Get Zimbra on Your Mobile Device

Did you know that Zimbra is available for your mobile devices - from iPhones to Palm Pres and more? If your handheld supports the web, you can access Zimbra's wonderful mobile interface just by visiting https://zimbra.washcoll.edu from the device itself.

What's more, Zimbra supports over the air sync to keep your mail, contacts and calendars up to date no matter where you are. With a device that supports Microsoft Exchange, you can keep everything synchronized easily.

To learn more about Zimbra on mobile devices, visit:

http://oit.washcoll.edu/zimbra

Extended Hours at the HelpDesk on Thursday

On Thursday, August 27, the HelpDesk will be open from 8:30 am to 8:00 pm. We've extended our hours to facilitate assisting the incoming and early return students.

If you need to contact the HelpDesk, please call extension 7777.

Telephone Interruption

In order to re-synchronize the telephone circuits with Verizon at 9:45 this morning we will reset the circuit boards for the telephone system.

Internet and Telephone Service

Verizon is having trouble with the fiber optic cable that feeds both telephone and Internet service to the campus. You may experience intermittent services while Verizon continues to work on their systems.

Printing to the Canon Copiers

In July OIT, replaced the copiers with new leased Canon copiers. In order to print to the new copiers, OIT staff went around and installed the drivers on staff and faculty machines. This was a very big job and we did our best to update the computers on campus that we could access. To complete this project, OIT is asking faculty and staff that cannot print to the copiers, to contact the HelpDesk at ext. 7777 to make arrangements to have the drivers installed on your computer.

Thank you. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Zimbra Calendar Training for Departments & Groups

In addition to email, the Zimbra collaboration suite provides a robust calendar application. Like Meeting Maker, the Zimbra calendar allows users to schedule meetings with staff, faculty and students alike. If you are a current Meeting Maker user, it’s important to get familiar with the new calendar before Meeting Maker is discontinued at the end of October.

To help with the transition, OIT is offering the opportunity to schedule “1-hour” hands-on training sessions for departments and groups that want to start using Zimbra's calendar now. These sessions will cover the basics of using the calendar including advanced topics like calendar sharing and managing roles and setting calendar specific preferences. Until Meeting Maker is discontinued, OIT encourages departments to attend calendar training together if possible. Doing so will make it easier to schedule interdepartmental meetings if everyone is using Zimbra calendar instead of a combination of Zimbra and Meeting Maker.

For your convenience we set aside the days and locations for training, as listed below:

• Monday, August 24 - Wednesday August 26 from 8:30 - 4:30 in Goldstein 202
• Monday, August 31 - Friday, September 4 from 9:00 - 1:00 in the Beck Instructional Lab (located on the Lower Level in Miller Library)

To schedule your department or group for a Zimbra Calendar workshop, please visit:

http://oit.washcoll.edu/trainingandtutorials.php

If you have questions about the training, please contact the HelpDesk (ext. 7777), Gene Sheehan (ext. 7168), Nick Smerker (ext. 7421), or Sharon Sledge (ext. 7450).

Hopefully, we’ll see you in a workshop real soon.

Long Distance Service Restored - 8/18

We have been notified by our long distance vendor that the service issues have been resolved. If you are still having difficulty with long distance numbers, please contact the HelpDesk at 410-778-7777.

Change Your Inbox View in Zimbra

By default, Zimbra displays mail messages as grouped conversations, allowing you to easily see a particular topic. You can think of this like a threaded conversation on a discussion board.

However, conversation view can be confusing or you may just prefer a more traditional message list in your inbox. Luckily, Zimbra makes it very easy to switch between inbox views - just click the View button.

Using the View button, you can choose to display messages as either conversations or just a straight list of messages. When in message view, you can also sort using the From field, which is not possible in conversation view. Additionally, you can use the View button to turn off the Reading Pane, which allows you to preview messages without double clicking them.

All in all, a very handy button to have around!

View Message Status in Zimbra

Like Outlook, Zimbra also displays an envelope icon to show that an email has been answered (with an arrow on the envelope.) To make sure that it will be displayed, right click on the menu bar immediately above the most recent email message. In the pop up menu, select Status. Items with a check mark to their left will be displayed in the menu bar/field.

