Mercyhurst College has made many online changes recently with the creation of the My.Mercyhurst portal and the Career Development Center’s CareerConnect Web site.

By the end of next week, students’ e-mail accounts will change as well with the migration from webmail to mymail.mercyhurst.edu. With the creation of the mymail account, e-mails will change from user@mercyhurst.edu to user@lakers.mercyhurst.edu.

“We think it’s going to be an improvement for students,” System/Domain Administrator Lorraine Frownfelter said.

Frownfelter discussed the benefits of the switch to mymail. The new e-mail system “offers instant messenger and all of the resources of Windows Live,” Frownfelter said.

The new account will hold 10 GB of e-mail rather than the 100 MB that the Mercyhurst e-mail account currently holds. Students will be able to send an e-mail with about 250 attachments as compared to the three-item limit which is the case with the current e-mail account.

Not only will students be able to store more e-mail, they will receive less spam while actually receiving the mail they do want because it will not go through Mercyhurst filters, Frownfelter said.

“I think it’s going to be a really good thing for the students,” Frownfelter said. “It offers them things we can’t give them.”

Besides the benefits that the Microsoft Outlook Live offers, students will benefit from the e-mail change because they will have access to their mymail account after graduation.

Before the e-mail switch, students had the same e-mail account from their freshman year to one year after they graduated. If they wanted a Mercyhurst e-mail account after this time period, they could obtain an alumni e-mail account.

“By going to Live mail, basically the e-mail is lifetime,” Network Administrator Guy Di Pietro said.

Not only will students not lose their e-mail accounts after graduation, they won’t lose their e-mail during the switch.

Students’ e-mail folders migrate to their mymail account, and e-mail sent to a user@mercyhurst.edu address will be delivered to the user@lakers.mercyhurst.edu account. The deleted items and junk e-mail folders will not be moved.

Students are not the only ones to benefit from the e-mail switch. Mercyhurst IT employees benefit because their workload will be simplified since they will have less accounts to administer, Di Pietro said.

The migration for Mercyhurst Main campus will occur between Monday, Sept. 20, and Wednesday, Sept. 22. Last names beginning with the letters A-G will migrate on Monday, letters H-M on Tuesday and N-Z on Wednesday. Mercyhurst North East campus migrates on Tuesday, Sept. 28.

“We don’t anticipate any major problems,” Di Pietro said.

If the freshmen’s smooth transition to the new e-mail system is any indicator, students should not need to worry about the migration.

Frownfelter said she did not receive any complaints from freshmen regarding problems accessing or using their mymail accounts.

Students should have full access to their webmail accounts while their mail is being migrated, but there is a possibility of one day without e-mail, according to Frownfelter.

To access their accounts the first time, students will need to go to mymail.mercyhurst.edu and login with their full e-mail address. They will then need to answer security questions and set their default language.

Students who experience problems during the migration can contact the HelpDesk or access help 24/7 from Windows Live.