At this point, all we're doing is agreeing with each other and validating each other's feelings.
Granted, the current web mail is a cluster *&^% and not at all intuitive by even IT professionals, apparently. (Though it only took me 15 seconds to find the forwarding feature.... WITHOUT the help of a half written FAQ. I'm not sure why we have "MSU Preferences AND Options on the root menu. Then another MSU Preferences, which is NOT the same as the root MSU Preferences....)
As someone working with a VERY tight budget here, i've had to do things that don't look pretty at all! But they work. And people understand. (At least here on the College level, they're happy to have SOMETHING.)
A few things points...
#5 - Tight budgets.... we have to work with what works. Even if it's not pretty. and the current system works.
#4 - MSU treats email as official.... yes... it should be.... What does the UI have to do with that? Mail sent to and from the university can be "official" with no regard to what software / front end / back end is used to send it.
#3 - If you don't like the web mail system. DON'T USE IT. Use a Client. That's what i do. I'm not fond of web portals, PERIOD.
#2 - This all started because a user had problems finding the forward feature. How did we get to where we are? Really people? (My phrase of the day!)
and the biggest of all....
#1 - WHY did we get started on this to begin with?
Please, for the love of {name of higher power goes here}!
This system has been live for how long? Your opportunity to b(*&^ about it is well past. I think ATS did a very sufficient job in allowing us to test and use and abuse and issue our wish list / complaints BEFORE launching the final product. Please direct complaints and suggestions to the correct department. I AM NOT THE CORRECT DEPARTMENT!
So, i guess, at this point, I'll ask about where to direct suggestions and comments. (Not b*&^%es)
Can we send them directly to the ATS helpdesk? Will they get routed correctly? Or is there someone else to send them to?
At this point, i have no expectation of anything changing. If not, fine. My need for the web mail system is so minute that... it functions just fine for the little i need it, when i need it.
Thank you for your time!
-dak
On Oct 1, 2009, at 12:43 PM, Richard Wiggins wrote:
A couple things happened at the same time in the last couple of days. I desperately needed to communicate with MSU HR using an
msu.edu address, and WIlliam Safire died.
Increasingly MSU treats e-mail as official. It's really important to be able to forward your MSU e-mail to a professional service, as opposed to
mail.msu.edu. Since
mail.msu.edu is amateur, MSU needs to make it easy to forward to a professional service.
I literally spent an hour trying to figure out how to set forwarding in the new
mail.msu.edu interface. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I could not discern how to accomplish a simple task that MSU requires thousands to complete.
When I wrote MSU's first e-mail system in 1983, it was state of the art. That's because there was no art. It was primitive. We had no clue. That was 1983. It is 2009. We should be smarter now. I wasn't around when MSU chose its current e-mail system. But to bury a vital function such as forwarding -- which is now an essential thinig, which MSU demands -- under an obscure tab labeled "MSU Prefs"-- this is not just primitive. It is incompetent.
It also took more than 24 hours for my former colleagues at ATS to cough up simple information vital to me -- how do I set forwarding in this poor interface. We were better at FAQs in 1957 than we are in 2009. My colleagues are good people but the standard of service is poor. Questions should be answered in minutes, not days. And if the primary campus e-mail service hides forwarding under a label of "MSU Prefs" given a ribbon bar of normal options for the app, there is a problem.