You may also want to click Preferences, then the General tab. Be sure that Login using Advanced (AJAX) is selected. Unless you have a very old browser/slow connection Login using Standard (HTML) will limit the capabilities of Zimbra, including the message status indicators.

Long Distance Problems - 8/17

The college currently is having difficulty accessing some long distance numbers. The long distance carrier has been notified, and is working to correct the problems which are on their system.

Local Folders in Thunderbird (and other apps)

Now that we have transitioned to Zimbra, it's important to note that any of your local folders created in Thunderbird will not transfer over automatically to the Zimbra web client. Those folders exist only on your local machine. There are two options for dealing with your personal folders.

1. Set up your Thunderbird application to work with Zimbra and continue using Thunderbird. To do so, simply follow the directions OIT has created here:

http://oit.washcoll.edu/zimbra/pdfs/thunderbirdsettings.pdf

2. Move your local folders to Zimbra's online storage space. When you do that, they will no longer be local folders. They will exist on the Zimbra email server. This will enable you to use the Zimbra web client with those folders, as they will be moved to the server instead of your personal computer. If you have a lot of email stored in your local folders, you will need to move folders individually while watching the graph of your quota. If you near your quota, you need to stop moving email so as not to exceed the quota.

To move your local folders to Zimbra, follow these directions:

http://oit.washcoll.edu/zimbra/pdfs/personalfolders.pdf

If you run into trouble with either set of directions, please contact the HelpDesk at 410-778-7777.

If you use local folders in Thunderbird, or another email program that allows use of local folders, and have a very large amount of email, you might want to consider continuing to use that program for your main email client. You can copy folders that you might need when you are not at your main computer to Zimbra and keep most of your email in the local folders of your main computer.

You can still log into Zimbra when away from your own computer to read email, use its calendar, document storage and sharing info and other features.

Address Books and Other Email Updates

Email address books that existed in WebMail are being copied to the new Zimbra accounts. Unfortunately, they could not
be copied until all of the accounts were created.

The old WebMail address books are expected to be available in Zimbra by Noon, Eastern Daylight Savings Time, today for
all currently created accounts.

Currently we are having trouble with about 150 email accounts, mostly concerning people who are retired or Emeritus.

Those accounts will be made active as soon as possible, but that will likely be by Tuesday morning.

In all cases, as much as we tried to plan ahead, we did miss some information that it would have been good to communicate.

I guess that is "we-a" culpa.

SPAM Alert - "Dear Web Mail Owner..."

Please do not respond to the following SPAM/PHISHING email that is going around. It and other similar attempts to steal user names and passwords can lead to extra spam, to identity theft or other troubles.

Here is the current phishing email:

Dear: Web Mail Owner,

This message is from the Web mail messaging center to all Web email account owners. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center .We are deleting all web email account to create more space for new accounts. To prevent your account from closing you will have to update it so that we will know that it's a present used account. Your response should be sent to admin manager Email: web-service@w.cn

***********************************************
CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
Email Username :
EMAIL Password :
Login Site:
Date of Birth :
Country or Territory :
************************************************

Thanks,2009. Web Team

Remember: OIT will never ask by email for your network user name and password.

Important Email Information - Please Read

Please read this entire message carefully!

Note – with email not in service WAC Alerts will not work on email. Alerts will continue to work with telephone, text messages, etc.

In preparation for the major move to the new Zimbra email and collaboration suite OIT suggests that everyone take a few minutes to clean up your current email boxes and empty the trash folder. That will help to speed up the process of copying the campus email to the new system. This is not necessary, but will be helpful.

If you use WebMail address books, please make a copy of the address book and save it to your desktop. That is an easy task: Open WebMail. At the top of the page click on “Addresses.” When the address page opens, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the button that says “Export to CSV.” That will put a copy of the address book on your computer. This is a precautionary measure because we plan to move the addresses for you, but you should keep a copy “just in case.”

Beginning at 7:00 PM on Friday, August 7, 2009 all Washington College email service will go off-line until Monday morning. There will be no copies during that time to Blackberries or to other external devices or accounts. If you are expecting important email from anyone, please ask the sending party to copy the email to an outside account such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.

