On Jan. 4 NATS switched 14,000 student, faculty, and alumni email accounts over to Outlook to replace the outdated Willy Webmail.

The switch didn’t cost Wayne State any extra money because it came with the Microsoft campus agreement, and John Dunning said that the switch also freed up some space on the server for projects in the future.

Dunning, Chief Information Officer, and Brandon Eckmann, IT lead for NATS, said that the switch and migration went smoothly.

Dunning said they had a minor issue with people who are both student and staff not being able to switch quickly between their two accounts.

“I think I have had maybe five trouble tickets where a student was missing an email or two, so we had to restart the migration but that was pretty small,” said Eckmann.

The department is glad to see students using the new email system and are really pleased with it.

“I have noticed that 10 or so students have already set up a profile picture, and that made me happy, knowing that they are logging in and using it,” Eckmann said.

Outlook offers several features that Willy Webmail did not, such as calendaring. Dunning said he knows of several offices that interact with student workers who were planning on using this feature to help manage their workload in a more efficient fashion.
“I think that having everybody in the same address book is going to help with that,” Dunning said

There are help sheets on the college website to help students get Outlook on their phones as well as answer some common questions students may have.

Currently the old email system is still enabled for cellphone access to read old emails, but students will not receive any new emails through that system. NATS is asking that students delete that old account from their phones

“Within the next few weeks we will shut that server down, and so if folks don’t remove that from their phones they will start getting an error,” Dunning said.