As many in the Libraries have already heard, the university has started the migration of faculty and staff email and calendaring to a unified system, called Rutgers Connect, in the Microsoft Cloud using Office 365. The Libraries are scheduled to migrate in Phase 2, sometime between June and August of 2016, but we are still working with colleagues in the Health Sciences Libraries to determine whether they will be part of the Libraries’ migration, or remain part of RBHS, which is scheduled to migrate in the ongoing Phase 1.
There is plenty of good news to look forward to, even if some effort will be required from everyone in the course of the migration:
- Uniform availability anytime, anywhere, of mail, calendar, and the basic Office 365 applications on any platform: Windows, Mac as well as tablets and smart phones of all three flavors (Android, iOS, and Windows)
- The Office 365 cloud-based suite offers all major productivity apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, which will also be available in desktop versions
- The email/calendaring client, called Outlook, including Tasks and Contacts (now called People), and its Web-based version, called OWA (for Outlook Web Access), offer each user 50 Gigabytes of mail storage – an order of magnitude higher than what is currently available
- In addition to the large mail quota, each user will get 1 Terabyte of shareable file storage for collaboration (similar to Google Docs) on Microsoft OneDrive that will show up in your Windows Explorer (now called File Explorer in Windows 10; had been called File Manager before 2000) as just another “drive”
- In addition, Rutgers Connect includes access to Skype for Business for everyone
- More collaboration tools (like SharePoint) will be probably added in 2017
The Rutgers Office of Information Technology (OIT) has contracted a third-party integrator, Comparex, to help with the migration. They will provide webinar-based instruction and tutorials for the use of the entire Office 365 suite. The Libraries’ own Integrated Information Systems (IIS), together with the Libraries’ Unit Computing Specialists, will provide local, customized help in transitioning from Zimbra to Outlook.
As part of the transition to Office 365, our email addresses will change from “@rulmail.rutgers.edu” to the more intuitive “@libraries.rutgers.edu.” To prepare for this change, everyone is encouraged to set up a Rutgers-wide alias in the form of [firstname].[lastname]@rutgers.edu, and have it point to the current @rulmail.rutgers.edu address. (This can be done now by each user on their own, or IIS can help with the rather simple process that takes but a few minutes.)
Much more information will follow in the coming weeks and months as IIS prepares the support infrastructure for everyone to use. We will have a Communications Plan and a Support Website (just like for the Zimbra transition in 2011) with all relevant information, so you won’t have to search several Rutgers sites for every detail. The final migration plan itself will be worked out together with representatives of OIT and Comparex about one month before the actual date.
Here are a few pointers to alleviate early concerns:
- The current @rulmail.rutgers.edu addresses will forward incoming mail to our new accounts for one full year after migration (without the possibility of logging into the old account) – so that people will have plenty of time to adjust their external list subscriptions.
- All internal lists will be migrated and/or updated manually by IIS, or support will be provided for lists that we don’t have access to.
- Since all Rutgers Faculty and Staff domains will “trust” each other, it will be easy to find anyone in the global directory, and to sign up for lists from other departments.
Please look for a lot more information coming to your mailboxes as we move closer to the migration period. It is a good idea to take the online webinars close to the migration date (so as not to forget everything by the time you need to use the new apps). In the meantime, please let IIS know of any concern or question you might have at support@rulhelp.rutgers.edu and, in a few weeks, at the support website.