On Monday morning you will find that the existing “Log In” page on the College Web site will direct you to the new Zimbra email system. Your current network/email password will continue to work. Please don’t change your password at this time because that will prevent you from being able to go back to check that all of your email was copied correctly from the old system.

Even if you use Thunderbird or another email program, we suggest that you log into Zimbra and explore the features that you learned during the training sessions. Previous WebMail users, please check your address books and re-do your email signature in Zimbra. That is done in Zimbra by clicking on “Preferences,” and then on “Signatures.”

If you are a user of Thunderbird, or another email client EXCEPT Outlook, and want to continue to use the client external to Web-based Zimbra, you will need to your account settings in the client. Step-by-step instructions will be found at the following link:

http://oit.washcoll.edu/zimbra

Outlook users will need to install a small program that will allow Outlook to sync email with Zimbra. Please contact the HelpDesk on Monday for Outlook help.

If you currently use a Meeting Maker calendar - continue to use it. The calendar data will not be moved to Zimbra until Fall Break. Zimbra does include a calendar function. We suggest that you become familiar with the calendar, but do not make Zimbra your primary calendar before the Meeting Maker data is put into it because it might be overwritten when the Meeting Maker data transfers to Zimbra. OIT will provide Zimbra calendar training in the coming weeks.

On Monday morning, beginning at 8:00 AM, OIT will be ready to help with any problems that may be encountered because of this major change. Please go to OIT's Zimbra information site if you have questions before Monday:

http://oit.washcoll.edu/zimbra

Update: Please note that there will be no email lost during the process of transferring to the Zimbra email system.

Some questions have been raised about copies of email to Blackberry or other devices. Questions have also been asked about what happens if one's Washington College email is
forwarded to an outside address.

The answer to all of these questions is that the College's entire email system will be totally off for the weekend, starting at 7 PM on Friday through Monday morning. With the email system off, there can be no forwarding to any outside account or device.

OIT regrets any inconvenience caused by the transfer to the new system.

Zimbra Will Be Available On Monday, August 10

As many of you already know, OIT is moving the campus community to Zimbra. Zimbra is a modern and robust communications and collaboration suite that includes email, calendar, and document sharing. OIT is excited about moving the campus community to Zimbra and from your responses many of you are looking forward to using Zimbra. If you have already attended a Zimbra training session, this emails serves as a reminder that we are planning to migrate to Zimbra this weekend. If you haven't attended a Zimbra introductory session, please try to attend one of the three sessions (9:30, 11:00 or 1:00) on Friday, August 7 in Norman James to learn about Zimbra.

OIT wants to make the transition to Zimbra as easy as possible. To accomplish this the move will take place in two phases.

PHASE ONE: Deploying Zimbra

Beginning at 7pm on Friday, August 7, email services will be taken offline and will remain offline until Monday, August 10 at 6:00am. While email is offline, you will not be able to log in to your WC email account. However, no one will lose any email over the weekend. Email sent to your WC email account will be received and saved. On Monday, August 10, you can view all your email using Zimbra by clicking on the "Login" link on the home page.

Once Zimbra is available, you will not have access to Webmail. To continue using Thunderbird or another email client, you must first reconfigure the email client to work with Zimbra. OIT will provide instructions to help with reconfiguring Thunderbird shortly.

If you need help using Zimbra on Monday, please contact the HelpDesk.

PHASE TWO: Moving Meeting Maker Calendar Entries to Zimbra

To allow users time to get comfortable with Zimbra, OIT will not migrate your Meeting Maker calendars to Zimbra until October. If you are a Meeting Maker calendar user, please continue to use Meeting Maker. However, OIT encourages everyone to get familiar with Zimbra’s calendar. Do not put anything in Zimbra's calendar that you want to keep because it will get overwritten when we migrate your Meeting Maker calendar to Zimbra. Once the Meeting Maker migration to Zimbra is complete, OIT will discontinue Meeting Maker.

To learn more about Zimbra visit:

oit.washcoll.edu/zimbra

For questions about the Zimbra transition or training, please contact the HelpDesk at ext 7777.