Survey Results

We wish to thank the 4000 plus folks that took the time to respond to this comprehensive survey. Your answers are going to be a big help in OIT ‘s effort to determine the features needed by the University for email, calendaring, and related services.

1. Original Invitation to take the survey

2. Overview of Survey Results

3. Graph of email answers

4. Graph of calendar answers

5. Graph of redundant system answers

6. Survey questions and answers

7. Comments – themes & actual comments

What Do You Want in an Email System?

The Email Project is an effort by OIT to determine the features needed by the University for email, calendaring, and related services and to implement a solution that will most closely meet those needs. The process is intended to be inclusive of all opinions and a final proposal will reflect a best fit with the majority opinion. An effort will be made to address all current usage of these products and to anticipate the future needs as well as the product trends and directions to determine a best match over time. Our ultimate goal will be to develop a plan to address both current needs as well as future needs that will serve the University for several years.

If Email at UT is important to you, then OIT wants to hear from you!

THANK YOU! - Some of the results from the 4,000+ who took the survey

Overview of Survey Results

Over 4,000 students, faculty and staff completed the survey. Comparing student responses to those of the faculty/staff, we saw that they ran very parallel. The few items that did show a little difference were faculty/staff felt stronger about allowing others to manage their calendar and students felt stronger about Instant Messaging (IM). Thus, a single solution should address the needs of all.

Not surprising, folks indicated that email is critical to them. They required access 24 hours a day, and wanted a redundant system. That was followed closely by the functions related to their calendar.

Some of the items in a mail system that are most important to folks are: Automatic virus, spam, and junk mail handling; Web access; Frequent contacts address book; Support for both text and html; Ability to setup rules and filters; Call back an email after it was sent; Ability to track or be notified when an email you sent is delivered or opened; And recover deleted email.

Some of the items in a calendar system that are most important to folks are: Ability to manage personal calendar; Schedule group meetings; Ability to set and receive reminders (email or alarm); And have a To-Do or Task list. It might also be of interest to note that the client reported to be used most often for calendaring is Outlook.

Two thirds of students and one third of faculty/staff use Instant Messaging (IM). Those the use it tend to use it daily and find it a convenience but not critical to their work. On the other hand if a UT restricted IM system was available over 60% would be interested.

Two thirds of the 1,339 folks who responded to the questions about file sharing indicated that they shared files. The most common way to share files was by email (~50%). Of the 870 folks who responded to the question of importance of file sharing, 36% felt that they must have it to work while only 4% felt that they didn't needed it at all. In the questions about redundant systems, file sharing was one of the top 3, behind email and calendaring.

One third of the 1,325 folks who responded to the questions about discussion forums indicated that they used them. Of the 554 folks who responded to the question of importance of discussion groups, 10% felt that they must have them to work while 45% found them to be a convenience.

Over three fourths of the 1,319 folks who responded to the questions about web presentation tools indicated they did not have one. Of the 306 folks who responded to the question of the importance of presentation tools, 16% felt they must have them while 40% found them to be a convenience.

In addition to the responses to the survey, over 600 additional comments were logged and a couple hundred folks that requested it were also contacted by email and phone. Some of the issues that the felt strong about were spam and virus filtering. The current Webmail is very important to them but they would like to see some improvements. The disk quota needs to be increased; A calendar needs to be included; Ability to change fonts and colors; A button to set spam and junk mail filters; The current address book needs to be greatly improved; When you use another client as well as Webmail all the mail folders and the address books should be available (synchronized) no matter which one you are using; Ability to sort; And fix it so if you hit enter while your cursor is anywhere but in the body of the message field it doesn’t send the message before it’s ready. Several folks felt strongly that any system needs to be based on standards. Many folks indicated that they wanted to keep their email accounts after they graduate. Some folks said they need the ability to delegate proxy authority so administrative assistants (or others YOU authorize) can help manage your calendar, email and tasks. Several folks expressed the importance of making sure that any email/calendaring system would work with PDAs and what did not work well today (delete an email on the PDA does not delete it from the server).

Email

How important or useful to your work are the following features? Even if you do not currently use some of these features, please indicate how useful you think it might be if you were to start using them.

Calendar

How important or useful to your work are the following features? Even if you do not currently some of these features, please indicate how useful you think it might be if you were to start using it.

Graph on Calendar

Redundant Systems

Many tools can be set up so that there is a redundant system in place for failover in case the primary system crashes. The redundant system would take over so you would not experience an outage and could continue working with little interruption. How important would it be to have a redundant system for each of the following tools?

Graph on Redundant Systems

General Survey Questions

You can also see results to individual questions to the survey.
Note: The percent (%) is in respect to the number of people who answered that particular question. To maintain the feel of the survey the [Next Page] buttons were left in but are not active.

Comments

After going through the comments we found some common themes. If you go on to read through all the comments you will also see some strong feelings about one email system being better or worse than another. We also want to thank all the folks that after taking the long survey took the time to express their additional thoughts. Some of the common themes are represented by the following examples:

Critcal issues to me are spam and virus prevention in email

Also, I and many other students would like to be able to continue using this account after graduation.

I personally am happy with my email!

I also think it is a good idea to be able to see when a recipient has opened their email from you.

It is critical that we have an email system that is consistent and reliable, is user-friendly and robust, and is easily accessible through a variety of means.

the address book feature with Webmail needs to be more user friendly and easier to navigate

WebMail is good for email, but I couldn't do without my MS Outlook's task, calendar, contacts, and email features

An email system with additional email quota to students, especially graduate students, is very important.

Would like to be able to copy or save e-mails to my PC harddrive or a floppy disc with a push of a button.

It would be nice to have a button on the e-mail page that would allow you to block any messages from that address without having to go through the hassel of doing filter settings

if you hit return while the cursor is anywhere other than the body of the email, it AUTOMATICALLY SENDS THE EMAIL. I can't tell you how many times I've inadvertently sent an unfinished email while trying to hit the ""]"" key while typing in addresses. THIS IS EMBARRASING if your email is for official business.

Thanks for the opportunity to voice!

in webmail, please find a way for us to sort messages by date...I like to check my email in chronological order from oldest to newest so I see previous emails and can follow email discussions more easily

I would like to have the ability to synchronize utk-email with PDA and Outlook Express so that I wouldn't have to delete a single message manually from each device/program everytime.

if U.T. webmail had formatting capabilities, such as the ability to use different fonts, or tab, or bold, underline, italics, etc. This would spice up the boring straight computer text very much so, and allow for greater flexibility

A standard e-mail client is fine"" -- if you pick one I like!

There were over 600 additional Comments

Note: The only changes made to the comments was to alter the real email addresses,phone numbers and names that we found in the comments.