Roughly 15,000 UA employees will not have access to their email from 5 p.m. on May 18 to the morning of May 21.
During that time period, employees will be transferred to a new system. After the switch, they will still have all of their old emails and calendar events, only in a new online setting, according to Patti Fastje, assistant director of University Information Technology Services.
The new system will be hosted on university servers instead of on Microsoft cloud software, explained Jessica Woodworth, principal systems administrator with UITS. It will also include an updated version of the email instant messaging system and additional features.
Woodworth said UITS launched a pilot of the new email system on March 26. About 800 users switched to new accounts. The switch on May 18 will affect all other employee email accounts, which is somewhere in the 15,000-user range, she said.
Email addresses for faculty, classified staff, appointed personnel and retirees will not change. Student workers whose addresses contain “stwk” will change to an address that ends in catworks.arizona.edu.
During the migration, employees will not be able to access any new emails, but all emails received over that weekend will be waiting in their inbox on the following Monday, Fastje said. Automatic replies will not be sent out during the migration.
Beginning May 4, accounts for department-sponsored visitors will be created within the campus-based UAConnect system.
While many features will carry over to the new system, a few will be lost. Shared folders will need to be recreated and cloud-based department email accounts will need to have login rights re-added. The listed owner of that department’s email account will receive an email before the migration period that includes instructions on how to do so.
Julie Suess, information technology project manager for UITS, suggested that employees not try to access their email during the migration period to minimize any disruptions.
All employees will receive reminders and instructions about the migration before the move takes place.
