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Systems Support Users
Group Minutes |
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Systems Support Users
Group Minutes |
Present: Eric Hodges, Bart Lytel,
Dudley Roach, Linda Thomas, Ballard McCleskey, Kriss Davis, Carmen Plummer,
Shirley Murphy, Thomas Fowles, Donna Simms
Absent: Bob Aaron, Shannon Covey, Shawn Hayes, Cherly Young, Pam Beach, Tina
Wright, Julie Goodlick
The main focus of the meeting was to discuss options regarding the deployment of
Outlook 2003, Office 2003 in general, and other deployment issues to the various
departments and groups on campus. Eric sent out questions prior to the meeting
to solicit ideas regarding "default" settings. The group discussed each
question, the options, and came to a conclusion on each issue. The members of
this users group will receive Outlook 2003 first to gain some knowledge with the
product and to help out others in their respective organizations when the
deployment is made to a wider audience. One question was related to Quicktime
and WS-FTP installations.
1. Are QuickTime and WS FTP needed as standard applications on the computers? Or
should they be treated as specialty applications, which we install on request?
The group discusses this and determined that there were enough situations where
people used these applications or could use them that these should remain as
default applications placed on each desktop Eric's group supports.
2. Given the recent attachment size problem on the UA mail server, we need to
revisit this policy. We temporarily have a 10MB attachment size limit in place.
Is this too high, too low?
There was a LARGE attachment sent through one of the Exchange servers that
effectively brought the server to its knees (500+ megabytes). It took a fair
amount of time to isolate the problem and bring that group of users back online.
The final recommendation of the group was that 20 megabytes should fit the needs
of the areas represented.
Dudley mentioned that it must be kept in mind that even if a "sending" exchange
server is set to allow 100 meg attachment, the receiving system (Exchange or
whatever), may reject or refuse to pass it forward. Hotmail for example limits
attachments to 2 megabytes. The Exchange Server working group on campus has been
discussing this and has tentatively thought about setting this to 100 megabytes.
This would allow all Exchange based users on campus to pass 100 megabyte files
to each other, but these large attachments might have problems reaching
non-exchange based users on campus or off.
Some education on how folks can know what size of attachment they are attempting
to send should be done. Very few folks really can picture what 100 or 20 or 10
megabytes of information might be.
3. The Office toolbar (that floats in the upper right-hand corner of your
desktop) is not included in Office 2003. We will present a couple replacement
options, but we would like to know if you and your colleagues actively use the
Toolbar to start programs or if another method is preferred.
The group concurred that having a "single click" way of accessing/starting
applications like WORD, EXCEL, etc. is really convenient and that most end users
would dislike and have a hard time navigating the START MENU tree.
It was decided that using the WINDOWS "quick launch" bar and populating it with
the contents of the old OFFICE toolbar should work for initial deployment. The
Windows quick launch bar can be relocated by end users to the side or top if
they wish. It will look slightly different that the tool bar that was a part of
OFFICE 2000.
4. If you recall from last meeting, Outlook 2003 looks quite a bit different
than its predecessor. We'd like your input on whether to install Outlook 2003
with the new, default look-and-feel or if we should taylor it to look like the
previous version.
The group felt that there was probably two options that should be shared with a
larger base of people for their opinions and votes. There are more than two
options available, but the others were just more variations on a theme.
Eric will put out a website and survey showing what the OUTLOOK 2003 default
settings looks like (the "three pane" option with segmented folder lists on the
left). And another image of what OUTLOOK 2003 could look like if customized to
look similar to the current OUTLOOK 2000 version (continuous folder list on the
left and preview pane at the bottom). He will tabulate the outcome and let the
support group know. The support group members will receive OUTLOOK 2003 first to
allow for experimentation and learning curves to be overcome prior to whole
departments receiving the update.