Ohio University students accessing their Catmail accounts are logging in a little differently this semester.
Over the summer, Microsoft, the company that operates Catmail, changed the server system that supports it from live@edu to Office 365. It was a free upgrade for OU, said Sean O’Malley, IT Communications Manager.
Catmail is OU’s cloud service. Accounts are created from information automatically sent from the Student Information System.
One of the changes to OU includes a new URL for students to access. Before, students would go to live.com or outlook.com, but now they must go to catmail.ohio.edu.
Live.com and outlook.com are still usable logins for other types of email accounts; students just can’t use them for Catmail.
“Those still will give you a login, but when you try to login with your Catmail information it’s going to tell you it doesn’t know who you are,” O’Malley said.
Catmail also synchronized students’ Catmail and university passwords. In the past, students were able to set a different password for Catmail if they so desired. Now it automatically uses the password associated with students’ OU accounts, O’Malley said.
Catmail’s display remains the same after the switch to the new server, but students have more storage space. There is now 25 GB of space; before there was only 10 GB, O’Malley said.
Ryan Andrews, a sophomore studying psychology, experienced difficulties accessing his Catmail account last year, but since the update he has not had any problems.
“After they updated it I noticed that I was actually able to use it and that it was coming up properly every time I logged into my account,” Andrews said.
Students might remain active in their email if he or she doesn’t specifically log off. If a browser is completely closed, though, the student will be logged off from the system.
For Elizabeth Preske, a sophomore studying mechanical engineering, the new URL for the login isn’t something she is a fan of.
“It’s kind of annoying, but it’s nothing I’m going to complain about,” Preske said.
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