Email migration

Now that Divisional Home Directories and Shares have been migrated to ICT Services, the next project is to migrate email from the cemail server (also known as isaac) to ICT Services. While the Division should be aware of this project, it is unlikely to have any impact on staff use of email until, at the earliest, late this year.

In March 2007 ICT Services will pilot Exchange 2003 with Development and International, to iron out any problems. It will then roll Exchange 2003 out across the other areas of the University not currently on Exchange (HDS and the other non-Academic Divisions). COMEDU and BLIS are already using Exchange 2003 so there will be no noticeable impact on either Division during this stage (COMEDU and BLIS will continue to host their staff email on their existing servers: the rest of the University will be hosted on an ICT Services Exchange 2003 Server).

After Semester 2, 2007, ICT Services will implement Exchange 2007 on a new server. Over the summer break 2007-2008, all users (including BLIS and COMEDU users) will be migrated to the new Exchange 2007 Server. After the migration to the ICT Services’ Exchange 2007 Server, BLIS and COMEDU will be able to decommission their Divisional servers.

Sometime this year ICT Services’ disk images for staff will contain Outlook 2003 (PC) or Entourage 2004 (Macintosh) as a part of a rollout of Office 2003 (PC) and Office 2004 (Macintosh). While most of the Division’s staff computers will support Office 2003/2004, it is too early to say whether the Division will get the new images this year or deploy them widely. We will probably wait until 2008 before updating across the board, when there will be a move to use Office 2007 (PC) or 2008 (Macintosh) to support Exchange 2007.

The move to Office 2007 (PC) and Office 2008 (Macintosh) in 2008 will be a major change since the new Office suites are radically different to previous versions. Significant staff training will be required to ensure the transition is smooth. There may also be some problems with older hardware that doesn't run these new Office suites satisfactorily: more research is required before the impact of the changeover can be determined with any accuracy.

Once the new Office suites are in place, support will only be provided for Outlook (PC) and Entourage (Macintosh) as email (and Calendar: see following item on Calendar migration) clients. While Divisional staff will not be required to use these clients, the then current versions of Outlook and Entourage will be the only ones supported. Nothing will be done specifically to prevent staff using whatever email client they can get to work to access their email, but they won't be supported if they need assistance.

Off-campus access to email will also change. Staff will need to use a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, connection to the campus network to be allowed access to their email and calendar from anywhere outside the campus. There will be some difficulties with this approach (user training, infrastructure and capacity within the University to support VPN connections, VPN clients on computers used by staff outside the University to access the services here, configuration help and support, and so on) that will need to be monitored and addressed as the system is implemented.

Centralisation of email

The University is moving forward on the planned centralisation of email and integrating a new campus-wide calendaring environment.

A (rather large) working group has been established to organise the migration of email and calendar services to a central email, calendaring, address list and document sharing system under ICT Services. The University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC) recently accepted the recommendations of a report compiled by Acumen Alliance to establish a central collaborative system based on Microsoft’s Exchange and Sharepoint services.

Debate is currently centred around the choice of version for the Exchange Server environment: the current version, Exchange 2003, is in use in BLIS and COMEDU, but Microsoft is due to release Exchange 2007 Real Soon Now. 2007 would be a preferred environment based on the expected functionality it would bring, but experience has shown that it is reasonable to expect some delays in the availability of a suitably stable version for enterprise use when such a major release is made available.

The expectation is that email will be operating centrally by the end of the first quarter of 2007 (31 March 2007). Should an enterprise-ready version of Exchange 2007 be available from Microsoft in time for a thoroughly-tested service to be deployed by that time, then the email should be hosted by ICT Services then.

Currently the University has available to it a centrally-provided electronic calendar (Oracle Calendar). BLIS users also have a calendar in Exchange 2003 (as do COMEDU users), but in order to manage appointments and meetings across Divisions, the Oracle Calendar needs to be used. Exchange has an integrated calendar that will replace Oracle Calendar. Migration strategy, roll-out plans and a timetable for Exchange Calendar are yet to be determined.

Once email and calendar functions are operating, document sharing using Sharepoint will be implemented. Again no plans or a timetable are in place for the implementation of Sharepoint. In the meantime document sharing is being managed by the Divisions and ICT Services on an ‘at-need’ basis.

Student email

Should the University still provide students with email?

The University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC) decided at its meeting on Thursday 17 August 2006 to press ahead with the investigation of giving up hosting email for students. Instead, students will be asked to supply their email address on enrolment much as they supply postal and residential addresses and contact phone numbers now (which they should keep up to date through OSIS).

