Lync client to offer new communication tools

By Erin Landau, The Dartmouth Staff

Published on Monday, February 6, 2012

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Although the College’s email migration to the new Microsoft Outlook server has experienced a few “hiccups” since it began last spring, complaints regarding the new system have fallen, and students “appear to be happier,” according to Susan Zaslaw, associate director of administrative computing. As the transition continues, Computing Services will introduce an agent called Lync in the spring, enabling students to instant message, share documents and conduct video conferences through Blitz.

The migration process is over halfway complete, with only about 6,700 of 17,000 accounts left to transfer to the new Blitz system. The entire undergraduate student body, as well as arts and sciences graduate students and students at Dartmouth Medical School, have already seen their accounts migrate, according to Zaslaw.

Currently, team members at Computing Services are testing Lync, an addition to Outlook that will allow students to communicate using instant messaging, audio chat and video messaging and that includes online meeting scheduling capabilities and other useful functions, according to Zaslaw.

“The Tuck School has actually had Lync available for its students and staff for a while now, and they have reported that the instant messaging is most popular with students,” Zaslaw said. “Some of the online meeting and desktop sharing when they have student work groups has come in handy, and the mobile app for the iPhone has this great ability to send your location to other people.”

Other features of Lync include “presence,” which lists users’ availability based on manual input or information collected from a calendar. Students can also participate in WebEx sessions that enable them to see and hear presenters during virtual meetings. Lync gives students the ability to share files and offers different communication capabilities, Zaslaw said.

Computing Services specialists have assembled a team that includes students and staff in order to develop an outline for launching Lync, including a communications launch during Spring term to introduce Lync and its features to students, Zaslaw said.

Developers are also considering the problems they might encounter in the program’s launch, including bandwidth shortages and compatibility issues. Tests will be conducted to test the functionality of Lync clients for Macintosh and Windows operating systems as well as a range of mobile devices.

“We actually did some bandwidth testing to see how much of our Internet capacity is used when there’s a Lync session going on,” Zaslaw said. “We felt comfortable that we will be able to accommodate it because we’re going through a network update right now.”

The Lync clients may also support other instant messaging systems, such as Yahoo, allowing students to connect with individuals outside the Dartmouth community, according to Zaslaw.

“We’re going to get the most bang for our buck with Lync if lots of people use it, and it becomes more effective if lots of people know about it,” she said. “Most importantly, if they use different email systems, then they can still install the Lync client and use it.”

When College administrators announced plans to move to a cloud-based system in 2010, committees made up of students and faculty were formed in order to involved Dartmouth community members in the “momentous” decision between Google and Microsoft, according to Will Hix ’12, a member of the communications and collaboration tools study group, said.

“Basically, the administration wanted a couple students on the committee to get the student voice, and mostly what we did was listen, and we would say, ‘This is what students think,’ but it didn’t carry a whole lot of weight,” study group committee member Emi Weed ’13 said.

Despite recommendations reflecting students’ desire to move to a Google-based system, the administration decided to move to a Microsoft cloud system instead, according to study group member Mason Cole ’13. This decision was fueled by the administration’s desire for the campus to remain on a unified system, since many administrators already used Outlook, Cole said. In addition, issues arose regarding the security of the Google server, he said.

Advantages to the new system include improved spam folders, calendar functions and the ability to connect with devices such as smart phones, according to Cole.

The flexibility marks one of the highlights of the new system, as it allows users to access their data via a web browser, desktop client or by forwarding mail through other email systems, according to Bambi Rivera, manager of the Blitz-2-Blitz migration project.

However, many students still miss BlitzMail, especially the role of bulletins and nearly instantaneous messaging, Hix said.

Students often complain about the slower speeds associated with the new Blitz system and the frequency of server problems, according to Weed.

“Old Blitz, because it was made by Dartmouth, has a special spot,” Cole said. “It’s nice to talk about how Dartmouth was the leader in innovation — you were reminded every time you used it.”