Undergraduate students will have access to a new email and calendaring service beginning next week.

“We are excited to transition to Office 365 and introduce students to all of the benefits and features of the new system,” says Mike Smith, Project Lead, Student Email Migration. “Significant planning and the valuable experience gained migrating staff, faculty and graduate student email last year should minimize service disruptions for undergraduate students this weekend.”

Every undergraduate account holder has received an email with the details of the migration that begins Saturday, January 26 at 12:01 am. Students will not have access to their email for up to 12 hours. The disruption may be shorter depending on the account’s position in the queue. Students can use an online tool to track the progress of their email migration and access support resources.

Students will not lose current emails during the migration. However, there may be a delay of several days before 100 per cent of current emails are transferred to the new system.

Once the transition is complete, students can log in to the Office 365 web interface using their Queen’s NetID and password and start exploring the many features the system offers. Benefits include:

• 250 times more mailbox storage from 100MB to 25GB
• Seamless integration with mobile devices
• Feature-rich web interface
• Compatibility with the staff and faculty email and calendaring system

Moving to an externally hosted email and calendaring solution for undergraduate students allows the university to reduce energy consumption, as six servers are no longer needed. Before selecting a cloud solution for student email, the university commissioned an independent privacy risk assessment that found Queen’s in compliance with freedom of information and privacy legislation.

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