During a recent activity in the Division where students were asked to supply a contact email address, over 75% of 200+ participants nominated a non-UC student email address. Anecdotal evidence suggest many students don’t use their UC student email address, and of course when students leave they lose the address anyway, so can’t be contacted via their UC student email address for any follow-up communication.

It is expected that students who don’t have email addresses will be encouraged to set one up with any one of a number of free services like GMail, Yahoo! or Hotmail.

Students who check their email on campus might also find they are using up their traffic cost quota where before when the University provided the email account traffic was free. A working party is to be established to address this and other issues that might arise, and to consult widely with stakeholders to inform progress on the proposal.

Enterprise Collaboration Software

After four years of discussions, some progress on an Enterprise Collaboration Environment.

At its meeting on Thursday 17 August 2006 the University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC) endorsed the recommendations of an Acumen Alliance consultancy report that concluded that Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server are the best functional fit for the University to support email, calendaring, contact lists, task lists and file sharing as an enterprise-wide system for staff.

UIMSC has established a working group consisting of the IT Managers of the Academic Divisions and some ICT personnel to prepare an implementation plan.

The Division of Communication and Education has been using Exchange for email for a number of years now, so the transition from a Divisional-supported email system to a University-provided system should not be too problematic and require little adjustment if any for most staff in the Division. Existing Outlook and Entourage users should experience no differences after some settings are adjusted.

The movement of the calendar from the Oracle system to Exchange will require more work especially with staff training and support for those staff who don’t currently use a Calendar, or don’t use Microsoft Outlook or Entourage as their email client. In the longer term to move to Exchange Calendar across the campus should provide a much more integrated system for managing scheduling and communication than the current environment allows.

Implementation and use of the Sharepoint document sharing system is an unknown quantity at the moment since it is a completely new system for the Division. Certainly an ongoing commitment to training and support within the Division will be required if document sharing is to be used actively and appropriately in the Division.

The email and address list stage of the project at least should be in place by the end of this year.

SPAM

Has the avalanche of unwanted emails slowed?

Early in July the University further increased its efforts to reduce spam and emails containing viruses and other malware from reaching University email accounts. Graphical evidence at http://rattlesnake.canberra.edu.au/cgi-bin/mailgraph.cgi/werewolf shows clearly the results of the changes between June and July (on the Month and Year graphs towards the bottom of the screen): many more messages are now being rejected rather than passed on to user accounts with [POSSIBLE SPAM] tags. Anecdotal evidence also suggests the amount of spam, even the number of messages marked as [POSSIBLE SPAM], has reduced since the increased measures were implemented.

Staff are asked to pass on spam and other unwanted email messages not marked as [POSSIBLE SPAM] that are still getting through to their in boxes to ICT Services for review, to establish what might be able to be done to reduce even further the amount of unwanted email reaching user accounts. A new Public Folder called SPAM for ICT should have appeared in your email client (under the Public Folders directory in your University account). Drag or save emails you believe to be examples of spam or other unwanted emails into this folder and they will be made available to ICT Services automatically. Contact the comedu helpdesk if you need assistance in transferring spam to this folder.

Forwarding suspect email to either ICT Services or the comedu helpdesk won’t help: forwarded emails may lose the data required by ICT Services to establish how it might have got through the filters in place.

The new arrangements in force may have unintended consequences for people outside the University sending legitimate email to University accounts. Otherwise legitimate email may be marked as [POSSIBLE SPAM] or even rejected without being delivered to the addressee. If you come across examples of this happening please contact the ICT Services helpdesk (x5500 or servicedesk@canberra.edu.au) to advise them and to seek advice on what needs to be done to overcome the issue.

If legitimate email is rejected the sender will receive an explanation of why the email was rejected by the University with instructions on what the sender (or their IT section or ISP) has to do to have their email delivered to the University recipient without being rejected in the future. While in some cases the original email may not be delivered to the intended recipient, in most cases the email will be delivered anyway while the problem is rectified at the sender’s end: the sender just keeps getting the message to have their email server configured properly to avoid the messages being rejected.

Campus Collaborative software

A new direction to integrate email and provide campus-wide collaborative software.

At a meeting help on Monday, 27 March 2006, PVC Research and Information Management announced that the University was seeking external consultants’ advice on the selection of an appropriate campus-wide collaborative tool (to manage, for example, email, calendar, address book, task lists and file-sharing).

