Saturday PM Update

Greetings All,

Here is where we stand:

There was a minor issue this AM that our VT admin corrected. 

Outlook Users:
Everything should work fine for you.  You may be prompted with security warnings or autodiscover warnings when opening Outlook but these are fine.  These warnings are temporary and necessary for your settings to change automatically.  Please answer yes to these when Outlook presents them to you.

Outlook Web Access users:
mail.vcom.edu AND mail.vcom.vt.edu will both take you to where you need to go.  The login page now looks different and there is a minor change in what you need to put in for your username.  IT IS NO LONGER NECESSARY TO PUT VCOM\ INFRONT OF YOUR USERNAME.  Just put the first part of your email address (everything prior to the @ symbol) for your username.  Enter your password and login.  You will get a certificate error, this is fine and temporary.  You should then see your Web Outlook as usual.

Smart Phone Access:

This is going to be in limbo for a little while.  I apologize for that but it is necessary for the transition.  The following settings should work for you however THEY ARE NOT PERMANENT.  These will change sometime soon but for now this should work for you.

These settings are for exchange/active sync/corporate sync accounts.  You will get a certificate or security warning but it is fine to continue through this.

I apologize to BlackBerry users; they have a completely different access mechanism.  I don’t have one so I can test it.  Even if I could, the very limited way that they access email may not work during transition. 

Current settings (NOT PERMANENT):

Exchange server: elros.vcom.vt.edu
Domain: vcom
SSL/Secure connection: yes

Future settings (not currently active but will be as the transition moves ahead):

Exchange server: mail.vcom.edu
Domain: vcom
SSL/Secure connection: yes

POP/Gmail accounts:

There are some out there that prefer to use POP access or access their accounts through Gmail via the POP protocol.  This is not a recommend method but we recognize its importance.  As the transition continues I will push for this to be considered.  For now here are the settings that have worked for me.  I tested this using Windows Live Mail on Windows 7.

Incoming Mail Server: elros.vcom.vt.edu

Username:  everything prior to the @ symbol in your email address with no VCOM\

Authentication: Clear Text

Port: 110

SSL: off

Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.vcom.vt.edu

Use same credentials for authentication as incoming server

Port: 25

SSL: off

Sending through Gmail via our POP server:  I don’t think this is supported at the moment.  You may be able to send through Gmail.  We will attempt to support this in the future.

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From a user:  I've been messing around with the gmail settings and wanted to let you know what my current setup is. With this setup I at least have a secure connection with outgoing e-mail. I hope this helps as well.

POP3:

POP server: elros.vcom.edu
Port: 110
SSL: Off

Outgoing:

SMTP Server: mail.vcom.edu
Port 587
TLS: On

Credit goes to Edi B
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A continual source of frustration has been access to POP on Macs.  The same settings that work on Windows SHOULD work on Macs but sometimes don’t.  A quirk to watch out for on the Macs, changes to the server settings in the mail apps on those platforms often do not take until the app is fully quit and restarted.  I will do what I can to ensure that Macs will work with POP accounts.  Without one to test with this will be difficult. 

Thank you for all your patience!

Harth Tucker

Saturday AM Update

Greetings All,

I spoke with our admin at VT.  He got things working properly for the most part.  FOR NOW when you go to mail.vcom.edu and then login (WITHOUT vcom\) you will get a certificate error.  If you continue through the certificate error then you should have access to your email.  During the transition phase there is nothing that can be done about the cert error.  We will be in a transitional period for a little while so you should see the interface change as well as the cert error disappear. 

 Phones:  This afternoon I will do some testing with my Android based phone.  I will post what is working for me and what should work for everybody else. 

Outlook users:  At this time I have no reported problems accessing email through Outlook.

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Happy Saturday!!!  We have some mixed results this morning.  Outlook clients look to be working well.  The link to mail.vcom.vt.edu is taking you to where you should end up however most accounts can’t login.  The temporary work around is to go to elros.vcom.vt.edu and log in there.  Please remember to put vcom\ then your username to log in.

I notified the mail admin so hopefully the mail.vcom.edu will be working properly shortly.

A quick note about phones:

Until the dust settles I won’t know for sure what will work on the various platforms.  The priority for this weekend is Web Outlook and Outlook clients.  As time permits I will post what settings do work however, patience is advised because what may work during the upgrades might not work once they are done.  I apologize for the issues.  The end result of this will be well worth the temporary problems.

Welcome!

This is a temporary blog setup to inform our VCOM user base of any problems that may affect access to VCOM email during our upgrades.  At this time there are no announcements that our users need to be aware of.

I wanted to take a moment and make you all aware that there MAY be some temporary disruption in email services starting this Friday, the 1^st of July.  You may have already noticed a new page when you visit mail.vcom.vt.edu.  We are in the process of upgrading our email servers to offer better access and more robust features.  Our hope is that this will be transparent to most users.  The settings that will change shortly will take a little while to propagate through the network, as such the best course of action may be to wait until Saturday should you have issues accessing your e-mail Friday evening.  Our admins at tech will be doing many things to the servers this weekend so there may be short sporadic outages.

I will be monitoring the status of email systems over the weekend and doing everything that I can to ensure access remains as easy as possible.

VCOM Faculty and Staff:

The machines that we have issued you should be configured in a way that the changes made will not affect your access.  You may receive a security alert when opening Outlook.  Server names such as elledan.vcom.edu, elrohi.vcom.edu, elros.vcom.edu are all fine and part of our system.  Please answer yes to these security alerts.     

For our users that use the Outlook Web Access:

The URL for this will remain the same, mail.vcom.vt.edu for now.  This will be phased out in favor of mail.vcom.edu.  Both URLs should function but mail.vcom.edu will be the one for future use.  Please adjust your shortcuts appropriately. 

For our users that use Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010:

If we configured this for you, or you followed our guidance when setting up an exchange account then you should not experience any problems.  You may receive a security alert when opening Outlook.  Server names such as elledan.vcom.edu, elrohi.vcom.edu, elros.vcom.edu are all fine and part of our system.  Please answer yes to these security alerts.   

For users that use other mail clients that access via POP and IMAP protocols:

Please use mail.vcom.edu for incoming and outgoing mail servers.  Port settings should remain the same. 

For smart phone users:

If your phone is setup to use ActiveSync or access via exchange servers you may need to update the exchange server to point to mail.vcom.edu or elledan.vcom.edu.  Phones can be a big question mark as we don’t have every different type out there to test.  Please be patient with problems with smart phones.  In most cases the best way to restore functionality is to remove the account and re-add it.    

Certificate warnings:

These may linger as issues for a little while.  If you see a security certificate warning, continue through it and it should be fine.

General troubleshooting advice:

If you have connection issues reboot your computer.

If you still have problems hit Windows + R, type cmd then hit enter, then in the black box that appears type ipconfig /flushdns then hit enter.