IT updates services

By RACHEL CROSS

Updated: September 5, 2012, 9:33 PM

Tools

GVL / Jessica Hollenbeck Freshman Adam Terwilliger and juniors Rachel Gregg and Melanie Reed work in the Niemeyer computer lab.

GVL / Jessica Hollenbeck Freshman Adam Terwilliger and junior Calla Van Atta works in the Niemeyer computer lab.

GVL / Jessica Hollenbeck Freshman Adam Terwilliger and juniors Rachel Gregg and Melanie Reed work in the Niemeyer computer lab.

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The Information Technology department at Grand Valley State University has been implementing new changes to services, starting with the end of July, when IT changed it’s anti-spam solution program from Proofpoint to Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange for faculty and staff.

This new program will limit incoming e-mail messages from outside GVSU to 100 megabytes, and a quarantine message will be sent out daily. This quarantine message notifies faculty if the system recognizes an email as spam or not, and the staff can then determine if they want it to be moved to their junk folder.

Bill Fisher, associate director for technical services, promoted the switch to Forefront, at no cost, from a previous three-year Microsoft agreement that Fisher said totaled at $48,000.
“Before switching to Forefront, we were paying quite a bit for Proofpoint,” Fisher said. “It made sense to integrate this program because it already came with our campus use agreement.”

Sue Korzinek, director of IT, was another key-player in the university’s switch to Forefront. “GVSU students will benefit from this change because we are continuing to budget resources to allocate money by reviewing products we use,” Korzinek said. “It’s a fiscally responsible decision, and we are able to stretch our funds further to provide better services for everyone.”

Korzinek said the major challenge of this new change was making sure that people were aware of how this system operated and that it can take a while for Forefront to detect spam for an individual account. She added that some emails are obviously spam while others are not.

In addition to the new anti-spam program, IT has been making enhancements to mobile applications and the alert notification system, which can now send texts to students when professors post announcements on blackboard.

Fisher said one of IT’s major goals is to improve the efficiency and reliability of technology for students on campus. “This year, we are trying to improve infrastructure problems,” he said. “We want to make accessing the web more reliable for students. Lots of upgrades have been made, such as to the MAC labs.” In addition to these changes, students’ private drives have increased in size from 500 megabytes to 1,000 megabytes, Fisher said.

As for future projects, IT plans to look for more opportunities to communicate with students via mobile technology. “We want students to pick and choose what notifications they want to receive in a timely manner,” Korzinek said. “We also want to focus on the look and feel of mobile applications to make them operate more like a web page.”Students like senior Michelle Vader had some suggestions for IT, as well.

“I noticed that a lot of times when I send from a non-GVSU email account, my professors do not receive it as well,” Vader said. “I think having some sort of program that will allow external emails more easily would be beneficial for communication.”

Students experiencing difficulties with their computers, Internet or specific programs can contact the IT Help Desk for assistance at 616-331-2101.
rcross@lanthorn.com

Published September 5, 2012 News