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We were lucky enough to have contact with two people very involved with the ODU Computer system help us out with this project. Rusty Waterfield is the Acting Assistant Vice President of OCCS and Grace Little is the assistant director for OCCS. Just click on their names to take you to their responses or scroll down.





Grace Little is the assistant director for OCCS here at Old Dominion University. She was kind enough to respond to our problem statement about the ODU e-mail system. Here is a summary of what she had to say:

1: Ms. Little agrees that the java applet can be an issue as it is quite slow. She states that often times, people do not realize that the applet needs to load and click no in response to the warning window. This causes them to not upload the appropriate email features, thereby restricting their use of the system.
2: Ms. Little explains that the main reason the rich text applet is not embedded into the system is simply due to file size. Rich text is more involved and therefore uses more space, which is slower than the default text. The option is there for those who wish to use it, but the plain text is the default in an effort to make the system run at its fastest.
3: In reference to the student announcements, Ms Little began by explaining why they exist. Student announcements and faculty/staff announcements were created to address two specific problems: 1) departments were sending individual messages to all students, which caused problems with the mail queues; and 2) student mail boxes were being filled too quickly due to the overload of messages from each department. The student announcements were created as a way to combine all of these messages into one. Therefore, the file size of these messages was much smaller and the message consisted of links to the information, instead of the information itself. Also, these messages are sent during late hours so that they do not greatly affect the mail queue.
4: In regard to the small and sometimes unreliable attachment option, Ms. Little revealed some useful information. When mail is sent out through the Internet, there is a standard 10mb limit. However, if the mail that is sent stays within the Notes program, there is no restriction on file size. In simpler terms, if a message is sent to Kyle Nicholas using the address book in ODU mail, then the message will stay within the Notes environment. If the message is sent using the Internet address knichola@odu.edu, then the message goes out of the University, through the Internet and then back to the University. This is where size limitations are imposed, when messages are sent through the Net. **Maybe this is a sign that it is time for students to begin taking advantage of the address book feature**
5: Ms. Little informed us that while there are still times when the servers are out of service, that in general they are running smoothly. The servers were upgraded this past January, and uptime has been recorded at over 98% in all of 2003.
Ms. Little was also nice enough to give us her opinions concerning the e-mail server which we have included here in their original form;

“I actually like Lotus Notes email. Yes, I too find the webmail slow, but the Vendor is moving away from Java Applets, as can be seen with iNotes, and this will make things better. Notes has many features, including rich text, which are quite helpful. But the main thing for us is stability. We needed to provide a “workhorse” more than a “pretty” thing. Notes is very high on security. For example, a few years back, the “I love you virus” brought the world to its knees. Old Dominion was not affected. And this was due to using Notes email. Additionally, Old Dominion University averages over 65,000 messages daily. To me, these points far outweigh most other issues. Yet, as I’ve noted above, Lotus continues to work on the other issues as well”

-Grace Little
Assistant Director, OCCS
E-mail: glittle@odu.edu
Phone: 757 683-3203
Fax: 757 683-5155

*We want to thank Grace Little for her time and knowledge in responding to our problem statement*
-Group 2




The following information about email was provided in Mr. Rusty Waterfield’s PowerPoint presentation...

1: ODU’s application server runs email, as well as web, video streaming, and payroll.
2: The university handles about 46,000 emails per day
3: Data is a valuable asset to ODU. Managing/backing up/ maintaining disaster recovery are all very important.

We believe that Old Dominion University’s email system to be configured the way it is in the interest of security. Lotus Notes is an extremely secure email service, which is greatly important to the university. The size of this organization as well as the importance of the data stored in its computer systems, makes security is a big issue. While there may be some aspects of the Lotus email system that are problematic, the issue of security is not one of them, and that is a definite benefit to everyone.