Photo Illustration by Matt Weir / The Collegian

Staff, faculty and students at California State University, Fresno know firsthand just how difficult life can be without e-mail.

For the past two weeks, access to the staff and faculty calendar and e-mail service Zimbra was hit and miss, said Richard Boes, director of information technology services (ITS) and chief information security officer.

The problem began when the university upgraded the e-mail and calendar service from Zimbra 5 to the latest version, Zimbra 6, on Oct. 28, Boes explained.

“Unfortunately, we also found some bugs in Zimbra 6 and that has caused a significant amount of instability in the system,” Boes said.

Zimbra was never down longer than two hours at a time, but would fail multiple times throughout the day, Boes said.

“We dealt with a long period of instability that really made it unpalatable for the campus,” he said. “Our services during this period have been unacceptable to anybody, including me.”

Fresno State was the only Zimbra user to experience this problem, according to Boes. Zimbra, which is owned by Yahoo, had its entire server support team working to resolve the bugs. The ITS staff at Fresno State put in long hours as well, Boes said.

As of Nov. 12, the e-mail and calendar service was up and running without any outages. Boes said he is hopeful that the system will remain stable.

Marcia Martin, communications assistant in the Office of Community Economic Development said the last two weeks have been frustrating and a source of stress, as staff was unable to consistently utilize e-mail and calendars.

“It messes up your whole day,” Martin said.

The university is still fairly new to Zimbra, which transitioned in July from Sun ONE Messaging for e-mail and Media Maker for calendars, Boes said. When moving over to new software, he said, there are always some kinks to work through.

Director of donor and volunteer relations, Leticia Reyna-Cano, said the transition to Zimbra has been challenging, but she anticipates the problems will work out eventually.

“It’s something that’s new and we all have to get used to it,” Reyna-Cano said.

Despite the inconvenience, Reyna-Cano found alternatives to e-mail and used the phone to communicate with donors.

“I know a lot of people like e-mail because you’ve got that trail that shows the history of what you’re sending back and forth, but it was nice to pick up the phone and talk to somebody,” she said.

Jill Wagner, director of campaign communications, said that since transitioning to Zimbra there have been a few hiccups but nothing like the last two weeks. The recent problems forced staff and faculty into more face-to-face conversations and phone calls, she said.

“I think it’s a good test of our patience and understanding,” Wagner said. “It’s frustrating but the thing is we’re all in the same boat. It’s not personal.”

Student e-mail, which still runs on Sun ONE Messaging, crashed Nov. 12 at 8 p.m. and was unavailable until 5 p.m. on Nov. 13. Shirley Melikian Armbruster, assistant vice president for university communications, said the university used other online sources like ASI, Fresno State News, Black Board and My Fresno State portal to notify students of the problem. Staff and faculty were also informed.

“We really tried to get the word out to the whole campus community that this is something they need to be aware of,” Melikian Armbruster said.

Freshman Rose Xiong said she hoped the e-mail wouldn’t be down for long since she was expecting an e-mail from an advisor about an upcoming appointment.

“I also needed to talk to my professor and I wasn’t able to get in contact with them,” Xiong said of the inconvenience.

Some students were not as affected by the outage. Fourth-year chemistry major Stephen Calderon said he didn’t even know the e-mail was down until a friend told him.

“I check MySpace more than I check my CSU e-mail,” Calderon said.