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UCIST Student Email Ad Hoc group Report to UCIST on 17 March 2006

UCIST Student Email Ad Hoc group Report to UCIST on 17 March 2006. Andrea Chappell, IST. Agenda. Paraphrased goals Identified issues (from UCIST) Ad hoc group direction Results of explorations Questions. Identified Goals (Paraphrased). Overall goals: Improve now, expand in future

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UCIST Student Email Ad Hoc group Report to UCIST on 17 March 2006

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  1. UCIST Student Email Ad Hoc groupReport to UCIST on 17 March 2006 Andrea Chappell, IST

  2. Agenda • Paraphrased goals • Identified issues (from UCIST) • Ad hoc group direction • Results of explorations • Questions

  3. Identified Goals (Paraphrased) Overall goals: Improve now, expand in future • Want (need?!) to use email for official correspondence between UW and student (but there are problems). • Want to continue contact with students graduating. • Want to investigate how to improve initial (prospective) contact.

  4. Identified Issues (1/2) • Mail to external accounts (hotmail, gmail) • Bounces due to over quota, gone, or UW mass mailings marked as spam. • Mail from external accounts • Difficult to determine if email from cutiepie@hotmail.com is student X at UW. • Wish to continue to contact students after grad. (Alumni Affairs has an interest too.)

  5. Related Issues (2/2) • 8-character impersonal UWdir ID. Real constraints? • OUAC "feed" of email accounts for students. Change our processes so that the UW accounts are ready earlier? • Central mail server for students. Benefits? Drawbacks?

  6. Ad hoc group directions • Further research state of affairs (e.g., Are the processes in the Faculties similar?) • Identify the real problems, suggest potential solutions and implications. • Not asked for final decision, but report on a small set of well-considered possibilities, the pros and cons of each

  7. Team • Derek Kirkland (Student systems, processes) • Giles Malet, replacing Dawn Keenan (sendmail, mail processes) • Reg Quinton (UWdir, processes, ID mgmt project) • Martin Timmerman (Director, CSS in IST) • Dave Kibble (ID mgmt project, 2002 email review)

  8. Activities to Date • 5 meetings • Collecting data (problems, “wants,” and processes) • Separating near term and bigger picture issues

  9. Findings: The bounces • Characterization of “bounce” problem for outgoing email - “Enemy is us”? • 22,000 emails sent for FED election • Results: • ~150 empty email fields in UWdir (why?) • 329 bounces (1.5%) • 245 are local to UW (over quota) • 3 typos, 81 no longer active (typos?)

  10. Findings: 30 day wait • Delay of 30 days into term to fill empty UWdir email fields • Process: • OUAC addresses to SA • Students register, asked to update UWdir • Faculties create email accounts in month before term (varies!), and add (no clobber) • SA fills in empty fields • Last step 30 days into term due to Math request

  11. Findings: How not to spam • “Chunking” of emails into smaller batches • Reg uses a set of scripts for FED mailing • Registrar and Alumni use Groupmail from Infacto to customize messages and insert delays between messages • Mass mailing machine: mailman • Could be identified to external mailers commonly used by students

  12. 555 yahoo.ca 558 rogers.com 637 math.uwaterloo.ca 637 sympatico.ca 681 watarts.uwaterloo.ca 732 yahoo.com 1093 student.cs 1129 admmail 1334 fes.uwaterloo.ca 1376 gmail.com 1670 ahsmail 2102 sciborg 2102 scimail 3016 student.math 5493 artsmail 5517 hotmail.com 6979 engmail Findings: Top mail servers

  13. Findings: From whom? • cutiepie@hotmail.com asks you to send the mark from assignment 3 which she lost, signing as Susan Nasus. • Is she or isn’t she? • j23lee asks you to send the mark from the assignment 3 which he lost, signing as Jeff Lee. • Is he or isn’t he?

  14. Findings: Tracking • Need more information on userid@uwaterloo.ca, versus userid@fes.uwaterloo.ca, but it looks like logs will be adequate in both

  15. Questions • Do we care where the student ultimately receives email, UW or external? • Perhaps we care more about a record of delivery. • Do we care where the student sends from?

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