The university NinerMail system is nearing the completion of an upgrade that will bring it from a Microsoft Office 2010 base hosted with Live to e-mail inboxes through Office 365.
This upgrade will allow access to the Microsoft Office SkyDrive using NinerNet logon credentials.
Ave Maria Arrington-Ferguson, project manager for the NinerMail upgrade with Information and Technology Services, says the department is hopeful that the system upgrade will be complete by the end of the week.
“Microsoft is doing the lion’s share of the work so we’re at their mercy. We want it to be done by the end of the week and have the icon reappear but in the meantime students can use myninermail.uncc.edu and get right into their email,” she said.
Once complete, the majority of the upgrade, says Arrington Ferguson, not be directly visible through the inbox interface. All e-mails, contacts, calendar entries and other saved items on NinerMail accounts will be saved and transfered to the Office 365 infrastructure.
“You’ll actually go to their portal and you’ll click on inbox and you’ll go there,”said Arrington-Ferguson. “There is a thing to access your SkyDrive and you’ll click on that and use your Windows Live ID to go to your SkyDrive and get all your SkyDrive information.”
SkyDrive, a service by Microsoft Office that is similar to Dropbox, uses cloud storage space to allow users to access data anywhere from countless devices.
After this week’s NinerMail upgrade, another update to the Microsoft-based e-mail is possible in the coming academic year, says Arrington-Ferguson. The university e-mail is running on Office 2010, an older version of Microsoft’s products. Near the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014, it is likely that Microsoft will make the decision to transition the university e-mail from Office 2010 to Office 2013.
“That transition will be totally Microsoft. So one day you’ll log in and your inbox will be, where it used to be 2010 it’ll now be 2013,” said Arrington-Ferguson. “It’ll give the students more flexibility, or it’s supposed to. They’ll be able to get more apps if they choose to, that sort of thing.”
To access NinerMail during the upgrade, go to the Outlook 365 web platform and log on using the full university-provided email address and NinerNet password. Access through 49erExpress will be restored when the upgrade is complete.
Upgraded NinerMail will have students log into e-mail using Office 365.