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Voice mail switch delayed two weeks

New date will give users more time to activate mailboxes

By Portia-Elaine Gant
Senior Staff Writer

The University's transition to a new voice mail system, which was set to take place Saturday, has been postponed to March 6 in order to provide users more time to activate their new mailboxes.

"Based on our user acceptance testing and the training, it was felt that we needed to give users more time to initialize and secure their new voice mail boxes," Charles Chambers, the Information Technology Division's project manager, said.

"Those were available this week, but it was decided that five days was not enough time to prepare," Chambers said. "The more people who do that, the more successful this will be."

The IT department is still offering training for those who need to activate their new voice mail boxes.

"We have documentation and in-person training. We have information on the Web as well, and we would like users to go through that. They're going to need to secure their mailboxes before the switch," Chambers said.

The process of setting up the voice mail system will not be foreign to some people -- Chambers said the process will be similar to setting up voice mail on a cellular telephone or from SBC.

"Everyone with a mailbox will have to connect in, enter their initial PIN number, and it'll guide them through personalizing their account as well as changing their PIN number," Chambers said. 

"We would encourage people to go through it a little more and get used to it, but the primary thing is to get in there."

Though the department plans to give users an additional two weeks to set up their new mailboxes, they are encouraged to do so immediately.

The voice mail system was damaged during Tropical Storm Allison, and Chambers said a couple of mailboxes were lost at that time. In addition, he said some information has been lost a couple of times since then.

"This new system will get us away from that and move us into the future for messaging," he said.
 

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