Friday, March 22, 2013

The University of Georgia will migrate its email and calendar system from Microsoft’s Live@edu to the company’s Office 365 starting at 10 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 2, and continuing through Sunday, Aug. 4.

"Microsoft is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in migrating its basic email, collaboration and productivity tools to the Web,” said Timothy M. Chester, vice president for information technology at the University of Georgia. “By migrating to Office 365, the University is in a position to reap these benefits for its students, faculty and staff — at no cost to the University.”

For this upgrade, users should be prepared for email access to be intermittent during the upgrade time period. Microsoft is requiring its educational institutions to upgrade to Office 365 by September 2013. Approximately 115,000 UGA Live@edu accounts will be upgraded to Office 365, and this maintenance window was chosen because it falls between the summer and fall 2013 semesters.

Several changes will be apparent after this change. After the upgrade, all users will have two accounts — their UGAMail account, which is managed by the University; and their personal Microsoft consumer account, which is managed by Microsoft and provides access to Microsoft’s consumer services, such as SkyDrive.

Initially, user names and passwords will remain the same for both accounts. But, if users change their personal Microsoft account password, they will no longer be in sync with their University password.

The new personal Microsoft accounts will continue to allow users to access SkyDrive, Skype (Messenger) and other Microsoft consumer services. Users will need to verify their Microsoft consumer accounts after the upgrade themselves.

One of the key benefits of this upgrade is that it will increase users’ UGAMail storage from 10GB to 25GB.

Some older software packages, such as Office 2003 or Internet Explorer 7, will not be supported by Office 365. Users are encouraged to ensure they have the appropriate software prior to the upgrade. A list of all supporting web browsers, operating systems and software will be available at http://office365.uga.edu.

The University’s central IT department — Enterprise Information Technology Services — manages UGAMail accounts. EITS will provide more information about the upgrade as it becomes available at http://office365.uga.edu. The University community is encouraged to check the website for updates prior to August.