University Information Technology Services staff are expecting to replace HuskyMail \u2013 the e-mail system used and disparaged by UConn students for years \u2013 with a hosted, third-party system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe RFP is out the door,\u201d says Matthew Smith, manager of server support at UITS. \u201cThe bids will be in by May 11, an evaluation group will review the submissions, and we\u2019ll move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
If all goes according to plan, Smith says, students new to the campus will be automatically enrolled when the new system is installed, while continuing students will be \u201crolled\u201d into the new system over a period of several months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognize the need to upgrade, and the external third-party solutions can do the job far better than we,\u201d he says, noting that a number of other universities have already moved to outside vendors for e-mail and other support.<\/p>\n
The third-party solutions provide far larger systems, able to store several gigabytes of information compared to only 50 megabytes for HuskyMail. The external systems also will provide services for calendaring, document sharing, instant messaging, and more, all functions HuskyMail is incapable of performing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe heard the students and we\u2019re moving forward,\u201d Smith says.<\/p>\n
Students have complained about HuskyMail\u2019s slow speed and limited functionality for several years. Their voices became more strident last summer, and UConn administrators responded by sponsoring an open forum and creating the student technology advisory group, an 18-member committee that included nine students. The group researched the University\u2019s needs and developed the RFP that was sent out several weeks ago.<\/p>\n
The new system is expected to require minimal costs and staffing requirements, while greatly enhancing the functionality of the e-mail system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In response to feedback, UITS plans to upgrade the student e-mail with a third-party system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[37],"class_list":["post-14179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 07:55:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14179"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37381,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14179\/revisions\/37381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14179"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=14179"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}