making the switch to microsoft's live@edu services
In 2009, the University of Montana switched student email from a campus hosted system to Microsoft's Live@Edu, which we labeled UMConnect. During Fall Semester 2009, approximately 4800 students voluntarily signed up for UMConnect accounts. On February 22, 2010, UMConnect accounts were created for the remaining 10,000 students. What happened? What could have happened? What problems didn't we anticipate? At 8:00 AM Monday, we waited for the anticipated long lines of students asking for help, complaining or just being puzzled. Only 23 students came in that day and by week's end, there were less than 200 students needing activation help, despite the fact that over 6000 students had "Activated" their UMConnect accounts that first week. Why were we so successful? We spent many months coordinating IT and University resources to make the switch. IT administration, our Web team, Microsoft Exchange administrators, Client Support Services, IT Central Help Desk, IT Communications and UM administration all worked on this enormous project.. What were the biggest issues? Most were with Microsoft's activation process. Numerous "Service not available" errors caused users to retry again and again. Several times, Windows Live@Edu was updated during our implementation. This resulted in new activation procedures and problems depending upon browser and/or operating system used. How we deal with this and what lessons we learn will be part of an ongoing process we expect to resolve in the coming months.
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