PVC R&IM was asked to ensure that the consultants spoke with the Academic Divisions to identify their needs, and that they were asked to include plans for the deployment of their proposed solution within the UC environment in their report.

email outage

University IT support is NOT 24/7

The Divisional email system (‘isaac’, also known as ‘cemail’) was unavailable between 31 December 2005 and 2 January 2006, it appears due to the lock-up of network switches in Building 9. A member of the Division’s staff contacted me at home by phone (twice) to request that the system be repaired.

Heads of Schools and Centres are asked to remind their staff that members of the TSU are not to be contacted directly on their mobiles or at home to request support at any time, especially out of business hours. When email is unavailable requests for support can be lodged by calling the cehelpdesk and a voicemail message left if there is no-one there to take the call, otherwise emails to the cehelpdesk will be dealt with at the next available opportunity during business hours.

There are provisions for University staff to be available on standby out of hours in the Enterprise Agreement: should the Division or the University want technical staff to be on call then the appropriate arrangements should be negotiated under the terms of the Agreement.

Generic email addresses

The University is developing guidelines for generic, or position-based, email addresses.

The University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC) has asked the Divisions for comments on a recent paper from ICT Services proposing guidelines (stress: guidelines) for the use of generic email addresses to be used for official contact with the University.

Copies of the paper have been circulated to the members of the Division’s IT & Infrastructure Committee for comment. Further copies can be obtained from the office of the Deputy Head of the Division.

Blacklisting of email server

Overzealous attempts to limit spam leads to email delivery failure.

The COMEDU and BLIS email servers are being blacklisted by the SORBS service, apparently every day for the last two weeks. SORBS is a service that purports to list email servers that are sources of spam: email server administrators can subscribe to the SORBS service and use the blacklist to block ALL emails coming from those email servers on the basis that the emails are spam. ICT Services subscribes to the SORBS list and uses it to block any email from servers on the blacklist, resulting in email from BLIS and COMEDU addresses being ‘bounced’ back to the sender and not delivered.

There have been various reasons for the blacklisting of the BLIS and COMEDU email servers. For example, the first few times was from an 'Out of Office Reply' to a spam email which caused ICT Services email servers to interpret the reply as also spam. Over the past few days we were blacklisted due to some emails being “poorly” formatted, or email addresses misspelled. A series of bulk emails from the office of our PVC sent in support of an upcoming conference has led to the latest blacklist.

Each morning for the past week ICT Services has been contacted to remove the BLIS and COMEDU servers from the blacklist. ICT Services has been asked to change how they handle the blacklisting rules, but as yet to no avail.

Any attempt to reduce the amount of spam and malware is admirable: when it is overzealous and hinders the legitimate work of the University it is unacceptable. The Director of ICT Services has been asked to ensure that ICT Services staff modify the rules to ensure no legitimate email is refused delivery.

More email issues

Missing some emails? This might explain it...

It appears that the University, through the IT Security Manager, has recently implemented a security measure that checks the email server responsible for sending any emails to @canberra.edu.au addresses before delivering them. If the check establishes the email server is “valid”, the email will be delivered. If however the server sending the email identifies itself with a name that is not properly registered on the internet, the email will be refused and “bounced” to the sender with instructions on how to correct the problem before emails to University recipients will be delivered.

The objective of the measure is to reduce the number of inappropriate emails getting to UC addresses (including spam, pornographic emails, viruses and other malware delivered along with emails, and so on: a laudable objective). Unfortunately there will be many “false-positives”: legitimate emails that are bounced if there is a problem with the registration of the sender’s email server. The Division in fact found out about the introduction of the measure when Canon Australia complained that their emails to us were being bounced.

Staff should be aware that the new measure is in place and that legitimate emails may not be getting through. If you are not receiving emails that you think you ought to be receiving, contact the sender (your emails to them should still be delivered) and ask them to call you if their messages are being bounced. Explain to them that the bounced email message contains instructions for their mail server administrator on how to fix their problem. The sender may also be able to use a different email server, one that is registered in a DNS as being of type ‘A’, to send their emails to the University.

No discussion was held with the Division about this change, and no warning of its implementation given. The comedu helpdesk would like to receive reports of any bounced emails to monitor the situation and if necessary take it up with ICT Services.

Email server issues

The TSU is aware of the problems with the Divisional email server at the moment.

Isaac, the Division’s new email server, is somewhat problematic at the moment: Macintosh users may see frequent requests for passwords to be re-entered, and Windows users may get frequent messages from Outlook indicating the email server is either on or off line at that particular time.

Efforts are being made with the help of BLIS and ICT Services Network team to isolate the problem, which appears to be related to excessive network traffic being generated by the email server.

