Change is coming to Wayne State College early next year. Beginning Jan. 4 all student, graduate, applicant and student club e-mail accounts will migrate to Microsoft Outlook.

“A renovation in the student e-mail system was high on people’s list of things they’d like to see,” WSC Chief Information Officer John Dunning said. “Students want a more modern e-mail system with better mobile support.”

The decision was made to switch from Willy Webmail to Outlook for faculty and staff by the president’s staff in April. Network and Technology Services (NATS) approached the Student Senate leadership to make the switch official for students.

“From an administrative standpoint, the current student e-mail system costs us a fair amount of service base to maintain,” Dunning said. “Both Microsoft and Google are offering free e-mail for students where they’re paying for the service base and staff time to maintain it. It did not make sense to continue to do that in house.”

Willy Webmail has been in use at Wayne State College since the late 1990s. The migration process has been in the works for the past three years.

“We already get Outlook in our campus agreement with Microsoft,” Dunning said. “When we look at opportunities for collaboration with other institutions in the state of Nebraska, it works better if our campus is on the same platform as the people we collaborate with.”

All four of Nebraska’s university campuses as well as Chadron State College are using Outlook as their student e-mail platform.

“The most common problem is that students need additional space for their e-mail,” NATS staff member Brandon Eckmann said. “With the current system, we can only give about 300 megabytes of additional space. With the new system, we can give almost 50 gigabytes of additional space.”

With the rise of mobile devices over the last several years, Willy Webmail provided issues for students wanting to use it on their phone.

“Setting up Willy Webmail on your phone right now is a pain,” Eckmann said. “That’s going to be drastically easier with Outlook.”

Students also do not have to worry about transferring e-mails from their old account to the new.

“We are going to transfer all of the e-mails automatically,” Eckmann said. “When they log in for the first time on Jan. 4, any folders, e-mails and personal contacts from the Roundcube address book will be moved over as well.”

Students looking to use Outlook on their mobile devices will need to download the Outlook app. Access via eCampus will remain the same.

“If you do have the e-mail already set up on your phone or tablet, you’re going to need to reconfigure it,” Eckmann said. “If you’re using eCampus to access it, you’ll notice that the link will change. Instead of saying ‘Willy Mail,’ it’s going to say ‘Outlook Webmail.’”

Other benefits of the new system include access to a calendar, being in the same e-mail system as faculty and staff, and access to shared calendars and mailboxes amongst each other.

“Jan. 4, 2017, is going to be the magic day,” Dunning said.

Anyone with questions regarding the new e-mail system can visit the NATS project page or contact either John Dunning at [email protected] or Brandon Eckmann at [email protected].