A new e-mail service provider comes with the promise of a better, personalized service while saving the university money

With the transition to Gmail under way, students will have until April 30 to make the transfer before the change will happen automatically.

Fresno State currently holds more than 100,000 e-mail addresses, 30,000 of which are active with currently enrolled students. Only about 2,000 of these active e-mail addresses have been transferred to our new mail servers.

“There is a problem with communication,” said Jim Michael, the associate director of Information Technology Services (ITS).

Michael said ITS sent an e-mail out in early March that prompted roughly 1,000 students to sign up.

Michael said he is working on ways to put out the new information to those on campus who haven’t switched their addresses yet.

“I want to get it posted on the board in the student union, put a bulletin up in the recreation center,” Michael said. “People might also be waiting until spring break, and putting it off until they get some of their other priorities taken care of.”

Michael says that he prefers for the students to migrate themselves, this way they can get a feel for the new system.

The project has been active since August 2009, but ITS has been working on a new mail server for the student body for the past three years.

“We were getting the message that we needed to create a new system from the students for a while now,” Michael said. “It made sense that we move servers.”

Some students wondered why the change to a new e-mail server is taking place in the middle of the semester.

“There is never a good time to do this,” Michael said. “But at least now students can choose a time to migrate their accounts.”

The students who have moved over have provided very positive feedback.

“The features of the new server are very good, and it’s a more current web-based system where students can make their own personal accounts,” Michael said.

The tech service group has had some challenges as well though, and they are working through them to give students a better e-mail service.

“One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced is creating a way for students to access their e-mails from their mobile devices,” Michael said. “We needed to add support so they could manage their password from their mobile access separately. We didn’t want Google to get any of the information that is stored on their csufresno accounts.”

The other problem is that students need to move any e-mails they wish to keep and their address books over to their new Gmail accounts before the old server is retired this summer.

The new servers with Gmail are cheaper than the current service provider.

“Since we are using Google apps itself, we don’t have to pay a licensing fee,” Michael said. “We have a better system with less cost. We only have some minor cost for maintaining our authentication system.”

If students do not make the transition, their information will be adversely affected.

The Gmail accounts will be created for them. Anyone who is still using their csufresno.edu account will be moved over to the new servers. All e-mails and address books need to be moved over as well by June 30 or else they will be deleted and retired with the old server.

If you need help migrating your e-mail account you can contact the help desk at (559)278-7000.