GroupWise Gets “Exchanged”

Think you know your Salem State email address? Unbeknown to most of Salem State students, their email addresses have been subject to a recent "change."

              Current students have been using the email address name@salemstate.edu since their arrival at Salem State College. Kristin Gronberg, assistant director of IT helpdesk, said that the official address at Salem State has always been name@polaris.salemstate.edu but students were able to get by using the simpler email address. Students were able to use name@salemstate.edu thanks' to a system called Groupwise that was on a Novell server that the school had been using for a few years. Due to a new server, students are now required to use their official email address. Why the sudden change? The answer lies in a switch that faculty was forced to make.

             Salem State moved the staff and faculty email to a new server called MS Exchange that uses Outlook for mail. Gronberg said, "The license for GroupWise was expiring and was quite expensive, which contributed to the decision to move to Outlook. Outlook is more comprehensive and just as easy to use." Gronberg continued to say that the new server provided more capacity and that Salem State already had a license with Microsoft.

             With MS Exchange in use with all faculty and staff at Salem State, it forced students to use the official student email address, name@polaris.salemstate.edu. Gronberg says, "The old Novell server allowed the "alias" of name@salemstate.edu. The new Exchange environment

must utilize the format of name@polaris.salemstate.edu . So basically there is really no switch for students, Other systems on campus have always used the name@polaris.salemstate.edu format."

             Though IT doesn't think that the switch was a big deal, many Salem State students beg to differ. Gronberg says that all students were sent a community email prior to the switch informing them of the change. However, many students have said that they never received the notice. "I had no idea my email changed," said Josh Jennings, senor. "I had given out my email address to a few people regarding school work. I never received anything back, probably because I unknowingly gave them the wrong email address." The email sent out by IT was sent out just before winter break. Some students argue that just prior to winter break was a poor time to inform them of the change because not many students need to check their email at this time. The majority of school work is over for most students.