Mass communication students will have the chance Tuesday to learn and participate in a new PAWS e-mail service with enhanced features.
Students have been looking for enhancement in their e-mail for a long time, said Nicole Geske, manager of the Enterprise Solutions Group. The Enterprise Solutions Group, which is a part of the Office of Computing Services, was formed to provide greater focus on academic and research technological challenges.
“A lot of the generic talk is that it’s a new PAWS,” said Aaron Larose, Student Government’s director of information technologies. “All we are updating is e-mail. The entire PAWS is something else.”
A third-party company purchased the PAWS e-mail because it was the only way to further the system, Larose said.
“The way [PAWS e-mail] was designed has limits,” Larose said. “We were allowed to outsource this new e-mail from another company and provide for the students. It is a solution we can both benefit from.”
E-mail accounts are created constantly for new students.
After a student graduates, their e-mail address stays in the system. Soon, the number will get so high, OCS will have to hire more people to manage the accounts.
Because they have outsourced to another company, Outblaze, OCS will be saved from a heavier workload, and saved from hiring those extra employees, Larose said.
“We are acting now in order to circumvent that,” Larose said. “If not, it would require more funds due to the number of accounts being created for students.”
Some of the features students will see improved are Spam blocks, filtering options, the ability to create special folders for certain e-mails and calendars, Larose said.
More features include signatures for e-mails, advanced address books and advanced forwarding.
“You can add e-mails to a block list,” Larose said. “That feature is added to Outblaze. They will block some, and students can block the rest.”
Students will also be able to house certain e-mails in particular folders.
For instance, a student can create a folder dedicated to one class. After setting preferences, e-mails received from the teacher, or classmates will go to that particular class folder.
Instead of simply using just plain text, the new e-mail system will have the option to receive e-mails in HTML, Larose said.
“This allows for various formatting techniques– different fonts, colors, bullets, and indentions,” Larose said. “The software allows for HTML base e-mail, which is the same kind you see in a word processor application.”
The new e-mail will be similar to Hotmail e-mail accounts.
“It is much more user-friendly,” Geske said. “Students were looking for more features. It took us a while to meet the needs presented by Student Government, but we finally have.”
Student Government took part in a pilot program of the new e-mail this past summer, Geske said.
“We had a very positive reaction from Student Government,” Geske said. “They were very excited about it.”
Another big change will be the actual e-mail address for students. Instead of simply “[email protected]”, the new account will be “[email protected].”
However, students will still have the old e-mail account, Larose said.
“When you send an e-mail, it will be re-directed to the paws.lsu.edu address,” Larose said. “To make people feel safe, we aren’t stopping the old e-mail.”
OCS chose mass communication students as a larger pilot program because they had worked previously with the pilot for Tiger Bytes, Geske said.
“The College of Mass Communication is allowing us to use them for the larger pilot program,” Larose said. “We don’t feel safe to give it to the entire university at one time, so it will be one college at first, until we are comfortable.”
Students also will have the opportunity to remain with the older system. The PAWS page will provide a link to the new e-mail system.
Many students see the advancement of the e-mail as a positive step for PAWS.
“Moving to HTML-based is a very good thing,” said John Casey, an English sophomore. “I would consider it a good step for an already good system.”
The student technical fee will fund the change in e-mail, Larose said.
“It’s a student-created fee,” Larose said. “Since this e-mail system will impact every student, it is perfect to be paid for by the tech fee.”
Larose said although only mass communication students will be able to utilize the new e-mail system, he does not want that to discourage anyone from attending the information seminar Tuesday.
A seminar will be held at 1:30 p.m. in the Viex Carre room in the Union, open to all students.