Over the past few months, IT has been in the early phases of preparing for an upgrade of the e-mail system to GroupWise 8.0 (currently running GroupWise 7.0). Several members of IT have been working on the new GroupWise client in a test environment and have attended some workshops on the new GroupWise 8.0 to prepare ourselves for the upgrade.

The upgrade will be most noticeable in the web client with significant improvements to the calendar functionality and task management. Improvements for the local desktop client will be in functionality but the look and feel of your e-mail experience will not change. The upgrade itself should be rather seamless for the campus community.

The schedule for the upgrade process is as follows.

• April – IT testing
• Late April / Early May – Beta Testers from campus community for local client.
• Mid May – Documentation on new GroupWise Features to be available
• Saturday, May 30 – Launch of GroupWise 8 on the back end. (This immediately upgrades the web client interface.)
• June – Upgrade of local clients on campus.

The process for upgrading the system on the back end will take approximately 8 hours and during that time, e-mail will be unavailable. The upgrade is scheduled on Saturday, May 30th to occur between Commencement and FOCUS sessions thus minimizing the effect of the necessary down time from affecting these two important events. Once GroupWise 8.0 is up and running anyone accessing via the web will utilize the new web client. Contacts and messages will be automatically transferred during the upgrade process. The local GroupWise 7 client will continue to work with the new system so faculty and staff will be able to upgrade their local clients at a later time. IT will work with departments to launch an update script which will pop up upon login and say that you need to update your e-mail client. This experience will be the same as when you receive the update message for your web browser or computer. Once the update has run you’ll be using the new GroupWise 8.0 client.

If you are interested in being one of the Beta Testers, please contact Becky.Klein@valpo.edu, GroupWise 8.0 Project Lead. More information regarding the new features, locations for documentation and video training, etc. will be in an upcoming edition of SummIT and on the IT Website.