There is no immediate compelling reason to make the move to Staffmail, other than a desire to free up resources and follow University guidelines.

Time: It took about about 188 hours (25 days FTE).

How: 

Proposal:

Resources: Detailed knowledge of the current Informatics staff mail service and the proposed updates to the EUCS Staffmail service are required to arrive at a decision. Knowledge of IMAP will be required to plan and make the actual move.

Plan:

  1. Services unit members using staffmail by beginning January.
  2. Procedures for move to staffmail drawn up by end of January.
  3. All comp staff and any other interested parties using staffmail by end January.
  4. Decision on final staffmail move by end of semester.
Other: 

Dependencies:

  1. The present performance problems with Staffmail must be addressed by the forthcoming upgrade.
  2. Some sort of compromise must be reached with EUCS over our users whose mail usage currently exceeds the mail quotas applicable on Staffmail.

Risks: If the improvements to the staffmail service do not have the desired effect, we risk making members of staff use a mail service inferior to the current service.

Milestones

Proposed date Achieved date Name Description
2007-04-04 2007-02-16 procedures Produce procedures for moving to staffmail (the first intended audience for these will be computing staff).
2007-05-02 COs on staffmai All COs will have moved over to using staffmail. All but Simon and John have moved.
2007-10-01 2007-09-05 Staffmail Decis We will have decided by now whether to move Informatics staff mail services across to staffmail. It may well be possible to make this decision well ahead of this date depending on what our experience of staffmail is.
2007-06-29 2007-07-02 CSGproposal Produce a proposal for moving to staffmail to be put before the next meeting of CSG
2007-10-01 2007-08-01 csg2staffmail Move members of CSG to staffmail to allow them to experience the quality of service it offers. At least Mike, Gordon, Steve and Stuart should be moved.
soa, mob and srenals have been contacted about this, but so far they've not responded.
2007-11-01 2007-11-07 newusers By this date, all new users will use staffmail
2008-03-03 2007-12-05 PRC approval Seek final PRC approval for the move to staffmail
2008-10-23 2008-10-13 Transition proc Produce procedures for moving the main bulk of existing Informatics users to Staffmail.
2009-05-05 2008-11-03 complete All relevant users moved over to staffmail
2009-06-30 2009-07-01 Shared IMAP Present proposals for handling of shared IMAP folders
2010-03-02 2010-02-10 Shared folders implement solution for shared IMAP folders. Actually moving the folders to functional accounts on staffmail. The procmail equivalent filters on staffmail are a bit of pain.
2010-03-01 signoff Do what ever is necessary to get this project signed off