What to do when staff and students leave the University

Policy is under development to guide IT staff in dealing with data managed by staff and student who leave the University.

A member of staff, or a student enrolled at the University, gets access to a number of ICT services like email, file storage, web access, library systems and so on. When that person leaves, their access to these services is terminated, which may mean the loss of data that is significant for them and for the University. Current practice sees staff lose access to ICT services the day after they leave (although email may be redirected to a new address for one to six months), and students lose access when they complete, or are no longer enrolled for other reasons.

ICT Services is currently investigating developing more detailed policies on what to do when a staff member or student leaves. The University may be required legally to keep emails and electronic documents for everyone, including those that have left, for a certain period: ICT Services is seeking advice on what the requirements might be. Some staff members like to keep their email address working for a number of months until they can advise their contacts of their new details; students may like to keep their work available from a University server for potential employers to review: the demand for this access may increase with the development of ePortfolios.

Direct any comments on what may need to be done with data when staff or students leave to the Manager, IT and Media Services.

Individual vs Generic email addresses

We don't seem to be any closer to resolving the issue of using generic email addresses rather than personal ones for position-related email in the University.

Recent staff changes have again highlighted the difficulty posed by people advertising their individual email addresses for official purposes. When the staff member leaves or moves to another position, official email may be lost or delayed.

While there is a project currently running in the University to develop a schema for so-called generic email addresses (position@canberra.edu.au rather than firstname.surname@canberra.edu.au), the variety of purposes requiring generic addresses makes it difficult to develop a working schema, let alone manage one effectively.

All marketing and promotional materials (especially printed materials) should contain generic email addresses where possible. Contact the cehelpdesk in the first instance for advice on how to obtain and manage generic email addresses.

New email server

The Division has had to move to a new email server.

The new Exchange email server, isaac.canberra.edu.au, is now operational and TSU staff are busy transitioning Divisional staff over to the new server. While not yet complete, the transfer to a new server has shown great promise in solving a number of the issues recently experienced with the old server, spirilium.

All staff should be migrated to the new server by the beginning of Semester 2. For some staff this may require a visit from TSU staff who will check the configuration of their email client to ensure they are using the correct setup for the new server. Staff who access their email from outside the campus via an email client may need to contact the helpdesk to help them apply the new setting required.

Staff can access the new email server via the web: once all accounts have been transferred to the new server instructions for accessing the service via the web will be posted on the TSU website at http://www.canberra.edu.au/divisions/comedu/tsu/home. In the meantime, staff who have been migrated already can visit http://isaac.canberra.edu.au/ to have a look at the new Web Access system (enter your staff number with the ‘s’, and the password is your normal proxy password: no domain required!).

Email server upgrade

A server and software upgrade is planned to alleviate some current issues.

The Division’s existing Exchange 2000 email server is in urgent need of upgrade: to help combat spam; give some more protection against virus attacks; and to provide much needed extra storage space for emails (the current server is almost full and additional space can’t be added easily).

While the University has been talking for some years about providing a centralised collaborative system covering email, calendaring, document sharing and other tools, no system has yet been chosen and there is no timetable for implementation. In the circumstances, the existing server needs to be upgraded to continue to provide the Division with a reliable email service.

The Division of Business, Law and Information Systems has kindly assisted with the provision of a server licence for the current, newer version of Exchange (Exchange 2003), the email server used here in COMEDU, and has assisted us in the initial installation of the software. The server must now be installed in the rack and the existing Exchange 2000 accounts have to be transferred over to the new server: while end users should not notice the change, TSU staff may have to visit staff members individually over the next three months to finalise their transition to the new server.

Spam

Spam (unsolicited email) continues to be a problem for the Division (and the University, and indeed the entire online world), particularly the unsavoury varieties that seems to be on the increase.

To combat some of the recent increase in spam, personal comedu accounts are due to be closed by the end of this month, so the majority of the spam currently coming in should be curtailed. However there has been an increase in the amount of spam getting through the University’s existing filtering system.

ICT Services is adding some additional filtering to the email system to at least in the first instance identify those emails that are still getting through. As ICT Services tunes the system, email may begin to arrive in users’ in boxes with **POTENTIAL SPAM** added to the original subject in the subject line.

Users can set up rules on their email clients to divert messages with **POTENTIAL SPAM** in the subject line to a separate folder or directory, and examine these emails to see if indeed they are spam. If the messages marked as **POTENTIAL SPAM** are indeed legitimate emails (called “false positives” in the jargon), staff should advise the Building 10 Helpdesk that the system has marked a legitimate email incorrectly as spam so that they can further fine-tune the process.